The Secret Millionaire - Gill Fielding

7 November 2007 - The Secret Millionaire returns to Channel 4 tonight with six brand new programmes - each featuring a new millionaire fully committed and eager to make a difference to the lives and communities they observe and engage with along the way.

As in the first series, each millionaire will go undercover and assume a new identity to enable them to live anonymously as part of the community before revealing who they really are.

At the end of their ten days, the millionaires will reveal their true identity to the individuals and groups who they have met during their stay and who they feel are the most deserving of their own hard-earned cash. How much the millionaires give away and to whom is entirely their own decision.

Tonight's opening film features Gill Fielding - the first of two female millionaires in this new run and the first secret millionaire ever to give away nearly a quarter of a million pounds of her own money at the end of her tear-jerking, heart-warming and self-confessed "life changing" undercover experience.

Over 15 million pounds

Aged 50 and married with three children, Gill now lives in a large family home in Sussex. She is worth over 15 million pounds and confesses to spending around £20,000 a month "just on nicknakery".

She even has a pair of shoes to match her car! Gill is so talented at making money that she now runs her own Wealth Company, hosting seminars and giving talks to teach other people how to make money.

But life was not always this sweet for Gill who grew up in abject poverty in London's East End living in the same small house in which two generations of her own family also grew up. "We were so poor, we didn't have a number on the door and I had to chalk it on… we didn't have a bath in the house. I remember having one in 1963 and then again in 1970," she recalls.

However, while Gill's childhood was lacking in material goods, she grew up rich in love and support. She credits her success today to a few people who believed in her when she was young. One such person was her Uncle Dennis who gave Gill her first five pound note.

Big Deal

She remembers how this was such a big deal to her, that she hid it in the pages of her book and continued to use it to store any other money she was lucky enough to save or receive. And now Gill feels it is her turn to repay the good luck she was blessed with when young.

"People came out of the mist for me, and if I can come out of the mist for somebody…I want to feel there is a life made better by something I've done as that is what happened to me."

But returning to the East End 30 years on, and identifying people to help, is not going to prove an easy task for Gill. Once a vibrant, community-focused area, Canning Town is now one of the most deprived London boroughs.

Despite the fact that Gill is spending her ten days undercover a stone's throw away from where she grew up, she barely recognises the place. Gone are the bustling streets, lively market and the welcoming of strangers. Instead, she finds more trees, less people and road upon road with boarded-up tenement blocks.

Even Rathbone market, where she used to hang out regularly as a child is barely surviving. Gill was hoping to find casual work there as a means to earn some money and meet people she could possibly help, but it seems the shopping centres and supermarkets have killed off custom.

Casual work

Eventually Gill finds herself some casual work earning the minimum wage of five pounds and 35 pence an hour at the market's café. But it does not take her long to realise that her direct business approach asking customers about their income and how they are able to live is not going to help her identify any hopeful causes.

If anything, it teaches Gill her first lesson of the day - that not everybody on a low income is unhappy and in need of help. But what to do next is equally challenging.
The area is like a ghost town, and despite Gill's best efforts she is becoming increasingly frustrated that she is not going to find anybody whose life she can change for the better… until she strikes up a conversation with one of her customers at the café and then pays a visit to the local stage and theatre school which she had discovered on an earlier walk around the neighbourhood.

This is the only place that Gill can find where the children of the area are looked after and are able to hang out. And once Gill has her foot firmly in the door at Linda and Dennis's impressive, run-on-a-shoestring stage school, her enthusiasm and determination to make a difference just bubble over.

Now at last Gill has finally found some real people who she would like to help - her next dilemma is what can she do. Gill does not believe in short term solutions. She in intent on putting both her heart and her money into something that will really make a long term difference to the rest of their lives.

The Secret Millionaire - Gill Fielding is on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight, Wednesday 7th November 2007.