Lenny Henry, Reggie Yates, Samantha Womack and Angela Rippon land in Kibera with nothing but £2, a toothbrush and a camera crew. For the first week they bed down in tin shacks, wash from sewage-coloured standpipes and hustle casual labour for food money; producers confiscate phones, cash and return tickets to keep the humiliation honest. After seven days they split up and move in with locals: Henry shares a mattress with Bernard, a 14-year-old head-of-household to four younger siblings; Womack bunk-beds with a mother who prostitutes herself nightly to pay school fees her family in the countryside still believe come from a receptionist’s wage; Yates couch-surfs with a rapper burning borrowed electricity to lay down tracks he can’t afford to master; Rippon sweeps the floor of a hair salon whose HIV-positive owner risks losing both business and child if her status becomes gossip.
The stunt ends when the celebrities open their real-world chequebooks: Henry buys Bernard’s family a concrete-block house away from the drainpipe of filth; Yates hustles his rapper onto a Nairobi radio slot; Womack drives the sex worker across county lines for an unannounced reunion with her children; Rippon designs flyers that treble salon takings and keep the owner’s daughter in class. Aired 3 and 10 March 2011 as the flagship appeal for Comic Relief, the two-part special delivered the highest late-night ratings BBC One had seen in the slot since 2007.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 2 Episodes / 2011
Main Cast
