Winner's acceptance speech by Joseph Bullman and Nat Rogers for Killed by my Debt in the Single Drama category
JOSEPH BULLMAN: So we have just got our family coming up on stage. Here they come.
I just want to take a minute. You don't often see stories like this told on television, so we are so, so grateful for BBC Three, Damian Kavanagh, Fiona Campbell for giving us the opportunity, Clare Sillery and Danny Horan for commissioning it.
I'm sure most of you haven't seen it, but it's the true story of young Jerome Rogers, a young lad from South London. He got his dream job when he was 20 as a motorcycle courier. Went out and worked for a couple of weeks and got a couple of traffic fines, 65 quid each. However, he had a fantastic zero hours job. Some weeks he was earning 12 quid, other weeks he was earning nothing at all. He couldn't pay the fines. In the hands of bailiffs, they went up to more than £1,000. He didn't tell his most beautiful family, kept it to himself, and in the end he took his own life.
The thing is that the private debt collection agencies, the bailiffs in this country, are just an organised gang, extorting money from people that haven't got it, and I just wanted to introduce you to his amazing family, who spend their time campaigning for change.
NAT ROGERS: Thank you.
I just want to say thank you to Joe, Laura, Tahsin, Chance Perdomo who played my brother, everybody who took part in bringing Jerome's story to a programme that helps get the story out there to the nation, to highlight the issues of the gig economy in our nation, and the bailiff industry, which is completely unregulated, which can cause a young man to take his own life before he's reached his 21st birthday. We just want as many people to know about it so we can bring about a change to help protect -- because any of us in this room can be subject to bailiff action, and for something like that to lead to somebody taking their own life and destroying a family, it's not right.
So we just want to say thank you to everybody that helped bring this to the nation's attention, and to have this platform is incredible, and we hope if one more person sees it because of tonight, then it's amazing, and for it to be used as an educational tool is amazing.
So thank you so much.
