I’ve been broke three times in my life. The level of broke where you stop looking forward to payday because you’ll still be in your overdraft.

You avoid going to the canteen because lunch feels like a privilege and, at your lowest ebb, regularly rely on the “Bank of A Much Younger Sibling” to keep your T-Mobile contract alive.

On paper, I shouldn’t have been. I’ve worked since I was 16. I’m a freelance documentary director. I now have my own flat. I have zero children and I manage my finances alone. And yet at 40, I have no pension, no safety net, and I’ve scraped the barrel more than once.

Not because I’m reckless or spectacularly bad with money, but because freelance creative work was sold to me as: “Follow your passion. You don’t have to stay in one job for life like your mum or dad did, you could have flexibility, you can have it all.” Blah blah blah.

I chose television because it looked exciting, it looked like fun and more importantly it didn’t involve clocking on in a nine-to-five. What no one in the industry actually tells you is what happens when the work dries up.

The first time I was broke was in 2010. My take-home pay was a whopping £1,150 a month. I broke up with my husband and he stopped paying the mortgage, so every penny I earned went on the house. I borrowed money from colleagues – shout out........

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