An entrepreneur who used to be bullied at school for wearing hand-me-downs but went on to make millions has appeared on Channel 5's Rich House Poor House.

In the show, which aired this evening, Jessen James and his brood trade lives with the Fox family from Bradford, swapping their spacious and modern Ditton pad for a council house.

Used to having around £2,400 a week to spend on clothes and food, Jessen, his fiancee Lorna and her two young daughters have to make £54 last the week.

Jessen, 39, who now travels the world teaching people to succeed in business was accustomed to dining out up to four times a week before the coronavirus pandemic and admits to never looking at price tags when hitting the shops.

But his life wasn't always so luxurious and carefree.

He grew up in East Ham, in London, his mum a dinner lady and his dad working in a tax office. They never went hungry, but things were tight.

"Mum used to wake up at around 4 or 5am to get things ready and she used to walk 20 minutes to work rather than pay the bus fare.

"In school I used to have my brother's hand-me-downs and second hand trainers, I used to get bullied for that. I was angry as a kid that my parents couldn't afford to give me other stuff," he said.

Hanging out with drug dealers for a period of time at school, he almost fell in to a life of crime, attracted to the crowd's outlandish spending and easy access to cash, before his dad intervened.

"A lot of people I went to school with are either in jail or no longer with us," Jessen, who has two sons from a previous marriage, said.

Instead, as a teenager he found legal ways to make money, badgering a mobile phone shop owner to give him phone accessories which he sold to classmates.

After sixth form he became a care assistant at a private psychiatric hospital and then qualified as a nurse, while paying off debts after a luxury bathroom business he founded went bust.

He enjoyed his job, becoming the youngest ward manager in the country at one point, but in 2009 he was made redundant.

After five months of feeling like a failure, he founded a company which provided supportive living facilities for adults with learning difficulties, with six homes scattered across east London.

As the company grew, Jessen started buying beauty salons and other properties, making millions.

In 2012, he bought his dream car, a brand new Audi Q7, signing the deal while sipping champagne.

However, during two years of a costly and stressful divorce Jessen sold the properties and the care business and was left to start over from scratch.

'I made it very clear I would only do the show if it was a family I could help...'

He now runs business training programmes for entrepreneurs and is an award winning international speaker.

Reminded of his own childhood spent in second-hand clothes, during the show, Jessen buys the Fox children £300's worth of new attire.

He also offered mum, Jamie, a place on his three-day business workshop and mentoring scheme with the view to financially back her cleaning start-up company.

Finally, he helped solve Jamie and her husband Lee's severe money problems, by putting payment plans in place.

The dad of two said: "Jamie cried when I told her. I was stunned to see how they were living hand to mouth.

"I made it very clear I would only do the show if it was a family I could help and not a family that was after a free ride or a hand out.

"Similar to what I have been doing for a while, I wanted to help them overcome personal challenges."

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