A Life Without Work - Episode 1

A hundred years on from a ground breaking investigation into unemployment, Richard Bilton turns detective and uncovers a moving story of one family's journey from grinding poverty in a York slum to undreamt of success as a Hollywood actor. In 1910 philanthropist and chocolate tycoon Seebohm Rowntree wrote a radical book about unemployment, exposing for the first time the terrible conditions faced by Britain's jobless. The report featured the diaries of the Nevinson family who struggled on the brink of destitution. In the first of two programmes looking at unemployment over the century, Richard Bilton painstakingly hunts down the descendants of the Nevinsons and discovers their great grandson is actor Mark Addy - Friar Tuck in the recent Robin Hood movie and a star of The Full Monty. In many ways, the story of the Addy family is the story of all our working lives over the last century.