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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Lives in a Landscape

Factual: Life Stories

Documentary series telling original stories about real lives in Britain today

Lives in a Landscape: Series 13

Lives in a Landscape: Series 13: Episode 3: It's a Bargain

It's a Bargain

Episode 3

Episode 3: It's a Bargain

Series 13

BBC Radio 4 - Lives in a Landscape, Series 13, It's a Bargain

An insight into the lives of two Yorkshire van drivers who transport items traded on eBay.

An insight into the goods people are buying and selling on eBay, and an uncle and nephew who spotted a gap in the market and now transport many different goods across the UK.

We're all at it - from the very wealthiest amongst us to the very poorest: buying and selling on eBay. And no one knows better than Dave and Gary what's involved in shifting the items traded up and down the country.

The idea was simple: the depression in the building trade left Gary casting round for an alternative occupation. He's quite entrepreneurial and when someone suggested buying a van and cashing in on the eBay boom he decided to do just that, roping his uncle Dave in on what is now a family business.

They operate from a garage on a council estate in Cottingley, on the outskirts of Bradford, but for most of the week they're on the road - picking up and dropping everything from household goods to wool and even ornamental fountains! Their job takes them up and down the country and in just one journey they pick up a bed from the Speaker's wife, Sally Bercow - who has sold it on eBay to someone in the North - and drop off a rusting metal bench from Salford to a new owner in the South who hopes it will net him many thousands of pounds.

This might not be the future they once envisaged: Dave spent thirty years as a metal worker but when he topped 26 stones in weight his knees gave in and he lost his job. He has had gastric surgery and lost a third of his body weight but is sticking with the van driving for the time being. His nephew, Gary, needs him: he has a baby on the way and thinks he's identified an opportunity to make money from our national obsession with bargain hunting.

Producer: Sue Mitchell.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Series 13

Episode 3: It's a Bargain

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