Showing his true colours

VAT increases. Fuel costs on the up. Bankruptcies and defaulted mortgages everywhere. This recession is really pinching, and it has more than an inch in its icy cold grip.

And it doesn't seem to matter what your socio-economic status is - everyone's feeling the pain. Perhaps this is what the world needs in order to start redressing the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.

With that in mind, I propose that we have a whip-round for those less fortunate than ourselves. Because no matter how bad we think we've got it, someone else is in a much sorrier state.

I'm going to register with JustGive.org, so that people can pledge some money to help out Ted Turner, who seems to have fallen on the hardest of times. Despite a net worth of $1.9bn, Ted is now "at the edge of poverty". And since there are still classic black and white movies in desperate need of a garish splash of inappropriate colorisation, Ted needs our support.

Ted's packed an awful lot into his 72 years, including three marriages, coming up the superstation cable TV concept, and creating legendary '80s cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers. He also owns the world's largest bison herd, and donated $1bn to the United Nations.

Unfortunately though, all of that abundant spending has come back to haunt him, and he's now shuffling his executive loafers towards the poorhouse. Speaking on last Wednesday's edition of Morning Joe, the media mogul announced to the world that his generosity has cost him dearly. Well, you didn't think Jane Fonda got her face stretched at WalMart, did you?

Tugging at the nation's heartstrings, the selfless silver one told the show's hosts "I'm one of the few examples of a very wealthy person that's given himself to the edge of poverty." He even managed a smile beneath his albino caterpillar moustache.

Thankfully, he's not had to start stockpiling the cardboard boxes just yet, but he is down to his last few millions. Ever the pragmatist, he's mostly concerned with the legacy he leaves behind: "I don't want to leave my family with an unpaid funeral bill. I'm trying to save a little bit of money to at least cover my expenses."

Maybe he just needs to think about a plywood coffin with a teak finish. Or maybe he could ask Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Eisner to each bring a pie to the wake, in order to spread the costs. Vol au vents and crustless sandwiches don't come cheap, after all.

Glibness aside, it's disappointing that someone who has genuinely given so much to other people throughout his life, could be so clueless about what constitutes genuine poverty. It would be a shame if the legacy he leaves behind is not the lives that he managed to impact, but the noses he put out of joint with a couple of throwaway remarks about subjective destitution. I know he was never a fan of black and white, but those are the facts.

How the other half lives

Several weeks ago, Lord Young was pressured into standing down from his position as David Cameron's enterprise tsar, having commented (somewhat tactlessly) that most Britons have "never had it so good". Seemingly oblivious to the widespread impact of the recession, Young was basing his assertion on the idea that low interest rates meant cheaper mortgages for many.

Although he's right in that regard, his comments showed a fundamental lack of empathy for the other financial pressures faced by ordinary people. Pressures which show no signs of letting up, especially with Christmas just three weeks away. 

After all, Christmas is a time for remembering those less fortunate than yourself - people like Charlotte Metcalfe, who told her Bob Cratchit-worthy tale in the Mail this weekend. Her harrowing memoir begins: "Less than five years ago, Christmas for me meant leisurely afternoons in Harrods buying a pretty embroidered cushion, some bath oil and a toy or two here, some smoked salmon and a box of chocolates there." 

Tragically, the three properties that she and her partner snapped up during the property boom haven't held their value, saddling the unlucky couple with negative equity. The TV production work has also dried up, leaving Charlotte "lucky if I earn £500 a week as a writer."

Those happier days, when Charlotte "thought nothing of spending £45 on a pot of gold-lidded lusciously scented body cream as a Christmas present for a distant cousin." are long gone. Now she's worrying about how to buy the family's Christmas presents, when even "Boden, that reliable stand-by of well-to-do mums in the Home Counties, is now looking too expensive".

Although she's not oblivious to how her 'Nouveau Pauvre' misery might irritate some readers, she soldiers on, investigating the bargains in Poundland and Tesco like some kind of post-modern anthropologist. She remembers the days when her grandmother used to provide "tin upon tin of home-made mince pies and a Christmas cake" and laments the fact that she would love to bake, but simply doesn't have the time. Although I'm not sure why, since she's already pointed out that the freelance work has all but disappeared.

Rather depressingly, Charlotte's article is nothing new. In fact, as Enemies of Reason pointed out yesterday, the Mail regularly runs these "Gosh, I wondered where poor people buy their scrunchies from" stories. Only last week, a similar feature popped up in the Evening Standard, where Deborah Collcutt wrote about "A weekend eating Poundland food" as though she was forced to chew on a kangaroo vagina as part of a bushtucker trial. Without a trace of irony, she even comments that she's glad to exclude her daughter Dory from the experiment, fearful that "if she saw the pink label Heinz Barbie pasta in tomato sauce she would never eat broccoli or quinoa again."

All of which begs the question, what on Earth are these articles attempting to accomplish? If they're attempting to portray the harrowing impact of the recession on the papers' beloved Middle Class, perhaps they shouldn't have mentioned the fact that someone's Christmas has been ruined because they can no longer justify spending £50 on velvet and silk wrapping ribbons from VV Rouleaux. If anything, they simply serve to illustrate the incongruity of the Mail's worldview when compared with most people's day-to-days reality.

What's also apparent, is the fact that shopping in Poundland is one of those behaviours, like becoming a WAG or getting a tattoo, that was only ever intended for the underclass. The writers might try to put on a brave face and celebrate the bargains they've been able to snag, but their message is loud and clear - "I don't belong here. This isn't for me."

It seems that class warfare is alive and well. But perhaps, just for a moment, this might be the consumerist version of the Christmas truce. Two opposing sides downing arms for a moment, and bonding over the cut-price bargains in the no-man's-land of the 99p store, if only for a moment. We can but hope.

Nicolas Cage loses his National Treasures

Does anyone have a fiver they can lend to Nicolas Cage? Only he's a bit strapped for cash at the moment - so much so that he's already had to take the unfortunate step of selling off one of his three European castles.

I know, your heart just bleeds for him. Especially if, like me, you've ever sat through one of the National Treasure movies, an experience not unlike having someone bellowing a Dan Brown novel at you through a loud-hailer.

Then again, noisy, explosive movies make up more than half of Nicolas' eclectic filmography, with the rest of his output involving introspective, downbeat dramas about the frailty of the human condition. No prizes for guessing which half brings in the big bucks - clue: his last big movie saw him providing the voice of a vengeance-seeking Guinea Pig.

But even the multi-million dollar paycheques don't seem to be sufficient to sustain the kind of spendy lifestyle that would make Michael Jackson look like Scrooge McDuck. In recent years, Cage has shown about as much consideration for his purchases as he has for his film roles, splashing his cash on 15 huge houses, four yachts, an island in the Bahamas, a Gulfstream jet and 22 cars. And barely a penny on a decent haircut.

Despite the fact that he brought in an estimated $40 million last year alone, Nicolas is now looking at the poorhouse (although for once, he's not viewing it as an investment property). And like any self-respecting celebrity, he's not prepared to be held accountable for his shopping addiction. Instead, he's suing his former business manager for $20 million in damages for sending him "down a path toward financial ruin".

The lawsuit all sounds convincing enough, using phrases like 'breach of contract', 'constructive fraud' and 'breach of fiduciary duty'. But there's a big difference between the careful siphoning off of funds and willingly signing on the dotted line to buy an island in the Bahamas, or $7million on a Bavarian castle.

With the wolves at the door, Nicolas must now be weighing up every offer that comes his way in the hope of clearing his debts. Maybe we'll finally get to see that sequel to Leaving Las Vegas we've all been hoping for, where a hopeless shopaholic relocates to Nevada committed to spending himself to death. Instead, he meets a whore who is happy to cash his cheques, and they both live happily ever after, watching QVC and flicking through old issues of the Betterware catalogue. I smell another Oscar...

From the headlines to the breadlines

Everyone loves a rags to riches story. You know the drill - poor boy makes good, girl from the wrong side of the tracks lands preppy boyfriend. There's a whole Hollywood sub-genre dedicated to these kinds of stories. But let's be honest - we also love those spectacular falls from grace. Because we love to wonder, how do you return to the way things were once you've had a taste of the good life?

Mel B, who after a recent exercise regime seems to have morphed into Wesley Snipes in a bad weave, is currently revisiting her roots in Leeds, where she's living in a rundown terraced house. But don't worry about Scary, this isn't a result of the Spice Girls' catastrophic comeback cock-up, it's for a new reality show called 7 Days On The Breadline.

Dressed in a shabby green tracksuit with a face like thunder (so no change there), Mel has kept herself busy by visiting the laundromat and picking up benefits from the post office. Other 'celebrities' lined up to appear in the series include Trinny Woodall and Keith Allen - as if their poverty stricken neighbours haven't suffered enough already.

Sadly, not all celebrities get to finish their stint in the poorhouse then head back to their en-suites and private pools. For a select few, those miserable queues outside the Job Centre are drawing inexorably closer. And given her current state of affairs, Kerry Katona will be joining them before too long.

The latest from the world's most dysfunctional non-cartoon family is that Kerry's financial stability is hanging by a Turkey Twizzler. Of course, it doesn't help that her malignant growth of a husband has been steadily syphoning off the cash to buy flash cars and set up a string of dodgy sounding businesses. More disturbingly, Kerry now believes that Mark was even responsible for the cocaine sting that saw her ravenous drug consumption exposed on the front pages of all the tabloids.

Obviously, this level of distrust in a marriage is unhealthy, but Kerry continues to avoid relationship advice as if it was a plate of fresh vegetables. With the bailiffs now hovering, reports have alleged that Kerry has since shut herself in the attic like a latter-day Mrs Rochester.

But fear not, because hubby Mark has a plan to solve all of Kerry's financial woes. He's heard about how much money was coined in by videos of Paris Hilton and Abi Titmuss in a state of 'congress' and figures that there's a cool half-million to be made. The only flaw in his plan is that the release of Mark and Kerry sex-tape would trigger a nationwide epidemic of instantaneous blindness worthy of a Triffid invasion.

Now, is anyone else suddenly considering a whip-round to help Kerry get back on her feet?