Bak's TV Week: Famous, Rich and Homeless

In these dark economic times, everyone seems to know someone who has recently lost their job, been forced to downgrade their home, or resorted to doing their weekly shop in Aldi. It's no wonder then that homelessness is on the increase. BBC1's Famous, Rich and Homeless, then, in which five sort-of-famous faces sleep rough on the streets of London for 10 days, couldn't really be better-timed.

 

So while the BBC bigwigs were using your licence fees to fund their own obnoxiously lavish lifestyles, five hapless celebs agreed to exchange their log fires, drawing rooms and servants for cardboard boxes and discarded, half-eaten kebabs in an attempt to discover what life is really like for the thousands of homeless people currently sleeping rough in the UK every night.

 

The programme started with a few strangely familiar aerial panoramas of London, dramatic classical music, and the news that the five volunteers were to meet in an abandoned warehouse at the Thames. But this wasn't an episode of The Apprentice and instead of Sir Alan the celebs were met by John Bird, former street urchin and founder of the Big Issue, armed with a few harsh words and a bin bag full of ill-fitting clothes for them to change into.

 

Step forward Rosie Boycott, Annabel Croft, Bruce Jones, Hardeep Singh Kohli and Lord James Blandford, who spent 10 bitterly cold nights last December begging, scrounging and whining their way round the streets of London. Well, four of them did anyway: Blandford bottled it on the third day following two impossibly difficult nights spent in the comfort of luxurious Chelsea hotels.

 

Blandford Bows Out

 

Like his fellow contestants, Blandford – great nephew of Winston Churchill – started the programme with a great show of bravado, claiming that this would be his 'war on concrete'. His great uncle would have been so proud when, after shuffling about in the cold for approximately 15 minutes, pudgy moneybags Blandford chucked the towel in and broke the rules by checking into a hotel. He lasted about another 10 minutes after that before calling his wife and begging to come back home, leading Hardeep to declare later that: "If he doesn't have the bollocks to do it, he can f**k off." But not to his face, obviously.

 

Elsewhere, having recovered from several emotional collapses even before being dropped off in the middle of Islington, Rosie Boycott was using her years of experience as editor of The Daily Express to great effect, spinning a web of lies and deceit to dupe well-meaning pub-goers out of their hard-earned cash.

As 'Cynthia', a beaten housewife from Bristol who had taken to the streets of London after running away from her violent husband, Rosie swindled close to 50 quid out of one kindly soul who after seeing herself conned on television probably won't commit a single charitable act ever again. And who could blame her? Boycott was later seen passing it on to a genuine homeless man, as if that in some way excused her dastardly behaviour. Still, at least it didn't end up in the pocket of some unscrupulous BBC exec or other.

 

Annabel Croft, meanwhile, unused to straying too far from the luxuries to which she has become accustomed, chose on the first night to bed down on London's exclusive Bond Street. Where she was no doubt given short shrift the next morning by snooty shoppers looking for bargain panda bear fur hats and shoes made from the skin of baby dolphins.

 

Posh Annabel was always going to struggle with the whole homeless thing, and tried to make up for her own inability to cope by taking real homeless people under her perfumed wing, much to the dismay of organiser John Bird. Her attempts to rehabilitate alcoholic Drax, homeless for 20 years, earned her the tag 'Florence Nightingale' and a dressing-down from Bird on day seven, which led to the show's only really hilarious moment as former Corrie star Bruce Jones exploded in Annabel's defence, bellowing: "IT IS OVER! IT IS OVER!" (It wasn't).

 

Brucie Bonus

 

Bruce was the documentary's brilliant surprise, especially when you consider that he was sacked from Corrie for allegedly making racist jokes at a club night, and that he was revealed as a horrific sexist in last year's Wife Swap with Sinitta. Famous, Rich & Homeless showed that, while clearly somewhat misguided in life, he may have some wit about him after all.

 

On day two he could already be found earning an honest crust on Westminster Bridge, taking photos of passing tourists in exchange for a few coppers, enough to buy him four pints and a packet of nuts at the end of the day, which is all you really need in life. But it was his compassion for heroin addict Mark that really brought out Les Battersby's human side though, admittedly, his suggestion that all prisoners should be hanged in order to give more money to the homeless may have been somewhat ill-considered.

Still, watching him take a gaggle of toothless old alcoholics on a boat cruise around Loch Lomond may have been one of the most touching things I've seen on TV this year. That, and hard-up Hardeep's claim that he could easily "fall into sex work for a tenner." Which is probably about twice as much as anyone would be willing to pay. Hardeep is fortunate though in that if he ever was to find himself homeless he could probably live off the flab for a good few months before things got desperate.

 

So, a serious documentary rendered somewhat unserious by the presence of some fairly ludicrous celebs. But at least Bruce Jones learned a few things from it. And he looked the part. Next week: Famous, Rich & For Rent, in which Beverly Callard, James Blunt, Piers Morgan and the Queen spend two weeks working a seedy Soho brothel in exchange for tiny handfuls of obsolete foreign currency. Enjoy.

 

Quotes Of The Week

 

"She was Florence Nightingale and I suppose he thought he was General Booth." - Big Issue founder John Bird lets rip at Annabel and Bruce.

 

"People are going to try and urinate on you." - I'm sure at least one of the celebs has experimented with that kind of thing before.

 

"I feel like Robinson Crusoe, surrounded by a million Fridays." - Bruce betrays a hitherto unknown talent for crap metaphors.

 

"I haven't got a clue where I am." - Northerner Bruce is dumbstruck upon seeing the London Eye.

 

"I wouldn't say I'm comfortable and I wouldn't say I'm rested." - Blandford finds hotel accommodation less comfortable than his own palace.

 

"He's a keeper." - Comic Hardeep on 20 years homeless drug addict, alcoholic and former rent boy Sean.

 

"What frightens me is how easily I could fall into sex work for a tenner." - Don't flatter yourself, Hardeep.

Bak On TV

Read more of Stuart Bak's TV reviews in our Couch Potato archive. Do you agree with Stu's opinions? Disagree? Drop him a line on bakontv@hotmail.co.uk