"My probation officer said she's glad I'm doing this instead of robbing and getting put away again," says Tony. He's a windscreen washer manning the lights just south of the Thames at Vauxhall Cross in London.
This programme observes the humour and aggression, the privations and rewards, of a year in the life of the "squeegies", who lie in wait of motorists at the traffic lights and clean their windscreens in the hope of a tip. Leah, who is 28, is "the Queen Bee of the crosses", but even she is not hardened to the rigours of the life. "If you're being nice and they're still rude it hurts you and makes it more difficult to have the will power to go on and ask other people," she says.
The film is also a frank picture of the street society that the squeegies live in, of which washing screens is just a part.
Director Paul Bernays
Series editor Paul Watson
Followed by Sarajevo - a Street under Siege