Riches to rags

[faceless]

After wife swapping and celebrity sex, new reality TV phenomenon is ... philanthropy
Owen Gibson, media correspondent
Saturday October 21, 2006
The Guardian

It's a pitch from broadcasters so familiar it barely registers - a reality show with a twist. But Secret Millionaire, a new Channel 4 show from the makers of Wife Swap, is genuinely different. For a start there are no prizes and it costs contestants up to ?50,000 each to take part. Not for them the promise of tabloid infamy or the lure of profitable spin-offs and book deals ? la Jade Goody or Chantelle Houghton. Instead, they are forced to live on the breadline and give their own money away.

"It's the first show in the world where you have to guarantee to give ?40,000 or ?50,000 away to get on it," promises Stephen Lambert, executive producer of the programme for RDF.

But Secret Millionaire could match the fury provoked by its Bafta-winning predecessor Wife Swap when it first aired in 2003 and newspapers called it "an abuse of TV's Godlike power". Some charities will complain that the show is exploitative and an inefficient means of redistributing wealth among those who most need help. The makers admit that they are steeled for charges of "poverty tourism". "I'm sure that we'll come in for some form of criticism. We were extremely aware of falling into the trap of what you might call poverty tourism. We were very conscious of that and have been throughout," said Jenny Crowther, series producer of the show.

When it launches on Channel 4 next month, the show will take five millionaire, would-be philanthropists and force them to live undercover for 10 days on the equivalent of state benefit or doing a menial job for the minimum wage in some of the most deprived areas of Britain. At the end of the period, during which they are expected to get out and about in the community under the guise of appearing in a TV show that swaps the rural poor for the city poor, they decide which individuals deserve their money.

In one episode, John Elliott, who made his money from air cooling units in County Durham, leaves behind his gauche hilltop mansion with its indoor swimming pool and own bar and goes to live in Kensington, Liverpool, on ?11 a day. Other contestants include Ben Way, a 26-year-old dotcom whizzkid who goes to work in a youth centre in Hackney, father and son team Paul and Ben Williamson who go to live on the deprived Thorntree estate in Middlesbrough and Caran Gill, the Glasgow "curry king" who goes to Thetford in Norfolk with the aim of finding out how life has changed for immigrants to the UK.

Mr Elliott says his motivation is not a desire to appear on television but a means to redistribute a slice of his ?60m fortune: "I don't think charities are good at it. They don't tend to pick out the most deserving cases. They tend to pick out the sexy ones and the politically correct ones." Elliott, who has worked since the age of 15, finds it hard to comprehend why many of those of working age are on the dole and is sceptical before visiting a drop-in centre for asylum seekers and refugees. "Illegal asylum is wrong on every level," he says. He thinks it would be "wrong" to give money to the centre because it would encourage immigration.

Mr Lambert, who is also RDF's chief creative officer, says: "There's a fish out of water quality to it, a bit like Faking It. But there's a different dynamic to it. They're not learning a skill, they're learning about people. On the whole, making documentaries about housing problems in northern England is the kind of thing that people don't normally want to make. So coming up with a format that is actually rather entertaining and still has quite a lot of social commentary is great."

Like Faking It, the programme is as much about the journey undertaken by the central protagonist as the beneficiaries of their largesse. By the end, when he hands out his cheques to the chosen few, Mr Elliott finds his views have shifted. "Poverty and exclusion are very much a concern for refugees and asylum seekers," said a spokesman for Refugee Action. "But the issue is about having a just and fair system that gives the right decision to people fleeing persecution. The question of whether or not an individual might be deserving of a large sum of money is not really the heart of the issue as far as the people we help on a daily basis are concerned."

Ms Crowther said: "I'm sure some people will say you shouldn't do this at all and others will say that putting down a deposit for one family is not going to solve the housing problems in Britain. But is it not better to help one family than none at all?" She said they had aimed to make the show as sensitively as possible. "If you were doing it as a gameshow where the businessman turned up in a Rolls-Royce wearing a pinstripe suit and went to the pub to give out ?50 notes from his briefcase, it would be very different. But the participants really care. It's not very often that you see films about life on the estate or in the homeless hostel or the asylum seeker's shelter. I think it absolutely justifies the format."

Getting real

1974: The Family Paul Watson's fly-on-the-wall film about the Wilkins clan was hailed as the first documentary to give a voice to the British working class and is considered by many as the first reality show.

1982: In at the Deep End Light-hearted forerunner to Faking It and other "formatted documentaries".

1996: Changing Rooms First makeover show.

2000: Big Brother The first series, won by Liverpudlian builder Craig Phillips, was pitched as a cross between a social experiment and a gameshow.

2002: I'm a Celebrity ... Celebrities start to take over as contestants.

2003: Wife Swap Roundly denounced on its debut for playing God with people's marriages, but wins at the Baftas. A notorious episode featured hot-tempered mother-of-eight Lizzie Bardsley.

2006: Celebrity Big Brother Unknown Chantelle wins the celebrity version, becoming an overnight star despite having no discernable talent.