Famous, Rich and Homeless, Wednesday 9pm, BBC1

Famous, Rich and Homeless © BBC

Thanks to the recession, the number of people in the UK living on the streets has risen sharply over the past 12 months – and those community-spirited folks at the BBC want to pay lip service. And this being 2009, a boring old documentary about the plight of the homeless simply won’t cut the mustard. You guessed it; we need a bunch of misguided, simpering celebrities to show us what life on the streets is like.

Enter journalists Rosie Boycott and Hardeep Singh Kohli, tennis star turned Treasure Hunt presenter Annabelle Croft, aristocrat James ‘Marquess of’ Blandford and finally Bruce Jones – better known as Coronation Street reprobate Les Battersby – as our game volunteers. As an aside, despite his booming “homeless people are bums” speech, the latter even starts the programme looking like he permanently resides on a bench at Waterloo Station. Oops.

After a bizarre Apprentice-lite opening, all swooping shots of the capital with Big Issue founder John Bird stepping into Sir Alan Sugar’s size nines, the C-listers are stripped of their clothes and dressed up in some humble charity shop fare, before being dropped off at various points across London with no money and left to fend for themselves.

All manage to cope with varying degrees of success, apart from the Marquess. Living up to his stereotype, James – an early contender for this year’s coveted Most Utterly Despicable Person award - manages to slope off and find a swanky hotel to sleep in before throwing in the towel after a couple of days. Meanwhile, Rosie is troubled by pangs of guilt after a kindly passer by hands her two crisp £20 notes after falling for her battered wife yarn, and Bruce sets up a little photography firm outside the Houses of Parliament, doing a roaring trade until his pungent stench eventually starts driving the customers away.

There’s some choice quotes to pick from in this vulgar vanity fest, but Annabelle Croft probably edges it by declaring the show to be “a real opportunity for me personally”, before adding, “How often do you have the opportunity to be stripped of everything you own?”

I suppose if the whole sorry exercise prompts one person to re-evaluate their attitudes to homelessness it could be worth it, but one can’t help but wonder if the Beeb would’ve done better to send Centrepoint a cheque to the value of the production costs.

by Stewart Turner, Tuesday 23 June 2009

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