As a newly minted Picture Editor and thus part of the management team of a then-popular left-wing national newspaper, I sat in on a discussion about why the poor ate so badly.

Having only recently landed the job and as keen as mustard – and oh so naive – my feet were still planted firmly in the real world. OK, I was earning a fortune, but I’d not been earning it long enough to forget poverty. Plus as a working-class lad from Bideford, I was suffering from lashings of “Imposter Syndrome”. So I explained that much of the problem stemmed from the exorbitant prices the poor were forced to pay.

With impeccable upper-middle-class logic, they reasoned that fresh fruit and vegetables were cheap – presumably in their local Waitrose. They were perplexed, to say the least, as to why the poor would instead choose to eat ‘expensive’ takeaway food.

What will they think of next? As I expounded my theories, demystifying the enigma of the prepayment conundrum, I was struck by an observation.

On the left arm of each of the nine or ten heads of department in attendance was a nice, shiny watch – nothing unusual about that. But there are watches, and there are WATCHES.

Watching the watches

Whether hand-me-downs, family heirlooms, or on-trend power pieces, had these timepieces found their way into the hands of my fellow convenience store customers, they would have inevitably been pawned—not out of greed but need—each representing a fortune beyond imagination.

At this point, I tuned out. Why listen to those preaching to the poor from such luxurious pulpits? And so, I devised what I........

© City A.M.