BANKRUPT: RAY GOSLING BBC Two: Thursday 30 September 2004 11.20pm-12.20am
With more than 100 television documentaries and over a thousand radio documentaries, Ray Gosling's name - and his reputation - were known to millions.
But five years ago Gosling's face no longer fitted. Then when his partner Bryn became ill and later died, Ray's life fell apart. With mounting unpaid bills and debts, he found himself facing bankruptcy.
In a moving and humorous portrait, Bankrupt: Ray Gosling follows Ray as he battles to save his home against mounting pressure from the VAT man and the Inland Revenue.
FOUR FACTS
Ray Gosling's documentaries tended to focus on the minutiae of life and such subjects as garden sheds to holiday camps.
When Gosling stood for Nottingham City Council in the 1960s his party affiliation on voting papers was "madman".
In an interview with Radio 4 he explained how the BBC paid him for his new documentary: "They said they couldn't pay me properly because it would be tantamount to paying a criminal, because I was bankrupt."
Commenting on his bankruptcy, Gosling told The Guardian in April 2002: "My advice to others is to sign on at once. I didn't - I'd worked for 40 years and work would always pop up. I was having a bad spell, that's all."
