crackerwax

Caught this on BBC Three the other night and it’s a fairly interesting concept. You take five relatively well to do people, strip them of everything they own and chuck them onto the streets of London. Boy did they choose some stunners.

The five volunteers are Clementine, Darren, Thomas, Charles and Ravi. All of them are worth a bob or two and have agreed to take part in the show to get a feel for what life is like on the other side of the coin. Very brave if you ask me, I don’t know if I could do it. Then again after watching the show I’m not sure they can.

The two people over seeing this experiment are Craig a homeless worker whose pretty sound and Rebecca, who’s sound too, and American and hard as nails. They’re proper boring though, so join me now for a journey through time and space in to the world of the filthy rich and homeless!

First off is Thomas who’s a student and also a bit of a yahoo, he’s from Yorkshire and lives in a huge house with his parents the vegetable oil magnates. Hey at least he gets on with it though. Throughout the first show he manages to cope remarkably well, although on one occasion he claims to feel stupid but that’s fair enough because he probably is.

Thomas chose the begging route, but at least he didn’t sit crying or whining on like a fanny, unlike Darren.

Darren’s fat, arrogant and an absolute fucking sham of a man. Bewildered by the fact that people aren’t as lucky as he is, yet even more astonished by the fact that he would be brought down to this level. Careful Darren, send not for whom the bell tolls and all that. Although in true fashion he managed to come out with this cracker, through tears by the way:

‘[It’s] worse than hell. It’s cold, it’s degrading, it’s embarrassing. I can’t look at anybody, I can’t look anyone in the eye. I feel like I want to quit. I want to go home.’

Boo, fucking, hoo Darren. Embarrassing? What are you talking about? Embarrasing is, as a grown man, deciding he has to call his Mum and cry down the phone to her about how horrific one night on the streets is and the fact that he’s wearing shit stained pants. Twat.

Next on the list is Charles, a farmer’s son who’s not too keen on doing the whole farming thing for the rest of his life. He seems like a fairly decent lad and it looks like he’s taking part for all the right reasons. Early on he bumps into three rah friends who drop him a bit of loose change, and fair play to the guy he refuses to take more, however he managed to lose all his credibility by ending the encounter with the lovely:

‘Nice to see a bit of skirt!’

Still, I like Charles, he hates semi-skimmed milk and in my book that makes him alright, unlike Ravi.

Ravi I dislike. Straight off the bat he came out with this astoundingly off beam comment:

‘Being homeless is the result of, in my mind, failure. Failure at your life. Maybe self inflicted or they choose to be homeless I think there are options available to them.’

Not only that but he also struck a rich seam of arrogance with this gem:

‘I’m going into this thinking I will be making money every day’

What a tool, in his favour though at least he tries to prove his theory by working his arse off to make a few bob and buy himself dinner. His plans don’t quite work out, he gets his collar felt a couple of times and ends up completely downhearted. Still at least he did something and even though he is a total cock that I wouldn’t piss on if he was on fire, he can’t compare to the amazing Clementine.

Clementine is Alastair Stewart’s daughter. A chubby waster who doesn’t need to worry about anything and seems to treat the whole thing like an exercise in finding out who’s got the best contacts in London, rather than seeing who can survive the life of a homeless person. Relying on Daddy’s friends to give you a shower and some cash is certainly not the point of this exercise, what’s worse is that she actually says:

‘I know people all across London, I know there’s ten or fifteen flats, houses, apartments I could stay in tonight and be welcome and leave with a hundred quid in my pocket, fill up with food and the invitation to come back the next day if I needed to.’

Whoa, whoa, oh hang on, she continues.

‘To an extent that would be surviving but it would be unrealistic and it would be cheating, and I don’t want to cheat because then I would have wasted my time and I won’t have challenged myself like I wanted to.’

Ah, good she realises it would be completely counter to the point of the exercise. That’s definitely a good thing, but wait, she goes on.

‘But at the same time I’m not going to sit here freeze and be starving. Y’know there are certain rules you can bend before breaking them.’

First off love you’re not going to starve, trust me. Secondly, the rules? It’s not fucking Cluedo, it’s an exercise in eye-opening, you’re meant to have your perception altered by the events you experience not dash around London tapping up your dad’s chums for cash. Anyway after her pathetic little tirade she promptly dashes off to the Good Morning studios and door steps Fern Brittan. Words fail me.

What a fucking waste of space she is, she didn’t move a muscle all night preferring instead to sit whining on about how dangerous it is on the streets and how the producers were crazy to dump her in Soho. Get over yourself you daft tart and just get on with it.

In conclusion, aside from the humour value of watching people have break downs over trivialities, this show is actually very good. It shows a side of life that most of will hopefully never experience and it does it with a fair amount of taste and sensitivity. It’s shows like this that open our eyes, and if it means you have to rip the piss out of a group of willing, fame hungry morons then so be it.

Filthy Rich and Homeless is on BBC Three at 21:00 on Tuesdays, set the Sky+.