Every now and again, a minor celebrity or institution will announce that they are “challenging themselves” to “be poor for a day” in order to raise awareness of the plight of people living in poverty in the UK. Sometimes this is done through charitable initiatives such as Live Below The Line, which I have done myself for several years running. I use my own experiences of living in real food and fuel poverty as a single mum on benefits to cook and eat for £1 a day, and I write about it extensively.

It usually causes some degree of mental anguish, flashbacks, reliving of some of the worst periods of my life, and is not something that I enter into lightly. I have not done it for the last two years, to protect and preserve my own mental health. I am not sure if I will do it again.

Compare this, then, to YouTube star Alfie Deyes, deciding to live on just one measly pound for a day, as a kooky video idea. Complete with five paid advertisements in the middle of the video, Deyes took his £1 coin to Waitrose, where he was comically shocked to find that fresh fruit is expensive for people living on a budget. “So is the whole of Waitrose, Alfie,” I muttered as I winced my way through the 20-minute video.

Most people in poverty can’t blag a dozen free Krispy Kreme doughnuts for having a famous face, and neither can they just pause the challenge in the middle of the day to buy some beard oil and hit the gym. Slipping into our scarred and malnourished skins for a day, knowing full well you are heading back to your mansion at the end of it, stuffed to the gills with all the freebies and luxury that most people can only dream of, is insulting and cruel. It is nothing more than “poorface” – performance poverty – to entertain yourself and others, with no value but your own entertainment and barely hidden disdain.

Poorface is a term that I coined a while back, used to denote the mockery and minstrel performance whereby someone in a position of privilege pretends to be poor for a day, in order to “experience poverty for themselves”. You won’t. Poverty is not a 24-hour challenge. It is a world of endless nothing. It is depression, despair, darkness. It is having no light at the end of the tunnel, like being stuck down a well, waiting to die.

The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned Show all 16 1 /16 The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "One case where the claimant’s wife went into premature labour and had to go to hospital. This caused the claimant to miss an appointment. No leeway given" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "It’s Christmas Day and you don’t fill in your job search evidence form to show that you’ve looked for all the new jobs that are advertised on Christmas Day. You are sanctioned. Merry Christmas" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "You apply for three jobs one week and three jobs the following Sunday and Monday. Because the job centre week starts on a Tuesday it treats this as applying for six jobs in one week and none the following week. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks for failing to apply for three jobs each week" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A London man missed his Jobcentre appointments for two weeks because he was in hospital after being hit by a car. He was sanctioned" 2011 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "You’ve been unemployed for seven months and are forced onto a workfare scheme in a shop miles away, but can’t afford to travel. You offer to work in a nearer branch but are refused and get sanctioned for not attending your placement" 2013 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "You are a mum of two, and are five minutes late for your job centre appointment. You show the advisor the clock on your phone, which is running late. You are sanctioned for a month" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A man with heart problems who was on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) had a heart attack during a work capability assessment. He was then sanctioned for failing to complete the assessment" Rex The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A man who had gotten a job that was scheduled to begin in two weeks’ time was sanctioned for not looking for work as he waited for the role to start" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Army veteran Stephen Taylor, 60, whose Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) was stopped after he sold poppies in memory of fallen soldiers" 2014 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A man had to miss his regular appointment at the job centre to attend his father’s funeral. He was sanctioned even though he told DWP staff in advance" 2014 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Ceri Padley, 26, had her benefits sanctioned after she missed an appointment at the jobcentre - because she was at a job interview" Jason Doiy Photography The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A man got sanctioned for missing his slot to sign on - as he was attending a work programme interview. He was then sanctioned as he could not afford to travel for his job search" 2012 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Mother-of-three Angie Godwin, 27, said her benefits were sanctioned after she applied for a role job centre staff said was beyond her" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Sofya Harrison was sanctioned for attending a job interview and moving her signing-on to another day" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Michael, 54, had his benefits sanctioned for four months for failing to undertake a week’s work experience at a charity shop. The charity shop had told him they didn’t want him there" Getty The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Terry Eaton, 58, was sanctioned because he didn’t have the bus fare he needed to attend an appointment with the job centre" Getty Images

There is no planning for the future because you don’t believe you really have one. There are no savings accounts, no rainy day funds, no contents insurance, no health insurance, no investment in your own self, your own health, because to invest financially, nutritionally, or emotionally is to look forward.

Poverty only looks at its own feet, in too-tight shoes that let in the rain; it drags you downwards, and inwards, and I speak from bitter, horrible experience. I lived in poverty for around two years with an infant son, moving from a flat to a smaller, mouldy flat to a friend’s sofa to a mattress on the floor in a house I shared with five people. I made myself minimal, I hid in my room, I tried to kill myself several times. Nobody could take this on as a challenge.

There’s nothing fun and exciting about missing days of meals, with the heating off all winter, the lightbulbs unscrewed, selling your son’s shoes and drinking his formula milk that the food bank gave you. Try it for a month at least, if you really want to get an idea. Two months. Two years. Unscrew your lightbulbs, turn off your fridge, sell anything you can see lying around that you might get more than a quid for.

Stop going out. Walk everywhere, in the pouring rain, in your only pair of shoes, with a soaking wet and sobbing three-year-old trailing behind you. Drag that three-year-old into every pub and shop in unreasonable walking distance and ask if they have any job vacancies. Get home, soaking, still unemployed, to “dry out” in a freezing cold flat. Put two jumpers on and worry about how you’ll wash them, take them off, and put on a T-shirt underneath. You can wear the jumpers all week, and change the T-shirt twice.

Drag yourself to the cooker to pour some pasta into a pan, pour some chopped tomatoes on top, and try not to hurl it across the room when your son tells you he doesn’t like it – because there is nothing else. Nothing else at all.

Gordon Brown: Theresa May will cause more poverty than Thatcher

I was cold, exhausted, only forcing myself out of the depths of choking depression to smile at the children’s centre workers because I was scared they can see how numb and dead I felt, how I went to bed at night tormented by thoughts of suicide. The endless self-chatter: “Your son would have a better life without you. You’re a drain on society, the state, your family and friends.” I slit my wrists in the bath with a disposable razor and, horrified, came to, wailing and sobbing on the floor because I knew I’d hit the f***ing bottom. Again.

You’re grateful for the tea and sympathy but you just want everyone to leave you alone and to stop asking if you’re OK. Because you’re not. You’re full of rain and heartache and anger and despair and it’s starting to seep through the cracks in the kept-up appearances, seeping through the T-shirt sleeve and you need to get out of there.

The rain isn’t miraculously any less wet when you don’t have a coat with a hood, or an umbrella, or three quid for the bus, just because Mummy and Daddy are still married, or you went to a grammar school. That rain still soaks you to the skin, and your three-year-old, too.

Compare this to St Paul’s Girls School, a mere £24,000 a year in fees and boasting famous alumni such as Natasha and Joely Richardson, Victoria Coren Mitchell, Baroness Bonham Carter and Susanna Reid, holding an “Austerity Week” last week to show their pupils that – shock, horror – some people can’t eat their regular menu of confit duck leg, courgette mornay, Thai steamed plaice parcels and Malaysian snapper curries every day. Some people have just a little potato for dinner.

I suggested that perhaps St Paul’s would be better off inviting me to teach a Home Economics lesson, with a food bank parcel or an almost-empty cupboard of tinned beans, cheap pasta and a Healthy Start voucher, followed by a volunteering trip to the local food bank or homeless shelter, if they really wanted to understand the impact of austerity. Perhaps a visit to the widowed husband of Linda Wootton, who died eight days after being declared fit for work from a hospital bed, or the family of David Clapton, who died because he was unable to plug his fridge in to store his life-saving insulin.

Austerity is killing us in our thousands, and it is not a hunger game for the privileged to opt into for a day so they can pretend to have an insight. It’s easy to eat basic meals when you’re going home to your mansion at night. Jarvis Cocker said it better: “You’ll never get it right, because when you’re lying in bed at night, watching roaches climb the wall, you can call your Dad and he can stop it all.”

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 September 2020 A model presents a creation during the Bora Aksu catwalk show at London Fashion Week 2020 Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2020 World kickboxing champion Carl Thomas during his attempt to run a marathon while pulling a plane at Elvington Airfield near York. 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PA UK news in pictures 16 August Wasp players take a knee as Northampton Saints stand prior to kick-off in their Premiership match at Franklin's Gardens PA UK news in pictures 15 August Piper Colour Sergeant Lil Bahadur Gurung attends the VJ Day National Remembrance event, held at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 14 August People including students hold placards on Whitehall outside Downing Street as they protest against the downgrading of A-level results. The government faced criticism after education officials downgraded more than a third of pupils' final grades in a system devised after the coronavirus pandemic led to cancelled exams yes AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 13 August Benita Stipp (centre) and Mimi Ferguson (left) react as students at Norwich School receive their A-Level results PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2020 A train derailment near Stonehaven has left three people dead. Driver Brett McCullough, conductor Donald Dinnie, and a passenger were killed when the 6.38am Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street service crashed amid heavy rain and flooding BBC UK news in pictures 11 August 2020 A woman hydrates in the sun after open water swimming at the West Reservoir Centre in north London Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 10 August 2020 Prime Minister Boris Johnson takes part in an archery session as he visits Premier Education Summer Camp at Sacred Heart of Mary Girls' in Upminster Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2020 People cycle through Cambridge as the heatwave continues in Britain EPA UK news in pictures 8 August 2020 Healthcare workers take part in a protest in London over pay conditions in the NHS Getty UK news in pictures 7 August 2020 Emergency services make their way along the seafront on Bournemouth beach in Dorset on one of the hottest days of the year PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2020 Alison Murphy poses for a picture by husband Peter as she walks through a field of sunflowers in Altrincham, Cheshire PA UK news in pictures 5 August 2020 Pakistan's Abid Ali being bowled by England's Jofra Archer during day one of the First Test match at the Emirates Old Trafford, Manchester PA UK news in pictures 4 August 2020 The 'Timbuktu tumblers' from Kenya perform their balancing act on the Southsea waterfront as Zippos Circus reopens in Portsmouth Rex UK news in pictures 3 August 2020 Pelicans interact with a visitor in St James's Park in London PA UK news in pictures 2 August 2020 Lewis Hamilton drives with a puncture towards the finish line to win the Formula One British Grand Prix at Silverstone POOL/AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 1 August 2020 Arsenal's Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang celebrates with the trophy and teammates after winning the FA Cup, as play resumes behind closed doors following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease Pool via Reuters UK news in pictures 31 July 2020 People enjoy the sunny weather at a Bournemouth Beach Reuters

My offer stands, both to Alfie Deyes to teach him how to cook £1 meals and take him to a food bank in Brighton, to use his platform to make a genuine difference for people in poverty (people who, until last week, I’m not sure he knew existed), and to St Paul’s, to teach a Home Economics lesson on the real premium of poverty, with not a baked potato in sight.

In the meantime, the best thing that we all can do to “help” people living in poverty in the UK – some four million of them – is not put ourselves through ego-boosting challenges, not appropriate our miserable diets of limited choices and even more limited budgets; instead, join campaigns for living wages. Write to MPs and ask them to prioritise their constituents who get in touch with them about delayed or sanctioned benefits, or long waits for Universal Credit.

Examine your voting history and ask yourself: if I lost my job tomorrow, or became seriously unwell and ended up on benefits, would I want this person representing me and my interests? Do I want them making decisions on behalf of my friends?

It’s time we took collective responsibility for the most vulnerable people in our society – because not one of us is immune from being among them. As Neil Kinnock famously said, “I warn you that you will have pain, when healing and relief depend on payment. I warn you that you will be quiet, when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient. I warn you that you will be home-bound, when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up. I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to be ill. I warn you not to grow old.”

We are none of us immune from the scourge of poverty. Illness, accident, unemployment, bad luck can befall any one of us, and I warn you to put down your video cameras and self-congratulatory austerity weeks, and instead take the time to repair the welfare safety net that millions of your fellow citizens are slipping right through.