The last time I watched Secret Millionaire was when our local developer Chek Whyte transformed Manchester. He subsequently went bust owing a reputed £30m.

Nottingham - the good bits!

But I switched it on last night to be confronted with Mark Pearson – a millionaire who started work with Gordon Ramsay – but now runs an internet business myvouchercodes.com

And what a great start – “Nottingham has double the Crime of the Uk average”. And he gets to stay in the ‘drug riddled’ area of Radford. The first lady he meets warns him about the high level of drugs, knife crime and ‘crack-heads’.

No one doubts that Nottingham has its fair share of problems. But this sort of sensational journalism and commentary is quite unfair. It is also quite unhelpful! Two months ago we had Daisy Waugh wafting her fiction. I do realise why we get this sort of commentary – it makes for a great and compelling story. You are drawn into the drama – wondering if someone is going to break into Marks temporary home – and push his bed away from the door.

The only consolation is that these programmes each week are always based in a UK City and usually in the poorer parts. Which is really my point – Nottingham is no worse than our competing Cities around the UK. In fact I think it is much better.

Sure if you go and doss down in some of the lower value housing estates you will probably find some trouble. And similarly I wouldn’t wander round the town at night on my own – but no more so than in other places. I felt decidedly uncomfortable in Manchester earlier in the year as I blogged about here.

Nottingham has improving crime statistics. It’s not perfect, but we have high hopes. We don’t need the sensational journalism. I know it sells programmes but it doesn’t do much for us. Its not helpful.

But if some more millionaires want to pop in and leave a pile of cash to help some of the projects Mark got involved in then feel free. He was very generous!

UPDATE

I have had lots of comment today about this blogpost – from Nottingham folks and the consensus is really that this City isn’t one we recognise from the programme. I thought one of the best emails was from Kay Hudson at Invest in Nottingham who sent me the video below.