Mum, Heroin and Me (C4)

Two things I hate: the English upper-classes and junkies. As an Edinburgh Uni student living in Leith, I'm subjected to a bit of both every day, often swinging wildly from one end of the social spectrum to the other in the space it takes for the Number 14 bus to drive me from university to home.
Still, never did I expect to see the two spectacularly combined as I did in the extravaganza that was Mum, Heroin and Me last Thursday night.

Naturally Channel 4 were eager to commission a documentary about posh junkies: it's so much more palatable than their previous efforts. Anyone who remembers Krishnan Guru-Murthy's horrific presentation of a live detox - an unsavoury cross between Big Brother and America's Toughest Prisons - will understand why.

Irrespective of Jane Treays's merits as a documentary maker, this was never going to be the most heart-rending of subject matters. Because if you had grown up in Niddrie, with a life resembling a montage of the worst of Jeremy Kyle, heroin addiction as a lifestyle choice would be easier to understand. Somehow, telling us that it got so bad your mum had to sell the Conran sofa doesn't quite have the same ring of tragedy to it.

Consequently, I felt it necessary to illustrate my point with a list entitled "Why being a posh junkie is hard (but not that hard)":

1) You have to tie off the circulation in your arm before injecting (with a vintage Hermes scarf).

2) You cook up your fix in a spoon (a silver one).

3) You were once rattling so bad for a fix that you couldn't move. Mum sent Agnieska (the Polish maid) to pay the dealer.

4) You go through the chilling effects of cold turkey. Luckily, you can do this in the East Wing of the house, thus limiting any mess.

5) While detoxing, you have to puke and shit into buckets. Buckets made of gold.

6) Mummy and Daddy raid their ISA account and send you to rehab. In South Africa. Which is fabulous as your friends Freddie and Georgina are doing their gap year over there.