almost 300 complaints were made to ofcom after the first episode was shown. dee roberts complained that she had been tricked into being on the programme. she said that the people on the programme thought the show was about a working class community, but that instead they had been portrayed as "complete scum". almost 10,000 people signed a petition asking channel 4 to show no more episodes of the show. steve haywood, a friend of an alcoholic in the programme known as fungi, said that channel 4 gave fungi beer so that he would be on the show.