Food Bank Britain

Summary

Podcast Summary: More or Less - "Food Bank Britain"

BBC Radio 4 | Hosted by Tim Harford | Aired May 9, 2014

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Overview:

This episode focuses on the contested and headline-grabbing issue of food bank usage in the UK—specifically the claim that "a million Brits now use food banks." Host Tim Harford and reporter Laura Gray unpack the numbers behind these claims, examine what they do and don't reveal about food poverty, and how such statistics are weaponized in political debate. The episode also includes discussions on the growth of food banks, underlying social trends, and the limits of available data.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Headline Statistic: "A Million Brits Use Food Banks"

• Source of Numbers:
  • The figure comes from the Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest food bank network (over 400 food banks).
  • Their latest report cited over 900,000 people receiving a 3-day emergency food package in 2013-14 (01:49).
• Counting Method Flaws:
  • The 900,000 statistic does not track unique individuals—repeat visits mean people may be counted multiple times.
    • Tim Harford: “So if I was to go to my local food bank three times in the same year, I would be counted as three separate people, not one person?”
      Laura Gray: “Yes.” (02:23-02:29)
  • Trussell Trust’s survey suggests about two-thirds of users visited only once in six months.
    • Estimated unique individuals or families: 700,000–800,000, but this is imprecise (02:43).
  • The statistics exclude independent food banks outside the Trussell Trust network.

Limitations of Food Bank Data

• Why Use Trussell Trust Data?
  • There’s no national data on food banks or clear definition of what counts as a “food bank.”
  • Hannah Lambie-Mumford, Sheffield University:
    “Trussell Trust data is the only data that's systematically collected on a national scale... It's all we've got to go on.” (03:14-04:01)
• Politicization of Figures:
  • The Trussell Trust’s figures are commonly cited in political disputes about rising poverty.
  • Tim Harford: “Politicians certainly think the Trussell Trust numbers are useful for beating each other over the head.” (04:01)
  • Example: PM David Cameron’s claim that food bank use rose 10-fold under Labour, ignoring even steeper rises under the Coalition (04:14-04:57).
    • Laura Gray: “It did indeed give out more than 10 times as many parcels by the end of Labour's term... But then it’s continued to grow—a further 22-fold increase under the coalition.” (04:27-04:57)
  • Tim Harford analogy: Increase in food banks is like the spread of iPhones; growth in distribution doesn’t necessarily show growth in underlying need (04:57).
    • “Just because the Trussell Trust is handing out 300 times as many parcels…does that mean the problem is 300 times worse than a decade ago?” (05:34)

Lack of Official Statistics

• No monitoring of household food security by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
• No “proper numbers” on food poverty in the UK.
  • Laura Gray: “There is no effective monitoring of household food security in the UK." (05:58)

Broader Economic Context & Food Insecurity

• Underlying Socioeconomic Factors:
  • Median incomes dropped by 6% from 2007–08 to 2013–14 due to the financial crisis (06:11).
  • Food prices have risen by nearly 20% more than overall prices since 2005 (06:29).
    • Tim Harford: "Now, poorer people spend a larger percentage of their incomes on food, so that's a big deal." (06:36)
• Other Evidence:
  • Some reputable surveys point to increasing food insecurity, but these are all ultimately subjective.
  • Tim Harford: “There are no really solid numbers.” (06:51)

Why Do People Use Food Banks?

• Common Reasons Cited:
  • Most reliable data: Trussell Trust collects info via a voucher system.
  • Vouchers are issued by police, Citizens Advice, health workers, and (since recently) job centres.
  • Leading cause: Delay or sanction (suspension) of welfare claims.
    • Peter Radford (Trussell Trust):
      “We've measured an increase in the proportion of people who are coming to us with either a delay to their welfare claim or a sudden stop to their welfare claim…” (07:45-07:51)
• Government Disagreement:
  • Department for Work and Pensions disputes the Trussell Trust’s conclusions. (08:00)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Misleading Figures:

  • Tim Harford: “The more food parcels they get out the door, the worse food poverty must be. For instance, they nearly tripled their output last year and described that as shocking. But maybe the demand was there all along. We don’t know.” (05:34-05:49)

• On Data Limitations:

  • Hannah Lambie-Mumford: “We can't capture data from independent projects on a national scale or any other kind of food aid initiatives either, given the nature of these projects, which are independent, community based and working in a variety of ways.” (03:20-03:57)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Headlines: 00:00–01:10
• Tracing the “million users” statistic: 01:11–02:40
• Discussion of repeat visits & real numbers: 02:41–03:10
• Limits of Trussell Trust data & expert insight: 03:11–04:00
• Political uses and abuses: 04:01–04:57
• Analogy (iPhones/food bank growth): 04:57–05:34
• Why food bank usage ≠ food poverty rate: 05:35–06:10
• Household food security: lack of ONS stats: 05:58-06:11
• Median income & food price context: 06:12–06:41
• Nature of available survey evidence: 06:41–07:07
• Why people use food banks (benefits delays/sanctions): 07:08–07:55

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Tone and Style

The tone is analytical, skeptical, and slightly irreverent—hallmarks of "More or Less." Tim Harford and contributors use gentle humor alongside serious statistics, questioning assumptions behind headline claims while acknowledging gaps in the data.

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Conclusion

This episode urges caution in interpreting food bank statistics as direct evidence of food poverty or government failure, due to flawed methodologies and lack of comprehensive data. The discussion highlights how figures in the food poverty debate are often stretched or misapplied in politics and the media, revealing more about the growth and visibility of charities like the Trussell Trust than about exact levels or causes of need. The episode closes by acknowledging that, despite all the data caveats, trends in income, food prices, and subjective surveys do suggest growing hardship for some UK households, even if headline figures remain a blunt instrument.

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For more resources and information, visit:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4wt (official site for More or Less)

Transcript

[Tim Harford]

Thank you for downloading More or less from the BBC. This is the version first broadcast on Radio 4. Hello and welcome to More or Less. It's not the size of our data set that matters, it's what we do with it that counts. This week, a Brazilian mathematical superstar as famous as the country's legendary footballers. The death of the man that economist Milton Friedman called the greatest social scientist who's lived and worked is the last half century. And some very unusual sporting activity.

[Peter Radford]

Women did it. Men did it. Young men did it. Old men did it. Fat men did it. Sometimes for a wager, someone would do it and say, I can run 2 miles in XYZ time while eating a chicken.

[Tim Harford]

We'll be finding out about how the tools of statistical analysis are unearthing the forgotten history of running and maybe, just maybe, overturning a famous record. But first, a topic that keeps hitting the headlines. One million Brits now using food banks.

[Laura Gray]

Numbers relying on food banks triple in a year.

[Tim Harford]

And lots of you have been sending us emails about those headlines.

[Narrator/Producer]

I'd be interested to hear some statistics on food banks. One side of the argument is that this shows increasing poverty levels in the country. The other is that more food banks exist, more people know about them, so more people use them. What's the real story?

[Laura Gray]

Increased use of food banks is often reported as an indicator of increased food poverty. But can food bank statistics tell us anything about food poverty?

[Tim Harford]

So where do these numbers come from and what do they mean? Our reporter Laura Gray's been taking a look. Let's start, Laura, with the headline that we just heard. Nearly a million people are now going to food banks. Is that true?

[Laura Gray]

The figure comes from the Trussell Trust. It's the largest food bank network in the UK and runs over 400 food banks. A few weeks ago, they released their annual report which said that over 900,000 people received a package of three days emergency food from Trussell Trust food banks in 2013-2014.

[Tim Harford]

So almost a million.

[Laura Gray]

That's certainly what the Trussell Trust website suggests. But actually the statistic doesn't track repeat visits. Some people will have collected Truss or Trust food packages more than once, and they'll have been counted more than once, too.

[Tim Harford]

So if I was to go to my local food bank three times in the same year, I would be counted as three separate people, not one person?

[Laura Gray]

Yes.

[Tim Harford]

So this 900,000. Is this 450,000 people going twice or was it 9,000 people going 100 times? I mean, you would actually need to go 100 times if you were trying to eat for an entire year on food bank food.

[Laura Gray]

It's certainly not a few thousand people. Going back a hundred times. The Trussell Trust has done a small survey and it reckons that about two thirds of foodbank users only visited once over a six month period. Not many came back again and again and again. So we're Talking about maybe 700 or 800,000 individuals or families being helped. We can't be more precise than that. And remember, there are plenty of food banks that aren't part of the Trussell Trust network.

[Tim Harford]

Well, in that case, why are we looking at Trussell Trust numbers then?

[Laura Gray]

Because they're all we have. We have no idea how many food banks there are and even the definition of food bank is still up for grabs. Here's Hannah Lamby Mumford from Sheffield University, who's researched food banks. Trussell Trust data is the only data that's systematically collected on a national scale that tells us anything about food bank use in the uk. There's no other data set of data like it. We can't capture data from independent projects on a national scale or any other kind of food aid initiatives either, given the nature of these projects, which are independent, community based and working in a variety of ways. So this data set is actually incredibly valuable to us in terms of telling us about patterns in food bank use. It's all we've got to go on.

[Tim Harford]

Well, politicians certainly think the Trussell Trust numbers are useful for beating each other over the head. The Coalition's been criticised for presiding over a boom in food. And here's David Cameron last year fighting back.

[Narrator/Producer]

Food bank use went up 10 times under labour, so we don't have to

[Peter Radford]

take any lectures from them.

[Tim Harford]

Well, Laura, since we don't have any reliable numbers, how can either side make that kind of claim?

[Laura Gray]

Well, what the Prime Minister said would have been true if he'd been explicit that he was only referring to Trussell Trust food banks. The trust was tiny nine years ago. It did indeed give out more than 10 times as many parcels by the end of Labour's term in office as it did in 2005, 2006. But then it's continued to grow a further 22 fold increase under the coalition. So the Prime Minister might want to be careful about where he points this particular statistic.

[Tim Harford]

Touche, Laura. But let's just take a step back for a second. I know the recession's hit some people very hard, but it seems crazy to use one fast growing organization as some kind of measure of how big the problem Is. I mean, there were no iPhones sold in 2005 and Apple are selling 100 million a year now. But that doesn't mean there was no demand for iPhones in 2005. It just means there was no supply of iPhones in 2005. Now we can see the Trussell Trust is handing out 300 times as many parcels. But does that mean the problem is 300 times worse than it was a decade ago?

[Laura Gray]

The Trussell Trust press releases certainly invite you to reach the conclusion that the more food parcels they get out the door, the worse food poverty must be. For instance, they nearly tripled their output last year and described that as shocking. But maybe the demand was there all along. We don't know.

[Tim Harford]

But why are we relying on this incredibly indirect measure of how many people are struggling to get enough to eat? Don't the Office for National Statistics have proper numbers for us?

[Laura Gray]

Well, no, they don't. The House of Commons library published a report on food banks and food security a few weeks ago, but it concluded that there is no effective monitoring of household food security in the uk.

[Tim Harford]

But we can look at regular economic data and they do suggest a problem. There are two things going on. Incomes in general have been hit by the financial crisis and the slow recovery. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, median incomes were about 6% lower last year than in 2007, 2008, before the crisis hit.

[Laura Gray]

At the same time, food prices have by almost 20% more than prices as a whole since 2005.

[Tim Harford]

Now, poorer people spend a larger percentage of their incomes on food, so that's a big deal.

[Laura Gray]

There are other surveys that suggest that food insecurity is an increasing problem. They're reputable enough, but ultimately they are all subjective measures.

[Tim Harford]

There are no really solid numbers. And that makes it easy for politicians and campaigners to do this weird Trussell shuffle, citing the growth of the Trussell Trust as though that measured something other than. Well, something other than the growth of the Trussell Trust. Laura, do we know anything about why people use food banks?

[Laura Gray]

Well, there is one organisation that keeps track.

[Tim Harford]

Now, wait, don't tell me. The Trussell Trust.

[Laura Gray]

The Trussell Trust? Yes. People who collect food from the Trussell Trust food banks need a voucher to do that, and the voucher could be issued by various people, including the police, the Citizens Advice Bureau, health visitors, doctors and others. Job centres also refer people to food banks, which didn't happen under the previous government, although they're only responsible for 2 or 3% of all referrals. Adrian Curtis from the Trussell Trust believes there is one leading explanation for why those vouchers are being handed out.

[Peter Radford]

We've measured an increase in the proportion

[Tim Harford]

of people who are coming to us

[Peter Radford]

with either a delay to their welfare

[Tim Harford]

claim or a sudden stop to their welfare claim, which is sometimes called a sanction. So that's quite a specific claim. People are coming for food because they're having their benefits deliberately suspended or because of some other delay to receiving benefits. And Hannah Lambie Mumford of Sheffield University reached the same conclusion. I should say the Department for Work and Pensions does not agree. Thank you, Laura. Last weekend, there was sad news for economics nerds like me. Gary Becker died at the age of 83. Becker won the Nobel Memorial Prize for economics in 1992, and he changed the face of economics. It's now commonplace for econom to study anything from smoking to parenting to the economic impact of the contraceptive pill. And that's Gary Becker's influence at work. Becker was a polarising figure. I interviewed Gary Becker in 2005 for the financial Times, and he told me, my whole philosophy has been to be conventional in things such as dress and so on, but when it comes to ideas, I'll be willing to stick my neck out. I can take criticism if I think I'm right. I spoke to Justin Wolfers, who's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. What was the key to Gary Becker's approach to economics?

[Justin Wolfers]

Becker saw economics everywhere. Many people always thought about economics as a distinct field of inquiry. Money and banking and demand and supply and stuff. Becker saw it as an approach, and the economic approach was to look at people and think about them as making purposeful decisions. And they can do that in a market. That's standard economics. But then there's Beckett's economics, which is, we do the same thing when we're deciding whether to marry or who to marry, when we're deciding whether or not to take addictive drugs, when we're deciding whether or not to commit a crime. And so this expands economics into areas and questions that the field had previously shied away from. It's hard to understand how great of a movement this was when Becker wrote his dissertation on discrimination, which of course, today we think of as economics. Back then, people ignored it and didn't quite think of it as being a central economic question.

[Tim Harford]

This is the 1950s, back in the

[Justin Wolfers]

1950s, the view that economics can help us understand just about every aspect of our life. It's a Very, very modern view. And it's all about Becker.

[Tim Harford]

He was characterised by many people as a bit of a bogeyman, a right winger, somebody who had very socially conservative views. Is that description of Becker reasonable?

[Justin Wolfers]

He certainly was not a social conservative, but he was certainly a laissez faire economist.

[Tim Harford]

He was in favour of legalization of drugs, for example, which is not particularly socially conservative.

[Justin Wolfers]

He meant very few regulations he liked. And so if you start with very simple tools saying that people making decisions, trying to do the best they can in the circumstances they can, it's not surprising that quite often your conclusions will turn out to be leave them alone to do that. And so he was very much a laissez faire economist.

[Tim Harford]

Justin, you're describing an economist who was using supply and demand cost benefit analysis to talk about who we get married to. Now, a lot of people are going to think that is self evidently insane.

[Justin Wolfers]

And if you think hard enough about it, it's self evidently obvious. Who we marry is one of the most romantic decisions we make. It's also one of the most important and it's one that we calculate. We think hard about it. We go and ask our friends, is this a good idea? We stay up all night talking about it and what we're doing. We'll use words like love and commitment, but what we're really doing is we're thinking about costs and benefits. There's another step you can go here, which is, in fact, there's nothing wrong with saying that marriage is largely about love. That's a benefit. We can model that. We can put that inside our models and use that to help understand which couples are going to get married and how stable their relationships are going to be. There are things that are important to people, that's terrific, let's recognise them, but understand that economics can have something to say about them.

[Tim Harford]

Justin Wolfers. When I interviewed Gary Becker for the Financial Times, he parked in a 30 minute bay for what was supposed to be a leisurely lunch. We should be fine here. I don't think they check that carefully, he told me. So I asked him, was that a rational crime? He didn't hesitate for a second. Yes, it was. It was a practical lesson in economics, Gary Becker style. You're listening to more or Less the World Cup's coming and all eyes are turning to Brazil, which means over the next few months you'll be hearing a lot about football, beaches and samba. You probably won't hear a lot about maths. Now, of course, at more or less, we're not just going to take that lying down, sipping a capirinha, or while listening to the greatest hits of Gilbert au Gilles. So we turn to the only person we know who's an expert on both Brazil and mathematics, Alex Bellos. And we challenged him to find a fantastical tale which combines the two, preferably something to do with the national day of mathematics that Brazil celebrated last Tuesday. Easy.

[Narrator/Producer]

Rio de Janeiro, 1925 and Brazil is on the up. Workers are building the city's landmark Christ the Redeemer statue. Samba and new music is becoming a national craze, and the country's main newspaper, Anoits, introduces a new star writer with a story on the front page. Malbert Ahan, or to give him his full name, Ali Yazid Izadim Ibn Salim. Hank Malbatahan was a Middle Eastern author who wrote in Arabic and was translated into Portuguese for the Brazilian market. His short pieces were morality tales written in the style of the Arabian Nights. They were a huge success, and in 1932 Malbatahan published what would become one of the most successful books ever written in Brazil. The man who Counted. The Book is set in the 13th century.

[Narrator/Reader]

In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the most Merciful. I was on the Baghdad road, returning at my camel's slow pace from an excursion to the famous city of Samara on the banks of the Tigris, when I saw a modest dressed traveler sitting on a rock who looked as if he was recuperating from a voyage.

[Narrator/Producer]

The traveler is Beremiz Samir, a Persian mathematician who joins the narrator on a journey that involves dozens of episodes in which he solves problems using his skill with numbers. At one point he visits the house of the king's minister, the vizier Ibrahim Maluf.

[Narrator/Reader]

We passed through the heavy iron gate and down a narrow corridor into the splendid inner garden of the palace. This garden, laid out with exquisite taste, was shaded by two rows of orange trees. Passing through a variety of richly furnished rooms hung with tapestry fringed in silver thread, we at last reached the rooms of the king's minister, who was reclining on large cushions and conversing with two friends.

[Narrator/Producer]

Beremes impresses the vizier with an unusual way of counting a herd of camels. He counts the number of hooves and ears and then divides by six. The camels are a gift for the father of the vizier's 16 year old wife to be, but Beremez notices that one is missing an ear.

[Narrator/Reader]

I wanted to make a small suggestion, replied Bermez. If you Were to remove from the herd with the defective animal, the total would be 256, which is the square of 16. 16 times 16, the gift offered to the father of the delightful aster would then have a mathematical perfection. The number of camels equal to the square of the age of the beloved. The number 256 is an exact power of two, a number held to be symbolic by the ancients, while 257 is a prime number. These relations between squared numbers are good auguries for lovers.

[Narrator/Producer]

I love the man who Counted. The book transports you into a magical world of Bedouins, viziers, sheikhs, princes and kings. Rich in references to Islamic traditions and locations in the Middle East. The maths is gentle, accessible, and drives the stories. It's mostly arithmetic, but there are geometrical puzzles too, and also curiosities like magic squares. The man who Counted rightly became a bestseller and turned Malbert Ahan into a household name. A mathematician as famous as Brazil's football stars. His fans ranged from school children to the president of Brazil and include Brazil's most famous author, Paulo Coelho.

[Paulo Coelho]

When I was a child, I was fascinated by the books of a mysterious Arab author called Mobataham. And I asked my family to buy all his books. He's a great storyteller. Then one day I said, oh my God, this is such a fantastic person. I wish one day I'm going to meet him. And I was talking to my parents like this, and they said, but we know him. I said, what? How do you know Balba Teha? He's an Arab. He lives in the Middle East. And my parents said, no, no, he's not an Arab. He lives three or four blocks from here.

[Narrator/Producer]

The book was a literary hoax. MAU Ba Tahan never existed. He was the pen name of Giulio Serza Gimelo e Sousa, a maths teacher from Rio de Janeiro who never set foot in the Middle East. He'd had no luck getting his short stories published under his own name, but his love of maths had led him to a fascination with Islamic science. So he decided to write stories about ancient Arabia using the non deplom Malbatahan. And only the proprietor of the newspaper that printed the stories was in on the joke. For several years, no one knew that the famous Arab author was actually a local math teacher whose other passion was collecting porcelain frogs. When eventually Malbertahan was outed as humble Julius Cesar Gimello e Sousa, he was famous enough for it not to matter.

[Paulo Coelho]

I went to his house and I saw him and I shook hands. I did not dare to ask him to sign my books because I was totally shy. But Mo Batahan, not only for me but for my generation, is an author that taught us about this beautiful Arab culture. And this is so important today because tolerance is always present in these stories.

[Narrator/Producer]

As Malpatahan Meluis Souza wrote more than a hundred books, about half of them recreational maths and most of them set in the Islamic Middle east, although he also wrote stories about rabbis, Greeks, Chinese and Babylonians. Yet despite his love of foreign cultures, he only left Brazil to go to Portugal and Argentina. He died in 1974, by which time he had sold more than a million books in Brazil. The man who Counted remains his most famous and it's still in print. And he's going to carry on being part of Brazilian culture since the government decreed that as of last year, his birthday, May 6, is the national day of mathematics. Malbuhtahan was called the Brazilian of Arabia and the Pele of numbers. So did this all Brazilian hero like football? Not really. He thought it was a bit boring. Maths, Islam and collecting Thai frogs, now that was a lot more fun.

[Tim Harford]

Alex Bellos, author of the rather wonderful new book Alex through the Looking Glass as well as some old boring book about Brazilian football. You're listening to more or less. Last week we spoke with Sir Roger Bannister about his famous achievement 60 years ago, becoming the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. His name will be in the record books forever. But was he really the first? Let's take a walk through the streets of East London.

[Peter Radford]

The little south westerly wind. And it was 51 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 10 to 11 degrees centigrade. It was a chilly, chilly morning.

[Tim Harford]

Let's go back 244 years to Wednesday the 9th of May 1770. On that chilly London morning, a group gathered at the Charterhouse Wall on Goswell street in Shoreditch for a running race against the clock. Serious money was at stake.

[Peter Radford]

When we imagine the start, we can imagine James Parrott. We can imagine him there with his umpire and we can imagine whoever it was who was wagering against him doing it, being there with his umpire so these two people on opposite sides could adjudicate that everything was done correctly. The wager was that he would run one measured mile from Charterhouse Wall to the gates of Shoreditch Church in four and a half minutes.

[Tim Harford]

James Parrott was a costermonger, someone who sold fruit and vegetables or fish from a street Barrow. If he could run the mile in less than four and a half minutes, he stood to win 15 guineas more than three months wages.

[Peter Radford]

There would have been a starting signal and there would have been a carriage just up and round the corner into Rotten Row. They had a running start, so to speak, so they could have whipped the horse and gone off with the watches. The watches would have been observed and set by umpires and then probably sealed in a box.

[Tim Harford]

The starter signal's been given. Parrots started running the watches. The clocks are in a carriage. Everybody's racing ahead. Let's walk further along the course and find out what happened.

[Peter Radford]

All the buildings are.

[Tim Harford]

My guide today is Peter Radford, a retired professor of sports science and also bronze medallist in the 100 meters and 4 by 100 meter sprints at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Radford's a remarkable man. He was confined to a wheelchair as a child, but recovered and broke the world record for the 220 yards in 1960 at a provincial sports meeting in Wolverhampton. Since his time was also quicker than the 200 metres, and since, well, 220 yards is a little further than 200 metres, he was credited with a 200 meter record too. So Peter Radford knows a thing or two about unconventional records. He's also a man with a passion for runners from the past.

[Peter Radford]

Women did it, men did it. Young men did it, Old men did it, fat men did it. Sometimes for a wager, someone would do it and say, I can run 2 miles in XYZ time while eating a chicken.

[Tim Harford]

You'd think colorful performances like those would linger in the memory. Some of us would like to forget them. They haven't. Can you name a great athletic performance from before the 20th century?

[Peter Radford]

Everything in our athletic culture throughout the 20th century taught us to disbelieve. It taught us that all the times and all the performances of the past were so much hogwash and so much nonsense, and therefore they were ignored, forgotten and smiled about.

[Tim Harford]

Since times get faster and faster in recent years, it's natural to assume that the further back in time we look, the slower people were running. But we have some historical times and some of them are pretty fast. From our 21st century standpoint, where distances are measured by laser and times recorded automatically to a hundredth of a second, it's easy to dismiss the old times as errors or tall tales. But Peter Radford argues that our forebears were able to measure times and distances accurately, and the wagers meant they had a strong financial incentive to get it right. He's applied the tools of statistical analysis to hundreds of results that he's collected. Results that are suspect, stand out and can be discarded and those that remain can be seen as more reliable.

[Peter Radford]

You begin to see that they're not a random collection of oddball times and distances. There's an internal mathematical logic to it. The argument increases in strength all the time that there were some quite extraordinary athletes in the 18th century.

[Tim Harford]

So just how good were they? Let's go back to James Parrott's race through the streets of Shoreditch in May 1770. The spire of the church we can see now over the railway bridge.

[Peter Radford]

And at this stage the adrenaline is flying because he can see the end, because it is the gates of the church that are the agreed finishing point. And it's here where the watches will be stopped and it will be decided whether he's won his wager or not and indeed how fast he's completed his mile.

[Tim Harford]

His bet was that he was going to do this in four minutes and a half. Now he beat that easily.

[Peter Radford]

Yes, he did. And the umpires gathered around the watches, looked at them, blinked a little and then declared to all the interested parties, the parrot ran the distance, the 1 mile measured course in 4 minutes precisely.

[Tim Harford]

Peter Radford with the tantalising prospect that a four minute mile may have been run in 17:70. Last week we spoke with the man who ran the first gold plated, fully verified, unimpeachable sub 4 minute mile, sir Roger Bannister. And I did ask him what he thought of the idea that a costermonger might have got there before him.

[Narrator/Reader]

No, it's inconceivable without the modern measurement

[Tim Harford]

of tracks and stop watches that are reliable. There was a lot of guesswork in terms of the distance run and I don't think any of these claims are credible. Sir Roger Bannister. Several of you also got in touch after last week's programme to suggest the reason the mile world record hasn't been broken since 1999 is that it's rarely run these days. International competition focuses on the 1500 metres. Well, it might interest you to know that the 1500 metre record, also held by Hitcham El Guerrouj, has stood for even longer since 1998. Back to the drawing board for that theory. Well, that's all we have time for today. Please keep your questions and your comments coming. We'[e-mail] and as always, there's further information and a downloadable edition of the show [e-mail] more or less. We'll be back next week. Until then, goodbye. More or Less was presented by Tim

[Narrator/Producer]

Harford, the Financial Times undercover economist.

[Tim Harford]

The producer was me, James Fletcher, with

[Narrator/Producer]

Charlotte MacDonald and Laura Gray and the

[Tim Harford]

programs made in association with the Open University. You can download many more programs for free from Radio 4. You can find them at BBC.co.uk radio4.