Dorries: Channel 4 faked reality show with actors

The culture secretary also admitted sharing her Netflix password with four households

- ADAM FORREST

Cabinet minister Nadine Dorries has claimed that Channel 4 faked a reality TV show she appeared on by hiring actors to play poverty-stricken people on a housing estate. The culture secretary appeared on the reality documentary programme Tower Block of Commons in which she briefly lived on an estate in London's south Acton neighbourhood.

"I discovered later, they were actually actors,” Ms Dorries told a committee of MPs yesterday, referring to the residents she lived alongside. "The parents of the boys in that programme actually came here to have lunch with me, and contacted me to tell me, actually, they were in acting school, and that they weren't really living in a flat, and they weren't real," the minister said. She added: "And even, if you remember, there's a pharmacist or somebody that I went to see who prepared food - she was also a paid actress as well."