“On tv there is an excellent series currently screening called ‘Filthy Rich and Homeless’ that plucks five people from very privileged backgrounds and strips them of all their modern day finery: clothes, cell phones, cash, credit cards and social support systems and puts them on the street in London in old clothes armed only with a sleeping bag and their wits.”
There’s a new show exactly like this coming up on American TV. I’m not shocked. I just don’t know what to say. It’s almost perfect timing, yet I think we can both agree it is not as if the producers of these shows had any idea of the financial tsunami about to take place as they were filming. They simply rode the wave to money. No blame. It’s Hollywood.
Seriously. I can’t watch that stuff. I just watch the previews.
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November 27, 2008 at 3:42 am
Dr.Doom
Is this all the info you’ll provide if captured by the enemy?
November 27, 2008 at 4:29 am
Dr.Doom
I didn’t get that calendar yet, but I did find this contest clip:
November 27, 2008 at 4:48 am
Dr.Doom
and, she can dance. Did you learn anything else?
BTW, this idea (not sayin it’s anyone’s here) that the current financial crisis is a Black Swan is just so much BS. It’s just another bubble. The trouble is, no one, not even Greenspan, has any idea of a bigger one to replace it with.
Guess I’d better read Nudge’s post now.
November 27, 2008 at 4:55 am
Dr.Doom
This seems appropriate for Thanksgiving…
November 28, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Mary
Filthy Rich and Homeless – Part One
Five people volunteer to be homeless for 10 days in Soho, London, the notorious crack triangle in February 2007 with temperatures hovering around at 2°C.
These people entered a hidden society within society that has its own subculture and dangers who are stripped of all their comforts and contacts.
The five are:
Darren
A self-made, wheeler-dealer ex-internet liquor business man, living the life of Riley selling up after 15 years, having started from scratch. Aged 39, divorced with two boys, he spent his nights out on the tiles living large but it had begun to pall.
His enormous wealth showed him going out with ₤1k and returning with only ₤20 with him stating he’d do the same the next day. That same day he closed a real estate deal for a villa in Spain for half a million pounds. Of course there was the black Range Rover and the flash phone and clothes.
He’d previously regarded homelessness as unthinkable but wanted to have the rug pulled out from under him to challenge him with the only regret being not being able to see his sons.
During the first three days Darren met a man who had lived on the street for 12 years off and on but preferred to live outside and kindly acted as a guide to show Darren where to source good free food (bolognaise, fruit, sandwiches, tea and coffee etc) at a Soup Run. This was fortunate as he hadn’t slept much and had had nothing to eat for a day.
Clementine
A 21 year old student teacher who lived a pampered life as her Dad was a well rewarded TV reporter and definitely the apple of his eye. She had the pleasure of choosing from eight horses as to which one she would ride for the day.
She said she wanted a challenge as she realised she was privileged and had never had to do anything the hard way.
When dropped off in the red light district she moved to a safer area but caved in and tracked down a family friend who took her in and gave her a meal and slipped her ₤20 before she left.
Clementine was busted by the program runners and she had to either give away either the money or her sleeping bag. She wouldn’t give away the money so her bag was taken and she used the money to sleep in a hostel for the night.
Ravi
Self-made millionaire of 24 with his own internet empire, a lot of money in real estate and various companies and a three-storey penthouse in London.
His mother and siblings were cast aside by his father when he was 12 and at 16 he left school and started promoting clubs to support his mother and siblings. He had made his first million by the age of 18 and was addicted to making money. This addiction had given him a very unforgiving attitude toward homeless people – he viewed homelessness as failure or a choice to live on the streets.
When stripped of his money he was very confident he would make a lot quickly and improve his situation. His first money making attempt was to assist a guy selling single roses and he thought he was going to make ₤30 but only ended up getting paid ₤9, but at least he was able to buy some food.
He bedded down on a park bench for the night. The next day he did the flower wholesalers thing as mentioned on CFN but lucked out.
It slowly dawned on him that homelessness meant spiralling down and making money was far more difficult than he’d envisioned.
Charles
Son of a farmer who had 1,000 acre farm with two brothers who said being privileged was a good thing. He had worked on the farm since leaving school but felt he needed to get out and explore the world and see if farming was what he wanted to do with his life.
His father reckoned that homelessness attracted undeserved kudos and hoped his son would not be entranced by it charms (yes I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either).
After walking around the city for a while and pinching some coins from a wishing fountain he said he was already valuing money so much more. He bumped into some friends on the street who offered him ₤20 but he showed some integrity and refused so as not to cheat.
The next morning he stole a carton of milk from in front of an office building.
Thomas
The 21 year-old son of parents who had built up a vegetable oil empire from nothing worth ₤40 million living in Yorkshire. He had been to private school but seemed pretty down to earth when he stated he thought all humans were equal.
He freely admitted his family had for more than they needed living in a stately home where a flash dining room had only been used once in the last 12 months.
After a day of having nothing to eat he found a coffee cup, sat on the pavement and started asking people if they had any spare change. He was really embarrassed and said people looked at him like he was shit or ignored him. He said that he’d been guilty of ignoring such people in the past.
The low point came when some guy on his mobile said into his phone “Hang on, I’m just giving some spare change to a bum.” That really floored Thomas to think he was that lowly regarded.
At the end of the program the narrator said that on any given night in the UK 600 people would be sleeping rough (I thought it would have been more, so I checked this again) and most of them would be in Soho.
One of the co-ordinators of the five said that this experiment would challenge people’s thoughts about homeless people or people on the margins as most people were only one trauma away from homelessness.
I’ve recorded the second program and will try to post the information tomorrow.
November 28, 2008 at 9:06 pm
JR
Wow. Thanks. At first, I thought you were copying and pasting off the shows website, but you actually wrote that up. Nice notes.
December 1, 2008 at 5:31 am
Mary
Filthy Rich and Homeless – Part Two
In this episode the famous five were paired with a person who was homeless at the time of filming or who had been in the past. The buddies had had serious drink or dug problems, sometimes both, or they had done time in prison.
Darren
A pretty hardy character in spite of his surface softness; he had one moment where he thought he can’t handle the experiment any more and phoned his mother, reversing the charges and broke down in the phone box about the shame of being homeless. His mother must have told him to buck up because he emerged to soldier on.
Darren was paired with a tramp, aged 59 who had been on his own since the age of 13, who distinguished himself as a tramp and not a homeless person as he travelled around doing odd jobs.
Darren is shown muttering under his breath as her goes to meet his buddy with words to the effect of “Oh my God, I don’t believe it, not him!”, but once he gets chatting to Smokey the tramp he chills out a lot.
Smokey is very candid about his past and says he did prodigious amounts of heroin and LSD and was such a hopeless alcoholic before he dried out he’d walked down the street in the past with urine and faecal soaked clothes.
Whilst they sat on a bench Smokey told Darren it was 4.30 pm and Darren asked him how he knew the time with no watch. Smokey said he knew the time from the way the shadows were cast on the buildings. Darren checked the time with a passerby and found Smokey was correct thereby blowing him away.
An advanced survival lesson from Smokey for Darren was to drop your daks and thermal top and wrapping newspaper around yourself before putting them on again. They went into the street, sat down and started asking people for spare change with Darren really cringing and Smokey said “See how your pride just disappears.”
Later in the evening they found sleeping quarters in the loading bay of a supermarket with two oblong cardboard boxes selected for beds. Smokey joked that there might be a £30 per night charge for their digs, that’s if they weren’t wheel clamped. Darren remarked that with his newspaper linings he would be all right. Smokey was also in the habit of looking out for fellow homeless people and found a blanket and covered a person with it.
Darren said that his preconceptions of homeless people were really challenged but he thought that 95% of Britons held the same views he had previously. His admiration seemed to be growing for the homeless because he said that even though things were bad for them they just cracked on with life.
Towards the end of the program the Dynamic Duo and another homeless person were sitting in a park having a chin wag and Darren said to Smokey that he shouldn’t drink coke because it would rot his teeth; Smokey said it wasn’t a problem because he carried them around in his pocket.
Right at the end Darren said that out of everyone in his life he felt that Smokey had had the most influence. It showed the two bear hugging each other and the tears were streaming down Darren’s face when they parted company.
Clementine
Clementine’s main concern with having a buddy was incompatibility as she would be around the person all the time.
She was assigned a 33 year old ex-heroin addict called Billie who had been homeless for 17 years. At 14 she had been kicked out of home and she had lived on the streets but had since found a home in a council flat with her girlfriend.
Billie said that living rough was awful and that she had been beaten up a number of times, pissed on while sleeping and had lost several street friends to heroin overdoses.
Billie took Clementine to a day centre where she could shower and wear some day centre clothes while hers were being washed. While at the centre there was a bloke who looked drunk who had got a can of shaving foam and was spraying it all over the carpet.
Clementine was shocked that he could treat the facility so badly and said if she was really homeless that she would go to the day centre every day as it was so nice. Perhaps she didn’t consider that the bloke may have had mental health issues as well as a drink problem.
Clementine saw a woman at the centre pregnant with her seventh child and was genuinely scared for the unborn child’s future as the mother was already in straitened circumstances.
The day ended with Clementine being taken to Billie’s flat where she was treated to a roast meal and a warm bed for the night.
Ravi
His morale seemed to be plunging quickly and he felt if he had a buddy he would have no control.
He was teamed with Allan, a 26 year old Glaswegian who had done a two year stint in prison for selling drugs. Allan was homeless because he couldn’t raise the money for a deposit on a flat but didn’t like to be seen as homeless.
The two spent the night in a park near a copse sleeping on top of strips of cardboard.
The next day Ravi tried to help Allan by signing over the lease of one of his rental flat properties and so have a permanent address which would mean he could have a library card issued. The library card would allow him to use the internet for free so he could go job hunting.
Ravi was all geared up to use the internet but Allan wanted to go to the pub and Ravi had a hissy fit. Allan told him that if he was going to spend the night sleeping outside he wanted some warmth and comfort before nightfall and to connect with his mates. He chided Ravi for thinking that homelessness was not having a home or a job and said the reasons were more complicated than he thought.
He continued on saying Ravi had a very authoritative manner and wasn’t used to not being in the driver’s seat. Ravi got miffed and Allan stalked off to the pub. Rebecca the co-ordinator got in Ravi’s face and told him that the object of the exercise wasn’t for him to fix Allan’s problems but for him to immerse himself in Allan’s world.
Ravi later admitted to feeling bereft when he was younger and providing for his family had made him obsessive about money. Suitably chastened he found Allan in his local and apologised for his high-handed behaviour.
Charles
Charles had 55 year old Denise as his companion and they seemed to get on well.
There was not much filming of the two apart from them getting snowed on during the night and getting an early wake up and move on from the police.
Thomas
Thomas had no desire to get to know anyone living on the streets. His guide was 43 year old Kieran, an ex-pat Kiwi who had been homeless for seven years. Kieran had come to the UK after his marriage had broken up and had run up debts he couldn’t pay.
He had had bad experiences on the street and wanted to broaden people’s perceptions about the poverty trap, one that was extremely hard to get out of as many people thought homelessness was down to laziness.
He said he was a recluse and didn’t sleep in doorways but in a tent hidden in a park in central London. . He was pretty flamboyant with black pants, leather jacket and a white ruffled shirt a la Prince.
He had an exercise book with Latin phrases – it wasn’t clear if he was fluent or trying to teach himself, but he taught Thomas the Latin for ‘Death is beautiful for those for whom life is a humiliation.’
Kieran had a lot of stuff hidden in bushes in the park like as portable DVD player and DVDs. He had suitcases of such things everywhere in case stuff was discovered and stolen or destroyed by the police.
The segment ended with him coming home to an “eviction” notice. Kieran seemed relieved as normally he wasn’t given notice – his stuff was thrown out. Thomas thought he had a good set up but I think tended to romanticise the situation.
The two co-ordinators are Rebecca Petitt, a former probation officer in the US who runs the course ‘The Urban Plunge’ which sends students out onto the streets of the US to learn about poverty the hard way, and Craig Last, a Brit who has worked for the UK homeless organisation Centrepoint at high support hostels in London.
Out of the five I think Darren may progress the most as he seems the most open to changing his mind, having a bit of heart despite being a bit wimpy at times.
The next episode screens here tomorrow where the five enter the world of hostels which looks scary as in one excerpt one of them says “That’s a lot of blood.”
December 8, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Mary
Filthy Rich and Homeless – Part Three
In this episode the subjects were sent to various hostels, some of which were “wet” meaning that the residents could have alcohol on the premises or where people would shoot up so they were warned about looking before they sat down and to wear shoes to avoid needle injuries, AIDS and hepatitis.
Darren
Darren was sent to a 12 bed hostel which was almost like a boarding house. Initially thinking the worst it turned out to be a pleasant change from street life – a really cushy number.
An ex-resident Dave dropped in and prepared lunch for everyone and revealed he stopped by most days to catch up with friends. The people running this hostel supported residents until they thought they could manage mostly on their own after finding suitable housing.
It was disappointing to see Darren backsliding when he challenged the hostel managers by making the comment that if residents got too comfortable in the hostel they would be scared to move on. He seemed to quickly forget how miserable he was when on the street once he was in the midst of warmth, food and a hot bath and failed to recognise that former residents had made social connections they wanted to keep.
The runners of the hostel picked up on this sanctimonious attitude and to bring him down to earth assigned him the task of cleaning out a garden shed that had housed a former resident. Armed with disposable gloves Darren went through blankets that either need turfing out or can be cleaned. What the managers didn’t tell him was that the resident had been incontinent – his face was a picture and he ended up spewing in the garden. The manager then offered to get him some bleach.
Clementine
This pampered princess was placed in a large hostel where it was a case of spot the white chick and she really felt it being in the minority. She said she hardly ever mixed outside her white middle-class group where they could not understand how anyone could be homeless and it was nothing to spend £300 on a flimsy top.
She noted that people did nothing because they had no money and this made people lethargic. The act of always waiting for something to happen in their lives such as getting permanent accommodation meant residents were susceptible to depression.
To distract herself she decided to help out at a mobile soup kitchen and her fellow worker Austin advised her to treat the clients with respect and not freak if they were a bit tetchy.
She realised that work such as what she had done made a difference and that the cost of funding the soup kitchen could be funded by the value of a couple of pieces of her clothing.
Ravi
The dot com millionaire was put in a wet hostel which housed 115 residents. He met Desi, a 64 year-old alcoholic and father of three who had been homeless for longer that he could remember and had been at Arlington for four years. Ravi said that in the hostel there was nowhere to hide and he kept his distance for his own safety.
Ravi was chided by the hostel manager who said he needed to treat people as human beings. He enjoyed his first shower in nearly a week and when the manager presented him with some brand spanking new clothes he nearly burst into tears. He said he was used to taking care of himself and not used to accepting help.
The next day the hostel manager tasked him with getting some of his fellow residents to go on a boat trip and he managed to round up eight who would go. One guy collapsed at the terminal pissed to the wide and was taken away in an ambulance with one of his mates saying that he was going to hospital to have a baby and cracking up at his own joke.
Desi had a great time knocking back the drink and Ravi asked him “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” and Desi looked at him like he’d lost his mind. The fact that Desi never stopped drinking really got to Ravi.
Charles
Not much coverage on this guy, apart from him being assigned to a 40 bed hostel where his first task was to unblock a toilet as residents were expected to help out around the hostel.
Thomas
He was given instructions on how to get to his hostel called Aldergate but was anxious that he would be on his own. At the large hostel he saw the leaders Victoria and Mark but they said they only took referrals from two agencies so there was no room at the inn for Thomas. While waiting outside on the steps of the hostel a guy in reception slashed his wrists and was carted off to hospital and Thomas was in shock never having seen blood on the street. He said his lack of knowledge of homeless people had inspired him to find out more about them for the future.
Thomas got talking to an ex-heroin addict he had been introduced to and accompanied the woman on her journey to obtain her methadone for next two days. She said that she had lost her children and there had been a lot of deaths in her family and she felt very down about things. She described the pain of wanting heroin and the relief she felt once she had shot up. She had practised self-harm by cutting and said the pain of concentrating on the cut blotted out other problems she had.
He received news that there was a bed in a night shelter but had to walk four miles to it but when he got there discovered that the bed had just been assigned to a woman so he would have to sleep on the street.
The co-ordinator Craig helped him find a place to bed down for the night in a residential area giving him some cardboard boxes with the warning to hide in the bushes to avoid the residents spotting him and calling the police.
Thomas was really disgusted as he could smell urine and possibly worse in his sleeping area.
The final program this week focuses on what the participants have learned from their time on the outer.
December 22, 2008 at 12:01 am
Mary
It’s a bit late but there were a lot of last minute things at work to attend to and school things to help out with so here goes:
Filthy Rich and Homeless – Part Four
This final instalment concentrated on the final day of the volunteers being homeless and the return to their lives.
Thomas
This young heir to the vegetable oil empire said that after having to sleep rough after missing out on a place in a hostel, all he wanted was a new bin bag for his belongings and some clean dry, socks as he had been wearing rain soaked ones for three days.
He went to the hostel that he had been turned away from and asked why he had been sent away as he wasn’t a druggie, an alcoholic and he didn’t have any mental health problems. The hostel manager explained that the hostel was there for the most vulnerable people.
Thomas said he thought that people affected by alcohol, drugs and mental health problems probably ended up that way through having no home in the first place and turned to substances as a means of escape or descended into depression.
He had an unexpected visit from his sister who had tracked him down and he told her about his buddy Kieran and how he wanted to keep an eye out for him. He became quite emotional over how people were judged unfairly just because they hadn’t any money and said Kieran was a genuinely decent person who was well educated in Greek, Latin and Russian but would be overlooked because people wouldn’t take the time to get to know him.
Instead of returning to university, he went further north to his parents’ home, was warmly greeted and his parents were glad to see he was still in one piece. He told his parents about Kieran and at his anger at everything coming down to money and that if a person had no money they basically had no rights. His father, clearly proud of his son was supportive of Thomas wanting to help Kieran out.
The next morning, after enjoying getting clean and having a warm bed, Thomas was up early and went shopping at a camping store to get Kieran some essentials like gloves, tin mug, plate, cutlery and a good camping torch. He also bought some clothes so that Kieran could interview for positions and sent them to a day centre for Kieran to collect. When Kieran opened that package he was quite overwhelmed and he said he rarely had anyone do anything for him.
Thomas met Kieran in London a short time later and while they had lunch he asked Kieran for his permission to help him to find a job as a gardener and Kieran was agreeable. Kieran related that given his position, hope slowly ebbed away over months and years of things not working out.
In the end, Thomas was unable to find any work for Kieran and Kieran seemed to have cooled towards the idea of moving to Oxford and wanted to stay in London. Thomas was non-plussed at this turn of events but accepted Kieran’s decision.
In spite of Thomas’ youth it looked like he came from a decent family and his views had changed from seeing homeless people as lazy to realising that it could happen to anyone for any number of reasons.
Clementine
Clementine’s spot opened with her being taken out for lunch with an ex (Adam) for lunch. She was glad of the break as she found the hostel draining, boring and depressing. She realised she was lucky to have good coping strategies for when she was stressed out such as getting a hug from her mother or riding one of her horses.
Over lunch she told her ex that the hostel was an awful place – the end of the world. She asked Adam what he thought of her appearance and if he was ashamed to be seen with her. He said that he had seen her look better but was not embarrassed to be seen with her.
When served pizza with a glass of wine she said she had never appreciated something so much in her life and that the outing had given her a breather from hostel life. She thought the hostel people were the biggest bunch of anxious, distrustful neurotics and it made for a depressing atmosphere.
When she went home she stated that she was glad she had managed to survive something she had found difficult. In addition, she said she wanted to be involved with the homeless, but had to juggle her teacher training, her horses and her social life.
Guess from her final statement re the homeless that that’s a no. She will in all likelihood tack that onto her CV, so that when going for a teaching job she can claim to understand the plight of the socially and economically disadvantaged. For my money, she’s just another dilettante more interested in being a spoilt daddy’s girl than putting in the hard yards.
Darren
When Darren got back at home he met his best friend Rina for lunch at the pub and said he felt very tired and drained. Rina asked him about his views on the homeless and he said that they had changed.
He said that after teaming up with Smokey he saw how much sadness there was in the world and that he shouldn’t be wallowing in self pity, and if homeless people could crack on with life given what they were up against so could he.
Rina asked him if he was going to a VIP party in spite of being exhausted and he said he was as he liked parties and he couldn’t change everything in his life. She then questioned him as to why he couldn’t miss a party and Darren said he liked to get out and hated not being invited to things, that it made him feel insecure. Rina said she thought that that was the nub of the matter and that his original object of participating had been to get out of the rut and the same old-same old, and the same group of people – she asked him what he was looking for.
Darren went out that evening and spent £400. The driver who took him home said to him that the money he had spent was a fortune to a homeless person and had he considered that aspect. Darren replied it had entered his brain and he had wanted to get off his tits and fucked out of his brain and did the driver have a problem with that.
Darren seems to pay lip service to any lessons he may have learnt during his homeless stint, and I can’t help thinking that he had it pretty cushy being assigned Smokey who was a good sort and then got a very nice hostel. He is at heart a big soft pudding, who, when not in the hole, I think will revert to his old prejudices.
Charles
Charles was wrestling with the decision to stay on the farm or do something else. He said he became close to his street buddy Denise.
Practically the moment he walked through the door his father asked him what had happened and did he have any scars, saying the fact he was back was the main thing. Charles gave his father some stick about predicting he would never return and his father denied it. His dad then said, “Well, as long as you’ve got it out of your system – have you?”
Charles described sleeping in the snow. His father said, “What, with the down and outs?” Charles countered with, “The homeless.” His father then asked if Charles had any homeless mates and he replied that he had a couple and his father asked him what that meant. He replied he’d made some friends and his father enquired if they would be turning up at the estate. Charles said they wouldn’t visit if his father didn’t want them to, and his father was most emphatic that he didn’t want them to visit as they had places they could stay in London – he didn’t want them in his house.
His father then asked if he had had any problems in London and Charles stated that he had found it tough. He was grilled as to whether he’d been arrested and Charles now pissed off said. “Yeah, loads of times.” His father then asked if he would have a record and Charles spat out, “Of course I wasn’t arrested! Why do you assume I was going to be fucking arrested?”
His father then whined, “These guys do get arrested. They’re sleeping on people’s private property where they shouldn’t be sleeping. They’re bound to get cleared up off the streets. I’m just asking you, that’s all.”
Later on Charles was uncertain whether or not farming was for him as his father seemed to have everything down pat. He said being homeless had given him a new perspective and that it could happen to anyone.
In the end he decided to stay on the farm for one more year as his dad had given him some more responsibility.
Hell’s teeth, I feel sorry for Charles – what an asshole of a parent to have – I’m surprised he hasn’t hung himself of got into drugs in a big way, it would be like living with the Gestapo.
Ravi
At the hostel Ravi accompanied one of the hostel managers in the morning to do the death knock on the residents’ doors. The manager explained that quite often when residents were sick enough to go to hospital they wouldn’t and they would be dead a couple of days latter.
Ravi said he confronting a lot from his past and that he had been determined to get along with the hostel residents.
His friend Desi had three ex-wives with whom he had contact now and again, and a son of 24, who, in his own words would only visit him out of dire necessity to deliver news such as a relative had died.
He liked talking to children because they were beautiful and unspoilt and reminded him of his own children. When Ravi asked him if he thought about his kids he countered with, “I don’t want to talk about that crap.” He looked like he might break down. Desi said he preferred to talk about the happier side of life.
Ravi was talking to Rebecca the homeless co-ordinator about how upset he was to see Desi slowly killing himself and how anyone could not be moved by what they saw. Rebecca asked why he was troubled by hostel life and he said his father had been a drinker and abusive with it. He had a lot of anger towards his father and the way he had treated his family. Rebecca said true alcoholics cannot control the compulsion without a lot of help and support but Ravi thought that his father could and he wasn’t ready to talk to him.
Rebecca put it to Ravi that his obsession with making money was a tactic to avoid the things that were really troubling him. Ravi said that being in a wet hostel had caused him to think about the plight of alcoholics, and what had started off as empathy for alcoholics had become self-awareness.
Another resident, upon hearing Ravi was leaving gave him a go about saying he was glad he was leaving as he couldn’t handle it. The resident said he been there for six years and Ravi agreed he couldn’t handle it for that long. The guy replied, “Of course you get used to it, you have to, and that’s why I drink so much.” He went on to say that he was glad Ravi had experienced the hostel as it made him appreciate what he had.
When Ravi returned home he was very glad of his bed. He washed the new clothes he was given and donated them to someone at the hostel. He also went back to the flower wholesaler and paid the man the £30 for the flowers he gave him on trust saying he had a hard time selling them, but raised enough for fork and knife money.
He visited Desi and later asked Desi for permission to visit him in the future and Desi was agreeable.
Towards the end of the program it showed that Ravi was having a hard time sleeping and didn’t know what to do with himself. When he was at a café he had something for £3.60 and remembered when that amount of money had kept him alive for three days on the street. He couldn’t look at big sums of money without thinking how many thousands of days that would keep someone homeless in food. Ravi thought the life he was used to living belonged to someone else and his regular life now felt strange.
Rebecca said that she thought the five would be like fish out of water after what they had experienced and Ravi certainly was that.
Out of all the five my favourite is Ravi because he showed how assumptions are slowly whittled away when you have nothing. From starting out as an arrogant, snotty little git, he grew more empathetic and is the most likely to actually aid the homeless in some way, hopefully taking his cue from those more experienced than him as he’s a bit prescriptive.
It would be great if an update program was in the offing.