For 40 years or more we have been told that buying your own home was the mark of a responsible, reliable citizen, a saver rather than a spender.

Now that more than half of us have done just that, the truth has less of the look of roses round the door. Home owners have become prodigious borrowers: on their slender foundations of bricks and mortar rests a pyramid of credit growing so fast that it spells trouble, not least to the financial managers of the country.

Mary Goldring assesses the consequences of the British dream of a property-owning democracy and looks at the options it leaves us.

(Re-broadcast tomorrow 11.0 am LW)