I met a Secret Millionaire

Only it wasn’t, you know, a secret. Last year I was visiting my brother’s church in Basingstoke and a lovely lady with curly hair got up to talk about herself & share a bit of her journey. Someone leaned over and said “She’s Blind” and then added “She’s an MBE”. I think I pulled one of those “Oh ok” faces I pull when I’m never really sure what to respond with.

What came next was five minutes of deeply entertaining, inspirational kick arse story. Little gems of great business sense dropped alongside an interesting personal story. No advance education, kicked off a business at 25 with no money and progressively failing sight from reitnitis pigmentosa and now employs over 100 people at her telemarketing company Great Guns Marketing. 

Liz Jackson MBE is appearing on the first programme in the new series of The Secret Millionaire. (Wednesday 16th September 2009 at 21:00 on Channel 4.)

Liz is a Christian and I’m interested to see how that is put across in the show- having seen Liz in action I know that she won’t be able to get through the show without mentioning the importance of her faith to her. It’ll also be interesting to see how people around her react to her as a disabled person, the usual secret millionaire formula will have to be tweaked a little I imagine.

(As a total aside- My brother has managed to convince me to refer to his job as being a “dot joiner” rather than a “war monger” and I’m sure Mum would say he “works in computers” but he’s still calling me a “tofu eating, Guardian reading liberal”. Some things never change, eh?)

Liz got sent to Lewisham to live in a flat and make contact with several charities before revealing her true identity and giving away thousands on pounds. I love the show normally, inspiring stuff, with someone as interesting as Liz will make this a ‘must see’ programme.