Secret Millionaire

Last night, on Channel 4, I watched one of the best (in my opinion) bits of TV this year. Made by the same people as “Faking It” (which was another of my long-term favourite series), “Secret Millionaire” each week takes one multi-millionaire and puts them in a scenario way outside their normal environment.

In last night’s programme (the first of the series) Ben Way was in one of the most deprived parts of London, the “Murder Mile” of Hackney, volunteering to work in the local youth centre, the Pedro Club. In an area with one of the highest percentages of under-16s in the country, this is the only youth centre, and it was really awesome to see how much they did with so little.

The kicker for the programme, though, is that these (in general) self-made multimillionaires are also looking at where their donations could have the greatest effect, the most benefits, and be appreciated the most. And it makes for great TV, when Way came back at the end of the ‘volunteering’, fully suited and booted, to give cheques to the people he’d decided needed it the most, or would benefit the most.

OK, he “only” gave away £40,000 – but to the people involved, those amounts could’ve had an extra zero on them, for the impact they made.

For me, though, it was also seeing that at the end, Way is still going back to the Pedro Centre, and is still heavily involved. To him, it wasn’t ‘just’ a TV programme – this was something where he learned about other people, got involved, and stayed involved.

Maybe I do live in an altruistic bubble, where I believe that people should work better with each other, and yes, maybe I am a bit of a hippie about some of these things. But this was a programme that kind of reaffirmed those ideas in me, and it was great to see something on TV that was about something rather more altruistic, touchy-feely, and generous than the great majority of current mainstream programmes.

Well worth the effort of finding it, if it’s repeated – alternatively, the next episode will be next Wednesday, on Channel 4, 9pm.