Petersfield's gap-year boost

Melissa Bufton-Tufton is seen here helping out the needy in Petersfield

Petersfield is hoping for an economic boost as applications surge from affluent foreign students to spend their gap year helping the downtrodden in the town.

Applications started flooding in when a leading Roman Catholic cardinal described Britain as 'a third world country', and Petersfield was pinpointed following the BBC's decision to film a Boys From The Blackstuff-style documentary about the unemployed in the area (see Badger story).

"I was going to spend my year off in Timbuktu helping one-legged orphans learn to use an iPad, but since I heard about this desolate outpost of poverty in East Hampshire I knew at once I had to offer to fly in," said Osama Bin Loaded of Riyadh.

Even Melissa Bufton-Tufton, of Monks Orchard, has put off her Cambridge degree course in managing a paternal trust fund to help out in her home town after getting 37 A* grades at Bojangles School.

"It's great," she said. "I'll be able to improve my CV without travelling to some awful place in Africa where I might not be able to plug in my straighteners. I'll be mostly doing community work - waitressing at Pizza Express and stuff like that."

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.

■ Read the true story here...