April 14, 2014, by Lindsay Brooke

Lifting the lid on the secrets of self storage – BBC Two 9pm tonight

Self storage bosses, compulsive collectors and observers including Nottingham’s Professor Louise Crewe feature in a BBC Two documentary series tonight.

Louise Crewe, Professor of Human Geography at The University of Nottingham features in tonight’s episode of the new BBC Two documentary series ‘Business Boomers’ that looks at businesses which have bucked the recessionary trend and flourished.

In the second programme of the series ‘The Real Storage Wars’ Louise helps them delve into the secret world of self storage, answering key questions about contemporary purchase and storage.

• Why did Britain come to have the biggest self-storage industry in Europe, when just three decades ago the industry didn’t exist?
• Why are we buying more stuff?
• Is the notion of the throwaway society simply a myth?
• Why do we find it so hard to part with our possessions?

Professor Crewe discusses the very real difficulties of disposal and explores the profound attachments many of us have to our possessions. The programme talks with the entrepreneurs who grew rich selling empty space and explores of the garish multi-coloured monster sheds that have sprung up around our towns and cities. Above all the programme questions our national predilection for buying stuff and hoarding it.

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