Jane Wilkins: I've really enjoyed seeing your films again on BBC Four. Will we be seeing you again on TV soon?
Ray Gosling:Yes, after the showing in April of the Bankrupt film, I got approached by of all people Carlton TV in London to do four films on statues and monuments in London. For this I was properly paid - and it was the first proper work for four years. All out of the publicity from Bankrupt!

Baker: You say more and more people are self-employed, I agree, there seems to be a self-employment boom.
Ray Gosling: It's not just self-employment, it's people on short term contracts, and this leads to more and more people liable to be made bankrupt. In the film, I returned to Ebbw Vale in South Wales, where the work that was has gone. It's as if the working class has gone. And the plight of the self-employed, including problems like bankruptcy, I see as bound to get worse and worse and worse. And the government should address it. I'm talking of people like myself, who are made bankrupt only because of money they owe only to government agencies. I owed no individual anything at all.

Freda: Would you say you are a cynic or a realist or simply humanist?
Ray Gosling: You can be all three... I'm a realist with a cynical bent but a humanist heart.

Mike-Barlow: Ray, you inspired this working class lad, and gave him so much mind stimulant as a child! How can the BBC only draft you in now, when your programmes are so compelling, so socially historical, and so NOW (as they always have been)?
Ray Gosling: After Bankrupt went out, I had 250 letters from people. I felt very humbled. None of them were critical. I'm trying to reply to them all, but it's taking its time. I can't answer for the BBC!

Scott: Ray, at the end of Bankrupt, we were left wondering if you were going to be evicted. What happened?
Ray Gosling: I have not yet been evicted. I think the publicity has made my trustees in bankruptcy, Price Waterhouse Coopers, thinking it's probably best leaving the old codger in his house until he pops it. Or until a day will surely come when I might want to live quite small.

Glenn: For someone in the same situation as you have been what advice would you give?
Ray Gosling: Don't be pushed, don't be frightened. Don't necessarily take advice from even your own solicitors, but if you want to stay, and don't owe money to anybody other than the state, you stay. That takes a lot of guts, and I don't think I could have had those guts without the rage inside me which was caused by my friend Bryn dying from cancer.

Judith: We need you! Are you going to make some more programmes?
Ray Gosling: It doesn't depend on me making the progs. It depends on the BBC and ITV. Both have dumbed down. I send in proposals often to both Radio 4 and to telly. What gets accepted, I can't tell. I feel very pessimistic about the situation. Maybe I'll try to write a book.

aphex: Would you really have rather left your house to be homeless than actually plan somewhere else first?
Ray Gosling: Yes.

Scott: One of the things I Iiked about Bankrupt was your potshots against the Beeb. Did they ask you to tone down the comments?
Ray Gosling: Yes. In the programme, there's an interview with me and a local journalist in Nottingham, John Brunton, and I explain to John that the programme Bankrupt was commissioned by Peter Salmon, controller of BBC1. This was removed by the BBC at the last moment because it proved, I suppose, to be commissioned by BBC1 and go out on BBC4 (no disrespect to BBC4) that BBC1 is dumbing down.

Richard: You always state the obvious in your work. Wasn't it obvious that you would have problems if you ignored things?
Ray Gosling: Yes, you're quite right. I'm sorry, but as I said in Bankrupt, my first duty was to look after my mate when the cancer happened. So the brown envelopes didn't get opened when they should have done. I'm sorry.

Mike-Barlow: Are the poor people of today worse off than the poor of yesteryear?
Ray Gosling: Of course the poor people of today are, in terms of money and drains and clean water, better off than yesterday. But in terms of solidarity and a feeling of warmth and community, they're much worse off.

continued: Voting for Thatcher in 1979

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