Famous Rich and Hungry

Bublin1

On bbc1 now.

I can't stop crying.

Especially over the single dad. His famous guest forced him to eat half a weetabix.

balletshoes

I watched last night too - this should be compulsory viewing for everyone in this country.

Bublin1

This is my first time watching.

Im so upset for so many reasons.

inkie

Just watched it on iplayer

marisco_2

It is not easy viewing at all. I think it is good to highlight the tough decisions many people face on a daily basis though.

cannyscot_2

I feel really bad . We used moneysavingexpert when we needed to save money for various reasons but not we are fairly well off. I think I will find a foodbank to donate money to each month and go back to keeping our food costs down and donate the difference as our food bill has steadily gone up and we ahve started wasting food.

Deanied

Am I the only one who wondered why some of them had pets when they could barely afford to feed themselves? Interesting priorities.

justjohn

Or the skint female smoking.

pawsies

Don't understand why they went shopping in 'expensive' places like Spar, corner shops etc.

Why not reduced sections of supermarket?! Some of them definitely had supermarkets as they were featured on the programme!

Also £7 on stew??!! You could get frozen veg (which is actually healthier) or reduced, chopped tomatoes, a worse cut of meat (i.e. not the most popular) or reduced and spices which they probably already have. That would come to maybe £4.

Some of the people should go to their local library and use the internet for free to access this site for ideas

whodathunkit

Just about everybody was short of money because they were repaying debts, not because they didn't receive enough money in benefits.

BitterAndTwisted

Eh, many people already have pets when they suffer a radical change of circumstances, and if I had to endure the lives some of them appear to have to live I'd be smoking like a chimney as well.

I did not expect any of the "visitors" to be able to offer any concrete or useful advice because, as they made clear more than once, what they were witnessing was completely outside their own experiences.

I daresay some of the regular posters over on Old-Style would have licked their budgets into shape in minutes.

What's obvious is that debt was a major factor for many of the families visited. How those debts were acquired, whether before or after becoming dependent on benefits wasn't always clear. The chap earning £18k per annum was the most deeply in debt, I believe. The amount of interest they were supporting was absolutely socking. And depressing. I'd have hanged myself.

It reminded me that any one of us could be in peril of being in precisely the same situation as them. Oh hang on, I am