Columnist Liz Jones yesterday revealed how readers had sent her offers of cash after she had previously confessed to being heavily in debt and depressed.
Jones, who is reputed to be one of the UK’s highest paid newspaper columnists, told readers of the Mail on Sunday how she had received 4,100 emails and dozens of letters offering help and support.
Amongst the post was a letter from an 87 year-old woman, named Joyce, which contained a scratch card, and Euro Lottery ticket sent by a reader, called Kenneth, who earned £46 working part-time at a Spa shop in Rochdale.
‘Being in debt is worse than anything I’ve experienced. When you’re ill, or get divorced, or lose a parent, others are sympathetic,’Jones wrote.
‘When you have no money, people assume it’s because you’re lazy, or profligate. I’d got to the point where I couldn’t cope.”
Jones went on to detail some of the other offers of support, which included “a lovely flat in Shrewsbury” from one reader who said Jones could use it for free.
“I could do you a food parcel,” another reader, called David, wrote. “It would be more Sainsbury’s than Harrods, but you could pick it up as you pass on the M4.”
Jones, who told readers of You magazine last week how she felt close to suicide as a result of her money worries, confessed yesterday to being ‘disillusioned with humanity’and as a result she ‘started to rescue more animals, a compulsion that has also contributed to my financial demise”.
One reader that contacted her wrote: “Let me pay for the animals for a year. I want nothing in return”. A second said: “Liz, I’ll send you £1,000 for the animals, as long as you don’t print my name.”
A 56-year-old disabled woman whose husband gave up work to care for her wrote to Jones “Would you accept £50 from us?” while a 77-year-old widow on a state pension wrote offering Jones the £50 she won on the premium bonds.
Jones told her readers that if she couldn’t return the money, she’d donate it to Equine Market Watch, of which she is a patron, and Wiccaweys, an organisation that rescues collies.
“We’re always being told we live in a broken society, that we’re greedy.” Jones wrote at the end of her column. “My faith in human nature has been restored. Thank you, Joyce. Thank you, everyone.”
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