Toast - Farepak's Christmas Hampers

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 695 Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What led to the collapse of the Christmas savings club Farepak?

The BBC Business journalist, Sean Farrington, investigates with the entrepreneur, Sam White, alongside him.

It's our Christmas special and we're turning the clock back to the mid 1960s…. and looking at a business which started from humble beginnings in a Peckham butcher's shop, and went on to change Christmas for tens of thousands of families all over the UK.

So, why did Farepak end up toast? Sean interviews:

-David Goodhart - founder of Prospect Magazine, journalist, commentator and author. David tells us more about the man known as Farepak's founder, Bob Johnson and how his passion for philanthropy influenced the business.

-Suzy Hall - Former Farepak customer and agent who went on to become a national campaign coordinator for Unfairpak- a campaign set up in the wake of the Farepak collapse.

-Dermot Power - Former senior partner with the accountants BDO Stoy Hayward, Dermot was appointed as joint administrator to the Farepak business and can talk us through what happened and how he worked to help get customers' money back.

Produced by Linda Walker. A BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Contact: toast@bbc.co.uk

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:07.0	Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously and then laughs at it.
0:13.4	This Christmas, forget about socks. We've got the best present of all.
0:17.2	Dead people!
0:18.2	All that sounds like zombies. Sorry, it's not zombies. Let me start again.
0:21.8	In our new family-friendly podcast series,
0:24.0	Dead Funny History,
0:25.0	historical figures come back to life
0:26.8	but just long enough to argue with me,
0:28.7	tell their life stories,
0:29.7	and sometimes get on my nerves.
0:31.8	You're dead to me.
0:32.8	Dead Funny History.
0:34.1	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:42.9	Okay. History. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the BBC Radio 4 series Toast, where we look at amazing brands that just like an
0:50.0	over-cooked prime turkey offer a lot at first but yet still end up toast.
0:56.4	As you may be able to tell, it's our Christmas special, our toast of Christmas past.
1:01.5	We're turning the clock back this time to the mid-60s. Mr. Mago's Christmas Carol was on the
1:06.6	telly. The Beatles were number one, shock, and a business which started from humble beginnings
1:11.8	went on to change Christmas for tens of thousands of families all over the UK.
1:18.5	I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist Sam White, of course, our resident entrepreneur,
1:24.5	business guru, and just like when we're sneaking Sam's presence under her tree,
	...

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