Last week BBC launched two mini-series 'Wastemen' and '24 Hours in the Past' one featuring waste recycling now, and the other how it was done in Victorian England.
 
'Wastemen' was set around Newcastle and Sunderland, travelling with binmen to a waste transfer station run by O'Brien's in which there was some demon waste sorting. The speed of the conveyor of plastic waste and its sorting was so fast that it looked impossible. And the manager's description of life in one of the most modern waste facilities in Britain was graphic - running the gamut from his belief that we should treat waste as a valuable resource, to the types of faecal remains and other nasties he and his teams dealt with on a daily basis. He no longer noticed the stench. The binmen illustrated the best (wealthy areas of multi-million pound houses around Jesmond) and worst (student lodgings) domestic waste recyclers. The first episode was seen on BBC2 by 1.5m viewers.
 
'24 hours in the past' took a team of celebs back into Victorian England at the Black Country Living Museum. The first episode was about hard graft, hunger and discomfort sorting domestic waste, with Anne Widdecombe, Colin Jackson and Alistair McGowan sieving cinders for breeze and cleaning and packing dung, night soil, ashes, dust and bones under the watchful eye of Dan Hill, the employer of the hapless crew. The programme on BBC1 was watched by 3.8m viewers.
 
Dan Hill, erstwhile Brighton salvage dealer, was pleased to see that everything had a value in Victorian times.
 
"I was there to give them a hard time," he said. "Even though they had been told beforehand, the celebrities were shocked at how hard they had to work, how cold they were, and how little food and sleep they had. The only real grafter there was Colin Jackson - but I guess he knew most about physically and mentally pushing yourself."
 
"The celebs were complaining about the stench, one was even sick, but I didn't think it was that bad - no worse than the kind of things salvage dealers have to put with at times. The row I had with Anne was filmed but not aired. She stepped in when I was giving Tyger a hard time. She said he was too young to be grafting at nineteen! If you can't do it then, when can you do it? The brief the director gave me was to treat the celebs how I would treat them if they worked in a salvage yard for me. I was ad libbing which worked because that is my background."
 
Asked if this was a career move for him into costume dramas, he said that although he liked dressing up, he did not think memorising a script and acting were for him and he was sticking with his other TV show - Storage Hunters UK.