Gregg Wallace Britain's Home Truths

Us Brits have a passion for property, and, of course,

our national obsession is house prices.

How much to buy?

You're looking at about 1.7 million, for an apartment like this.

But housing is about so much more than bricks and mortar.

Look at the smile on my face!

It's about who we are, and how we choose to live.

75 years since the Beveridge Report vowed to rebuild Britain's housing...

Slums must go...

..we're opening the doors to Britain's home truths.

From council houses...

To suburban semis...

High-rises...

To country pads...

In fact, anywhere we call home.

To find out if three quarters of a century later

we really have built a better place to live.

# We've got some half price cracked ice

# And miles and miles of carpet tiles... #

This is Peckham in south-east London, or as you might know it,

Del Boy country.

As we say in these parts, this is my old manor!

Keep heading south.

# No income tax, no VAT

-# No money back... #

-'And today I'm returning in style,

'courtesy of my very own Rodney - driver Martin Bridges.'

Yeah, I was born round here.

This is where I was born.

This is a trip down memory lane for me.

# Viva Hooky Street

# Long live Hooky Street... #

I used to get my car cleaned in this place here.

'Peckham's changed a lot since I was born here in 1964.'

Back then it was predominantly a white working class community.

And while London may have gained a reputation for being the swinging capital of the world...

'This, ladies and gentlemen, is London!

'Swinging London, it's been called.'

I don't think it reached as far south as my neighbourhood.

'You can catch a number 35 tram,

'which will take you over the River Thames,

'across Westminster Bridge and into South London.

'After about half an hour, through factories and crowded streets,

'you come to Peckham.'

'Today, Peckham's a vibrant, mixed, Metropolitan,

'inner-city community that's full of, well, trendies.'

You see those? Look, they're Victorian villas.

Look, they're the original...when this was countryside.

'House prices, meanwhile, have gone through the roof.

'The average price here is now over 500 grand,

'that's over 100 times what it was when I lived round here.

'But, for me, it's the memories that are priceless.'

This is the top of Rye Lane. I used to come down Rye Lane shopping

every Saturday with my nan and grandad.

And Saturday was toy day. I'd always get a little toy.

'I've changed quite a bit too, of course - on the outside at least.

'On the inside, the values I learned on these streets have seen me through life.

'Today, I'm returning to where it all began,

'the street where I grew up, and joining me is a very special lady.'

There's my mum! Oh, my God!

What are you like? What have you turned up in now?

-Hello, Mum.

-Hello, darling.

Look, that's telly for you!

NOVELTY CAR HORN

Are you ready? Do you want to go and look at the old house?

-Yeah, I do, I do, yeah.

-How do you feel?

A little bit apprehensive.

It's such a long time ago, and it actually looks cleaner.

-Cleaner?

-Yes, and brighter and more cared for.

-Really?

-Yeah, and look, trees.

There weren't trees here when I was here.

Well, how decrepit was it when we were here?

Pretty bad.

I have mixed memories of growing up in this two up, two down terrace.

Me, my brother and my mum and dad were crammed into the first floor.

My grandparents lived upstairs.

'Neither me or my mum have been inside the house since we moved out 40 years ago.

'It's strangely nerve-racking.'

-Go on.

-The knob's gone, look.

-The big knob...

-Go on, bang on the door.

-..that you twiddled. Yeah.

No, don't push it.

SHE KNOCKS AGAIN

-All right, that'll do, that'll do.

-Hello?

-Hello.

-Hello.

-I'm Gregg.

'Aisha, who lives here today, has kindly agreed to show us around.'

That's really kind of you, thank you.

Oh, yeah, it's fine, you can go in.

'And right away we can see that the layout is quite a bit different.'

This was your bedroom and a living room.

Yes, exactly, yeah.

And I had a bed there.

When you were born, I brought you home from hospital

and we were in the bed, there.

I can remember a Saturday night, watching Hammer House of Horror,

that used to be on about ten, 10:30pm,

and Dad was sitting there in the window.

And I can remember one night the breeze blew watching a horror film

and the curtain blew over his head.

He nearly had a heart attack!

This was basically, I don't know, our parlour?

We had a television here.

Sometimes we did. In the winter, if it was really cold.

And a fireplace there.

Because we had a fireplace there, yeah, a gas fire.

So you'd keep together in one room.

This is the room I remember the most. This is where we spent all our time.

-And we had mice everywhere.

-Absolutely.

One night I woke up, I must've been five, six years old,

I had mice running across my face in the bedroom.

One day my mum screamed, I came out, or I screamed,

-and there was a dirty great brown rat in the hallway.

-Yeah.

'But it was out the back that the really scary business took place,

'because, as with up to one in ten of British houses at the time,

'this is where the bog was.'

There we are, look.

That was it, wasn't it?

The little building there, yes, it definitely was.

Can you imagine that? Coming out here in the winter, cold and dark,

-and going to the toilet here?

-With the gap under the door,

just to make sure a nice draft got through.

It was freezing cold out there.

And this fence was very low and next-door's loo was facing,

so you and Mr Dylan or Mrs Dylan or whatever,

could all say good evening to each other as you knew what you'd been doing. It was lovely(!)

We didn't come out here at night because it was cold and dark.

We used to go to the toilet in a bucket and empty it out the next morning.

It sounds disgusting!

-We had no bathroom in there at all.

-No.

So where'd you bath?

We didn't. We washed in the kitchen sink here, that was just inside there.

-My grandad used to brush his teeth with salt on a rag.

-Yeah, yeah.

Until he didn't have any left to worry about!

It might all sound like something from a Dickensian novel,

but there were good times.

I remember a lot of love in this house, as well as hardship.

That's a photograph of your nan, nana and grandad, and that was me,

in the back garden, 1961.

And that's the outside toilet that we stood in front of

-to have our photographs taken.

-Marvellous.

"Let's all go outside and have our photograph taken next to the khazi!"

And that's a picture of your grandad pulling his grandad funny face.

-Yeah, he did that, didn't he?

-Yeah, yeah.

It was nice, you know, having Nan and Grandad upstairs and Mum downstairs when I was young.

He was a very gentle man, wasn't he?

And you were very fond of him, very fond of you.

Yeah, I used to, at the weekends, go to Millwall together,

we'd go up the park together, we'd feed the ducks,

and he would tell me stories of knights and castles and battles.

-I'm sure that's where my love of history comes from.

-Probably.

-Probably, yeah.

-He was nice.

Kindly.

So, the home truth about where I grew up is mixed.

Yeah, there were lots of great memories and influences

that made me the man I am today...

..but for working-class inner-city families like mine,

times were really tough.

'Now, though, I want to hear about where my story fits into the wider story -

'before and after I came along.

'So I'm going to a place where I can get a wider perspective on things,

'by travelling to the top of London's tallest skyscraper,

'to The View from The Shard.'

'Opened in 2002, the building stands almost 310 metres,

'giving it a panoramic view of the whole capital.

'I'm meeting someone who will help me make sense of it.'

-Hi, Greg.

-Hi. Amazing.

'Dr Paul Watt studies cities for a living.

'I just hope he's got a good head for heights!'

I was born in Peckham in 1964,

-and I reckon that's over there somewhere, don't you?

-Yeah.

So...

..if I...if I follow the railway line here, London Bridge,

I can see the Elephant and Castle, through Bermondsey,

I can see Millwall Football Club there,

so Peckham must be a mile or so just beyond it.

Yeah, just down there, yeah.

What would that have looked like when I was born?

Well, most of...

You wouldn't have had lots of the tower blocks that you see now.

Most of those were built in the '60s.

So a lot flatter and a lot browner?

-Browner! Yes!

-So, it would have been row upon row of terraced housing.

Yes, in many ways it would have been, yes.

Still a Victorian streetscape, yeah.

How would it have looked for my grandparents, before the Second World War?

It would have been probably very tough, actually.

Probably they'd have been living in overcrowded circumstances.

Lots of Londoners were sharing, sharing with families.

Lots of infestation - cockroaches, that sort of thing, and bedbugs,

and it was really difficult for a lot of working-class Londoners.

It wasn't just in London,

poor living conditions like this were a big problem across the whole

country at the beginning of the 20th century.

From Liverpool to Glasgow,

whole generations were living in overcrowded squalor,

causing a multitude of health and social problems.

-Do you live here?

-Live here?

You don't call this living, I call this existing.

Who could live under these circumstances?

This was the squalor of the slums,

one of society's giant evils that the 1942 Beveridge Report wanted to rid the country of,

as this film from the time, called The Great Crusade, illustrates.

'In one of these streets, lives Molly, her mother,

'two brothers and baby sister.

'Five of them in two rooms.

'The whole structure of the house is really falling to pieces.

'Walls and ceiling are rotting with age.

'The air is full of soot from 100 choked up chimneys.'

In London alone at this time it was estimated that over 230,000 people

were living in conditions unfit for human habitation.

Imagine what they would make of today's London -

a place of shiny buildings and immense wealth.

For people like my grandparents,

this would look like something out of a science fiction movie.

And you know what? I love it.

That, to me, is a very beautiful city.

Yeah, it is. It's a fantastic city in many ways.

I think the thing is, though, about it,

is that really what you've got here is the way that you've got many of the new, modern towers.

For example, you've got the Strata tower, you can see that there,

which is a kind of lipstick-type building.

That was erected in 2010.

It's got 43 storeys, 408 flats.

But the problem is that only about a quarter of those are affordable housing.

One of the big issues that London's facing is the way that, yes,

we've got lots of these spectacular new developments going up,

but the problem is that many of these developments are actually just

unaffordable for lots of local people.

Do you know how many people are living in London right now?

Well, currently there is actually about 8.6 million people in London.

Wow, wow.

Which is actually the largest since 1939.

So the population peaked in 1939?

The population peaked in 1939, yes.

'Looking out on London today,

'I want to know more about how we got from then to now.

'I want to go inside the houses and lives of those who have experienced

'this property revolution, to find out their home truths.

'And first up, I'm going back to the terraces.

'The Isle of Dogs has some of the few remaining old school terraced houses here in the capital.

'They're pretty smart these days and worth over half a million a pop,

'but, before the war, places like this would have housed the poorest members of our society,

'and you could have picked one up for less than 200 quid -

'not that many people bought back then, though.

'My guide is local resident David Stackable.'

I recognise old streets like this.

'He grew up here just after the war and has seen some incredible changes.'

On your left was the docks,

that was all the Millwall Dock and this was all dockers' cottages,

what they classed as two up, two downs.

Mellish Street was in the heart of London's historic docks,

which were built back in the 18th century.

By the 19th century, the Port of London was the biggest in the world.

'A fifth of all shipping, using British ports,

'passes through the Port of London.

'And you sometimes see visiting warships too.'

As the docks grew,

so too did the rows of terraced cottages built to house the workers.

But by the 20th century, many of them were falling apart and overcrowded.

But that also made it a very close-knit neighbourhood.

Want a cup of tea, Mum?

Not now, Eileen, later on.

And sense of community, do you think?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I always thought my dad was a diesel fitter,

cos he used to come out the docks and go, "Well, they'll fit her and that'll fit him".

-GREGG LAUGHS

-Do you like that one?

-He was a fitter cos that will fit him, that will fit...

-He was a fitter. Diesel fitter, yeah.

-"Diesel fit him, diesel fit her."

-Yeah.

'It's easy walking down Mellish Street,

'to picture what life here might have been like.

'But on the Isle of Dogs, it's never long until you're jerked back to the 21st century.'

-Hang on a minute, hang on a minute, that's a striking view, isn't it, at the end of the road?

-It is.

This used to be privately, originally,

this belonged to this house and an old lady lived in here.

Right? And this was her garden.

-It's like you've walked into a completely...

-Another world.

-A completely different world.

-Yeah.

'I wonder what the old dockers would have thought'

if they could see the luxurious apartments that have sprung up in their streets.

Their houses didn't even have hot water,

and bathing was often done in communal bathhouses like this.

Can I have some more water, please?

But it isn't just the buildings they wouldn't recognise,

it's the way the households were run too.

This was a world where men went to work and the women stayed at home,

looking after the kids and doing the chores.

Not that it was any easier than grafting down the docks.

There were no mod cons back then, remember...

No, everything was done by hand, and usually by the wife.

Today, of course, it's all about equality,

so I'm going to give it a go.

'Mum, I hope you're watching!'

'David's keeping an eye on proceedings from what I think you would call a safe distance.'

Tub of water.

And...washboard?

-No.

-Why not?

It's got a scrubber on there already.

-What, the ribs?

-Yeah.

Lonnie Donegan plays with them.

That's how your mother used to do it.

'Yeah, but she'd be amazed to see me giving it a go.

'Still, it will be a nice treat when I show her later.'

'That's it washed, but getting it dried is an even bigger chore.'

-Get that in there.

-Mind your fingers.

'Meet the mangle.

'Oh, my poor, poor pink posh shirt.

'I don't suppose that will be making an appearance on the telly again.'

That is ludicrous.

And women would have done this what, once a week?

Yep, Monday was wash days.

-On the collar...

-'Lovely jubbly.'

..and peg it up.

The process of removing Britain's inner-city slums began in earnest

after the First World War.

Large numbers of our fellow citizens and their children

are living amidst surroundings which are a disgrace to our civilisation.

By 1939, 240,000 houses had been demolished,

and their inhabitants rehoused.

AIR-RAID SIREN

But it was the effect of the Blitz that really accelerated the process...

..as Hitler's Luftwaffe carried out their aerial bombardment of Britain's major cities.

After the war was over,

the need to address Britain's housing crisis became even more urgent.

But building a better place to live would take time.

'We had to find out everything about this great city we were planning to rebuild.

'Everything about its history and its geography,

'its people and the way they live.

'We had to find out how much of it had been totally destroyed,

'and how much of it was in such a bad state that it would have to be rebuilt anyway.'

Luckily, Churchill came to the rescue with his Temporary Accommodation Act,

a plan to build 500,000 new-technology, temporary emergency houses,

or, prefabs to you and me.

'Britain's first factory-made show house.

'Prototype of the half million promised by Mr Churchill as emergency dwellings

'for demobilised service men and their families.'

Each unit cost around £375 to produce

and were only meant to last 10-15 years.

Over 60 years later, some still survive as homes,

and you'd be lucky to get change out of 100 grand for them.

I've come well south of the river to look round one of the most

well-preserved prefab housing projects in Britain.

This is the Excalibur prefab estate in Catford in south-east London,

and it's a lovely, quiet day.

It's a nice street, but if you listen you can just hear the sound of diggers working in the distance.

They're knocking down a load of these prefabs to make room for new houses,

and a lot of the residents, well, they're not very happy.

Many of them are fighting to actually stay in the houses that they've grown to love.

The Excalibur Estate was actually built by German and Italian prisoners of war.

187 brand-new homes for homeless families, each with two bedrooms,

a private garden and - wait for it - an indoor lavatory!

-Oh, hello, Gregg.

-Hello.

Welcome to my oasis and back in time.

'I'm visiting Patricia Dixon.

'She was brought up here from the age of five

'and has lived on the estate most of her life.'

It could be anywhere. It could be in the middle of the Cotswolds.

It is very peaceful, and very much like a step back into the 1950s.

'Time for a snoop around.'

'This house of the future has no stairs,

'no dust-collecting wainscoting and is intended to last about ten years.'

It doesn't look like an original 1950s bathroom!

'The kitchen is compact,

'but the initial blueprint didn't provide sufficient facilities for washing clothes.'

Compared to the slums, the prefabs were a step into a brave new world.

There was a gas cooker, fridge,

and even a boiler for hot water and central heating.

It may have come off the back of a lorry and been erected in a few days,

but for the men of the house, they were kings of their very own castle.

This is a picture of my dad, outside his prefab,

which is only over the road, where I grew up.

He looks happy. He looks almost proud, doesn't he?

He was very proud of the prefabs. He loved living in the prefabs.

It was his first major home.

For the women, it was the chance at last to build a real home for their families,

with a fully-fitted kitchen,

making cooking more of a pleasure than a chore.

'I consider the kitchen, with a built-in refrigerator

and such other useful equipments,

a great advance in a working man's home and a step in the right direction.

'As a tribute, I'm whipping up a bit of lunch

'that was particularly common during this time.

'Pre-boiled potatoes, onion and spam,

'incredibly popular because of rationing, although, of course,

'other luncheon meats are available!'

I don't think you'd get very far on MasterChef with this!

'Time for my grub to be judged. I wonder what that feels like?'

We'll see what Tricia makes of this.

-There you are.

-Thank you, that looks very nice.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-You don't have to eat it, you know.

No, it's OK, I'll give it a whirl.

You're a brave girl! SHE LAUGHS

You know, actually it's not that bad.

Yes, it reminds me very much of when I was very young.

But while rationing ended, the prefabs would prove a lot harder to get rid of.

The fact is that those who lived here, well, they just felt at home.

'And I really get the sense from spending time with Patricia,

'that that's how she wants it to stay.'

Listening to you talk, it's obvious that you're very,

very passionate about these prefabs.

Why do you love them so much?

They're very easy to live in and very nice to live in,

because you've got the windows that are huge.

They let in as much sunlight,

and it's the sunlight that makes you feel happy, really.

It's the design of the place, because they have a unique feel about them.

They were positioned southeast so that you'd get the sun in the morning,

and then you'd get the sun on the other side of the house in the evening.

During the day you didn't, you got the light,

but you didn't get the baking hot sun.

They just feel part of me, because I've been here so long.

I feel passionate to keep them on this planet,

as an example of what can be done in so short a time,

in building, and how long they can last.

What if you don't win the fight? What if you have to move?

-How will you feel?

-It would be just an end of an era for me.

It would be sort of like having to close down and start again from fresh.

I don't see how it wouldn't destroy me.

I enjoyed spending time with Tricia, and I like these houses as well.

I think it's a shame if she loses her home, not just her,

but many other people as well.

Some of them grew up here. That doesn't sound like progress to me.

By the 1960s, another set of home truths were about to hit Britain.

The baby boomers were coming of age.

Immigration had led to a new diverse influx of people.

And with the NHS now firmly established, older folk were surviving longer.

All these people needed a place to live.

Britain's inner cities simply had too many people and too little space.

And so, the solution was to look up to the skies.

'The answer is to build upwards.

'To provide attractive, well-planned dwellings for a high level of living.'

This was the birth of high-rise living,

where escaping the ground was seen as an opportunity to escape its problems.

It's like being in heaven, up here, because we've always been,

we've always been poor people

and we've had so many good friends up here,

and these places are just lovely for us.

Now, entire streets could be built on top of each other.

There's only one way to do it -

you've got to build up, instead of out.

What storey are you? 22nd storey, is it?

Do you like living up here?

In London, one of the first and most celebrated of these new housing schemes

was the Alton East Estate in Roehampton, beside Richmond Park.

Building upwards meant more room down beneath for leafy surroundings,

the exact opposite of the old terraces.

'These buildings on London estates are set in open spaces,

'where the light and air can get at them and where trees and flowers

'provide a setting.'

In 1960, the council charged up to £3 a week to live here.

Today, flats in the high-rises are around 120.

I think they might be worth it.

I kind of like these, you know, these buildings.

They're like a little piece of 1960s history.

I like the fact that there's people sitting on the grass

and I really like the fact that the grass and the trees roll away from the buildings.

I mean, whoever built these really thought, I think,

they were doing some good.

'To see if they really were the answer,

'I'm off on a little tour of the estate, with resident Deenie Lyon,

'and we're starting with a good look at the view.'

-Well, that's quite a view from here.

-It's beautiful.

-It is lovely, isn't it?

-Yeah.

'Deenie moved to Roehampton from Ladbroke Grove in 1954.

'She was only a small girl. The estate wasn't even built.'

Do you remember the tower block going up?

I vaguely remember.

I remember more of the conversations people had about it than actually

seeing the buildings being built, to be honest.

-Really?

-Yes.

-And what conversations were they?

Well, people were worried about who was going to be moving in.

We had some strange rumours.

Were we going to have... Were they going to have proper dustbins?

Yeah, of course, no-one had ever known anybody

-who had lived up in the sky, had they?

-No.

I'd like to show you how much interest there was around the world for this,

what was a very iconic building.

Look at this.

'In my opinion, Alton is the most beautiful and satisfactory

'of any housing project I've seen anywhere in the world.'

'Approaching the estate,

'you can see the interesting mixture of housing types.

'As a result, they achieve a very high density,

'without it seeming to be very crowded.

'It should be a good place for children to live,

'and quite safe for play.'

-Do you remember it like that?

-Yeah, I can.

The lady who was talking on there was saying it's a safe place for children to play.

When you walk round the estate today,

you realise there isn't a safe place here for children to play now.

If you live on the seventh floor,

you're not going to let your child come down and play,

it's just too far, you wouldn't be safe.

Children now have their computers and their boxes and things.

They don't go out to play very often.

The Alton Estates were completed in the late 1950s,

and over the next decade British cities went high-rise crazy.

'In the present housing shortage, time is the essence of the contract,

'and so is money.'

It was easy to see the attraction,

reinforced concrete slabs, created off-site,

sped up the construction process,

which meant people in poor living conditions could be rehoused quickly.

I think that industrialised production

will bring quicker housing.

We shall see in the future houses coming off the conveyor belt,

like motorcars.

But the dream was short lived.

Many began to worry about the loneliness and isolation

of those being moved from close-knit terraced streets to high-rise flats.

-We can try the one right down at the end.

-All right.

'I wonder if this is still the case.

'So I've decided to spread a bit of community spirit

'and introduce Deenie to some of her neighbours.

'I think our visit might be a bit of a surprise.'

-Hello!

-Hello.

-How are you?

-I'm fine, thank you.

'Barbara Bagalo is a nurse.

'She's lived on the estate for 37 years, but she's never met Deenie.'

-Nice.

-Wow. It's lovely.

-Here you are.

-I like the colour.

-Thank you.

-Can we sit down?

-Do you want to sit down? Sit down.

-Yeah.

-You're on there?

-Yeah.

-I'll come and sit over here with you.

Do you want to sit down, are you all right?

I didn't realise that you had an upstairs?

I thought it would all be on one level.

-It's nice. It's more like a house.

-Like a little house. Stacked, yeah.

What's it like, living here?

It's nice, it's quiet.

We have Richmond Park five minutes away.

With the transport links, you can get into central London basically from anywhere.

-Decent views?

-Decent views.

And your neighbours, do you get on with your neighbours?

Seldom see the neighbours.

Used to, years ago.

You knew all your neighbours.

But now, everyone seems to keep themselves to themselves.

Why don't I make a cup of tea and you two have a chat?

Oh, yes, please.

Two sugars, please!

So, when did you move here?

-In 1954.

-1954. Before I was born!

-Before the estate was born, actually.

-Yeah.

-The estate wasn't even here then.

-No.

-I love it.

I don't want ever to be anywhere else but Roehampton.

-I do love Roehampton.

-OK. So it's just home.

They seem to be getting on really well,

and I'm really pleased with myself.

I feel like I've done something good.

People have to talk to each other.

If estates are going to work, they have to be communities.

How many sugars?

Although the Alton Estates of Roehampton

have had their share of problems, they have survived.

And today, they provide over 5,000 homes.

Other high-rise housing estates from the same era didn't fare so well.

'In East London, three people are dead, seven are injured

'and seven unaccounted for after the collapse of a 22-storey block of flats.'

The collapse of Ronan Point tower block in 1968

marked an abrupt end to our love affair with high-rise living.

-You live in a very nice house!

-Yeah!

-You do not live in a tower block.

Pressurise the council! We must stick together!

You're living in bug-ridden places here!

As the '60s gave way to the '70s, estates saw graffiti,

drugs and even racial tension take root.

It seemed the inner-city slums of the early 20th century had been

replaced by slums in the sky.

For many, it was time for the high rises to come down.

Three, two, one...

blast off!

By the beginning of the '80s,

the inner cities were about to embark on another big rebuild.

Luckily, I was in a prime spot to see what happened next.

'I was working as a greengrocer and suddenly,

'I was getting orders from new, posh restaurants,

'all wanting to serve a new clientele.'

Mizuna. Sounds really exotic, Japanese leaf,

comes from a great exotic place called Surrey!

Pissenlit. It's dandelion.

Or dande-lyon. This has been used by the Italians and the French for years and years and years.

These certainly weren't the working class customers I was used to.

No, these guys had a bit of money to spend.

Some called them yuppies,

and it wasn't just fresh fruit and vegetables they were looking to splash their dosh on.

They also wanted places to live.

A demand developers were only too willing to meet

with even flashier apartments.

And nowhere more so than back where I began my journey, on the Isle of Dogs.

Once a dirty, busy working dock, throughout the next two decades,

it became the symbolic centre for the resurrection of London's inner-city.

'Needless to say, estate agents were onto a nice little earner.

'I've come to meet one, Paul Kirby.'

Can you tell me, when did this start?

When did it all start building like this?

Good question. '96? '96 I would say it really took off.

Properties were been sold off-plan in Hong Kong, again, at an alarming rate.

And people really took to the area.

I think they knew how big Canary Wharf was going to be.

-We're at the heart of it here, would you say?

-100%, yeah.

-Shall we have a walk up and down the road and just have a look at it?

-Yeah, let's do it.

So, you reckon a whole population of Canary Wharf, or the Isle of Dogs,

moved out between two and five years?

Pretty much. And the people that moved in were your bankers,

your solicitors, your stockbrokers.

Now, it's one thing seeing these gaffes from the outside,

but it's on the inside that you really see why the City's fat cats want to live here.

'Paul is showing me one of the area's most exclusive apartment blocks,

'a flat on the 17th floor that's just come onto the market.'

I like it. Listen, I need to ask, I really do need to ask.

How much to rent this?

To rent this you're looking at £1,100 a week.

-A week?

-Yeah.

-£5,000 a month?

Correct. 5,000 a month.

But look what you get. You know?

-Two bedrooms?

-Two...

You could make it a three-bedroom if you needed to, but...

-So, if that's to rent...

-Yes?

-How much is it to buy?

Something of this size, with the views,

anything up to 1.7 million, for an apartment like this.

Do you have any idea how much rent was here before Canary Wharf got built up?

I'd have to guess at...

..£200-£250 a month.

So, all the people that used to live here

-were completely priced out of here.

-Correct.

-And there's absolutely no way they'd ever be able to buy their way back in again.

-No way.

Here we have the master bedroom.

Balcony. En suite bathroom.

It's all right. It's big enough, isn't it?

-Yeah, yeah.

-It's big enough.

So what's this, an office?

Games room, TV room, office, yeah.

Look at that.

I don't know how I feel about living in the middle

-of a load of high-rises.

-Yeah.

It's just a different version of what was built before, right?

Well.

There's still a load of building going on.

I mean, they're cramming a building into every single inch.

Literally. They will keep building until there's nothing left.

I mean, honestly. Really, though.

The gaps between the buildings are constantly... What is that?

That is Baltimore Wharf.

-Look at that!

-One of the most exclusive properties in Canary Wharf.

All-glass structure outside.

They used 75 million panes of glass in that block itself.

There's over 72 floors in the block.

-Is it serving a purpose?

-I think so.

And what is that purpose?

It's filled in a culture of what they feel that people want in this area,

which is luxury, which is something that someone else hasn't got.

Like a home, where their grandparents were brought up.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll be honest, I don't really know how I feel about places like this.

I guess the home truth is that you can't really stop progress,

'and let's face it, who wouldn't want to live in a pad like this?'

But maybe, as a society, we've paid too high a price for it,

with traditional working-class communities now forced out.

Even worse, homelessness across Britain's inner cities

is also on the rise, and yet,

people are still finding ways to put an affordable roof over their heads.

-Are these shipping containers?

-Yeah.

'After finding himself on the streets, with the help of the YMCA,

'Scott McDonald now lives in an apartment block made of old shipping containers.

-They look trendy to me.

-Yeah, man, come have a look.

-May I?

Welcome to my container!

Righto.

Yeah, go on, give me a tour.

-Come through here.

-Find the kitchen.

Little cooker. Tiny little cooker.

A couple of hobs, a toaster, a microwave.

Fridge. And that's it.

-And through there?

-Is the shower room.

Adequate.

It's all right. Can I ask you, what is it like, living in it?

-It's all right.

-It's all right?

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Better than being out on the street.

-Yeah, sure.

Much better. Cos if you've been homeless and then you come into this, it's a godsend.

-Is it?

-Yeah, it's a godsend. Honestly.

Can I ask you how much you pay for this?

504 a month.

-All right, it's not...

-£79 a month council tax.

That's more expensive than I thought it was going to be.

Yeah, but you pay that for rooms.

-150. You can pay that for a room in a house.

-Yeah, OK.

With this, you've got your own door, your own key, nobody.

-Have you got your own kettle?

-Yeah. Do you want a cup of tea?

-Yeah, do you want one?

-I'll make you a cup of tea. Go on, then.

Well, it's nice to have a cuppa made for me this time.

And it's clear this sense of being in control of things is crucial to Paul, too.

So what does this do for you personally?

It gives me my independence.

You come down into this and it's my pad.

Only you come in the door.

And nobody else. Nobody else can get near you.

So, it's just a relief.

It's quiet, it's like this all the time, day and night.

-Never hear nothing.

-It seems to me it's more than just a container,

it's a step towards a normal life.

It's all coming back, my life's coming back to what I call normal.

And tomorrow, I'm going for my medical. I'm a coach driver.

So that's what I do for a living. Well, that's what I DID for a living, up until 2015.

So once I get my medical tomorrow my D4 done...

I've got my life back.

GREGG LAUGHS

My time is nearly up, so what home truths have I learned in my journey

into Britain's inner-city story?

Well, the properties may have changed to become a lot more pricey,

but for those working-class people who have lived here across the decades,

'life has always been a struggle.'

Tub of water.

A struggle to stay clean...

..to eat,

to stay warm,

just to keep sheltered in fact.

'But I've also found out that no matter the era,

'these same people are determined to live their lives

'with a real sense of pride, dignity and humour.

'And hopefully that's something I've taken from living in these streets too.

'Because although I may have moved on, this place never leaves you,

'and I'll always be a Peckham boy at heart.

'So where better to wrap things up than back in Del Boy land?

'Where Mum is joining me for a bit of grub in one of Peckham's trendier joints - well, why not?'

Mum, it is possibly the poshest plate of food we've ever had in Peckham.

Yeah, getting close, I think.

-Can you remember anything fancy like this?

-Certainly not.

But this is actually delicious.

I've been looking at housing, private housing and social housing,

in the middle of London.

I've met some fascinating people,

but I'm a little bit worried that the social housing is going to -

all of it - is going to be replaced by expensive private housing,

because I walked down a terraced street of old Victorian houses,

-very much like Kincaid Road.

-Yes.

There's a gap in the road, and you look through the gap

and there's all these great big expensive million-pound flats and stuff.

Absolutely incredible. I think the last big section of prefab housing...

And one of the biggest concentrations of those is in Lewisham,

and that's in danger of completely going.

You've got about 140, 150 of those.

Yes, and there were still some quite locally.

-But the people don't want to go.

-No, I can understand that.

That's their home.

I thought of you cos I was thinking of Nanny, your mum.

-I had a go at a mangle.

-Wow.

-Wow.

-In fact, I was wondering if you could wash and iron that for me?

-And you've mangled this?

-Mangled it? I murdered it!

You certainly did.

That's going to need some serious help. Would you like it back?

-No, I want it...

-No, all right, then.

-You're my mum - look after it.

Oh, I see, I see. I'll prop up a washing line while we're here, then.

Peckham's changed a lot, but then London's changed a lot,

but I don't think it matters where your home is - it should be loved,

it should be cherished and respected.

London is an incredible, vibrant, international city,

but if it can't be a home for everybody, I think that's a terrible shame.

MUSIC: Only Fools And Horses Theme