Badger helps unemployment hot-spot

Ruth Badger, left, leads a sing-along while a cut-price Richard Branson lookalike surprises Languish Hall's Humphrey Poison-Tombliboo during filming

A new BBC TV series, Inside Out, was this week filming in one of the country’s unemployment hot-spots: Languish.

Unemployment in the East Hampshire industrial heartland, which is famed for its clay and weird garden dioramas, is often as high as 0.5 per cent – and in an attempt to call a halt to this worrying trend BBC licence payers funded a stay in a posh hotel for somebody who failed to win a reality TV show.

Wolverhampton-born former barmaid Ruth Badger was runner-up in the 2006 series of The Apprentice – which in these days of celebrity hype and David Cameron’s Big Society practically makes her a business magnate – so who better to advise the long-term unemployed about coming to terms with being the first loser.

Badger visited Languish Hall and advised the unemployed of Languish on interview techniques, how to create a CV and how to change their own nappies.

Ribena Poison-Tombliboo, owner of Languish Hall, said: “We were delighted to be able to welcome this working-class woman to our establishment and we hope young Tamsin Poison-Tombliboo, five, learned enough to help her in the future.

“It’s essential she leans about unemployment as she will one day have to engage some working-class people.

“The publicity has been great – we haven’t had this much attention since the ‘blitz’ incident. Though I’m not sure the viewers demographics for this show are ideal for our market. Is it being broadcast on Radio Three?”

Meanwhile Miss Badger was last seen being chased through the streets of East Meon by an outraged farmer carrying a shotgun, after she denied being a carrier of tuberculosis.

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