Brian Cox reflects on ‘seeing both ends of the wage gap’

Brian Cox returns to school in the final episode of his Channel 5 series How The Other Half Live, reflecting on seeing ‘both ends of the pay gap’.

In a clip released ahead of the episode’s airing on Thursday, the Succession star, 76, admits that after getting a glimpse of the struggles faced by people on the poverty line, he realized the world “find a sense of unified purpose.”

It comes after Brian reflected on his own experience of extreme poverty as a child growing up in Scotland, confessing in the series that he is “constantly afraid of becoming poor again.”

In a clip of the episode’s closing moments, Brian returns to where his school once stood, only to discover that it has since been replaced by a row of houses.

The Emmy winner quips, “I thought they’d keep it as my legacy!”

Brian then narrates the clip by noting that he would soon be returning to work on Succession as “crassy” billionaire Logan Roy, describing him as “a guy who doesn’t give a damn what happens to the people he tramples on.” runs’.

But Brian repeats his point from the beginning of the series, adding, “I’m not Logan Roy.”

Brian pays a visit to a fish and chip shop and asks the server for a bag of ‘batter’, and as he leaves the shop, reflects on his experience filming the programme.

He says: ‘In making this series I have seen both ends of the wealth gap, in Britain and America. And I’ve been hit to the bone.

“Surely it’s time to wake up, before it’s too late, to stop rolling the dice in favor of the rich and find a sense of unified purpose, and if we don’t have this sense of unified purpose , what are we then? What are we doing? And that’s the tragedy.’

Brian’s documentary series has explored the wealth gap between rich and poor, as well as his own complicated relationship with money.

In the opening episode, the actor labeled money as his ‘own personal demon’ and said his ‘poor’ childhood – which his mother saw down to her last £10 at one point – ‘hangs over him all his life’.

He said, “I still have the fear that it will all be taken away and that I will return to poverty. It never leaves you.

“It’s like the Damoclean sword hanging over your head all your life.

“I never really felt it when I was young, I was a kid and just moving on, I was literally surviving. But as I got older, I looked at that boy and thought, my God, he survived, how did he do? It’s still a mystery to me.’

The Golden Globe-winning star said, “It is [money] my own personal demon. After my father died, my mother discovered that his bank had a sum of £10. We were destitute.

‘My mother only had a widow’s pension, which often ran out before the end of the week. So I went to the fish and chip shop and asked if they had any leftovers – the bits of batter in the bottom of the fryer – and took them home to eat.’

Brian created the series in part because, after four years of playing foul-mouthed billionaire media magnate Logan Roy on Sky’s hit drama Succession, he wanted to explore the growing wealth gap around the world, particularly in his home country and his adopted country of America.

The result takes him on a very personal journey in which he returns to the home in Dundee where his father died an untimely death, leading to a childhood filled with poverty after his mother collapsed.

He also visits the super rich playground of Miami and the soup kitchens of New York.

Brian left home when he got a scholarship to study acting at London’s renowned drama school LAMDA.

Describing money as “the tragedy of the world,” he said, “Wealth is increasingly concentrated in that top 1 percent and the rest of the world is suffering.

“When you play one of the richest men in the world, you live that life nine months out of the year where you’re sort of cocooned, and I feel like there’s an inequality that needs to be addressed.

“So this series is very much a result of what I grew up with and what I watched, I was lower middle class and had a relatively happy childhood until my father passed away.

‘Many people do not have the means to achieve any kind of standard of living on their own. Money is the tragedy of the world.’

Last month, the actor spoke to The Daily telegram about finding success and wealth in Hollywood, and while he’s a TV star, he’s not “one of them” or a “multimillionaire.”

He said that while money makes people safe, it also makes them “guilty,” saying that everyone suffers in some way from their exposure to money.

As for bequeathing his four children, Brian said he believes his estate will be divided among his descendants.

The actor admitted that he doesn’t want any promise of inheritance to be too big a ‘safety net’ for them and he still wants them to get out and ‘work their asses off’.

Brian shares his two eldest children – Alan, 52, and Margaret – with his ex-wife Caroline Burt, while he also has sons Orson, 20, and Torin, 18, with wife Nicole Ansari-Cox.

Brian Cox: How The Other Half Live ends Thursday at 9pm on Channel 5.