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From the outside, the Cairns family are typically middle class. For the past 25 years, they have made an eclectic apartment in Islington, north London their home, filling it with knick-knacks, books, guitars and a grand piano. Outside, next to a small but floral garden is the Mercedes that Mark Cairns, 60, drives around the capital, while his wife, Diane, 55, keeps house and teaches Pilates classes. The couple spend sunny evenings drinking wine on Highbury Fields, while their youngest son, Gabriel, 19, who is yet to fly the nest, studies for airline pilot selection tests.

But like a rising number of Britons, their happy existence is built on a shaky foundation.

“If you look at our lives from the outside it looks like one thing,” says Mark. “It’s a kind of chimera really. I live in a nice flat in Islington, but I don’t own it. I’m cruising around London in a lovely Mercedes, which is a minicab that the bank owns 90 per cent of.”

At the beginning of her premiership, Theresa May vowed to help the “just about managing” – those in-work who struggle to make ends meet, work multiple jobs and don’t have financial security. Three years later, as Boris Johnson takes office, employment is at a record high – but so is in-work poverty. A new BBC documentary, Broke, starting tonight, reveals that a third of Brits have less than £500 in savings and that a rising number are worried about their futures.

When we meet, Cairns, who features in the documentary, is lounging on the sofa, surrounded by slew of instruments and homely clutter. He closes the laptop on which he was editing a selection of photographs from Give! music festival, and picks up a cup of tea, before recounting a turbulent career that peaked and troughed before landing him as an Uber driver in 2019.

A one-time celebrity photographer, Cairns worked with the likes of Jay Z, Boyzone and Natalie Imbruglia in their 90s heydays. He had a private studio in Shoreditch and travelled to Florida with the Backstreet Boys. One of his best memories is photographing a personal hero: Mick Jones from The Clash.

Ross, a steelworker from Port Talbot, also features in 'Broke' credit: BBC

In another time, Cairns could have been lauded alongside Will Shu and Travis Kalanick as an internet millionaire who helped to shape the gig economy – instead, he became an Uber driver. Cairns took a break from photography at the turn of the century to launch his own courier company, Expeditus (named after the patron saint of urgent packages). He had £3 million in investment and a plan to connect courier companies so their drivers could work together on same day deliveries. But it launched a decade too early and, in 2005, Cairns sold his share for £15,000.

At 44, he had to start again – and it would take a decade. His dream of running a technology company died just as the rise of digital cameras shut him out of the photography world. “I was looking for work with the camera, but there was the financial crash and everything was digital, where my training had been in film,” he recalls. “Photography wasn’t supporting us. If I woke up at 4am to go to the loo I wouldn’t get back to sleep. I would just lie there counting the same meagre amounts of money over and over.”

The situation for old-school photographers like Cairns has worsened with the rise of smartphones and social media. “Now, I’m up against kids with fixie bikes, funny beards and 30,000 Instagram followers,” he says.

Uber answered Cairns’ problems on New Year’s Day 2014. After the clock struck midnight, he bundled a drunk friend into one its cars – who later told him the driver was earning £1,200 per week.

“It was peak Uber – everyone was feverishly downloading it,” says Cairns. “We were so in need of money; I had debts coming out of my ears and could barely pay the rent.”

He signed up to the app and by April he was on the road doing double shifts, four times a week; whenever he wasn’t eating or sleeping, he was driving. He earnt about £800 per week, in line with Uber’s claims. Around a quarter of his earnings pay for the car, insurance, fuel, and Uber’s service fee – but he managed to clear his debts.

“It was enough for me to not need to bully Diane around Lidl about the cost of loo roll,” he says.

Cairns is desperate to find the money to support Gabriel, middle, through pilot school credit: Mark Cairns /Telegraph

Cairns no longer works night shifts, but he still drives 45 to 60 hours a week. On a normal day, he wakes at 6:55am and log onto Uber by 7:20am. When the first job comes through, which can sometimes take up to 40 minutes, he “runs out like a Spitfire pilot” and starts driving.

Unlike other Uber drivers, Cairns’s hourly earnings never fall below minimum wage, but he thinks the price per mile – £1.25 since 2012 – is “too cheap” and that Sadiq Khan should set a minimum. The increase in the number of Uber drivers – 45,000 in London – means the amount of work available to each person has also declined.

“I’m reluctant to knock Uber too hard, but they’re a horrible company,” says Cairns. “They don’t care about their drivers. This is how shaky it is: one complaint and you can be deactivated. There’s no official appeal process.”

He recounts stories of drivers who have been kicked off the app because unhappy riders complained about something minor or falsely accused them of not being the same person as their picture. “They have wives and kids to feed,” he says. “I’ve never had a complaint, but I get by with a considerable amount of white privilege.”

Monetary concerns swirl at the back of Cairns’s mind when he’s driving. Most pressing is how to fund Gabriel’s pilot training. “If he passes selection, I’ve got to find £101,000 (£68,000 of which you get back as a bond),” says Cairns. “I just haven’t got the money and it breaks my heart.”

Then there is the constant fear of the future: doesn’t have a pension so is unsure if he’ll ever be able to retire. “The only way I cope with the future is to not think about it,” he says. “I have no pension, save for £12.89 a month from the internet company. We’ve got absolutely nothing.”

He also worries that if he falls ill or something happens to his car, then he won’t be unable to support his family.

Cairns and Gabriel at home in Islington, where they have lived in a rented flat for 25 years credit: Julian Simmonds /Telegraph

A major bone of contention between Uber and its drivers is whether or not they are workers, and should therefore receive benefits including sick and holiday pay. Under pressure, the company recently introduced basic sick pay, parental leave and bereavement payments. It is due to appear in the Supreme Court later this year in a fight to deny drivers additional rights.

“They’re going to lose,” says Cairns. “It’s the final throw of the dice and they will hopefully owe me four years of holiday back pay, which could add up to £15,000.”

It isn’t just Uber’s policies that make life difficult for drivers – road traffic fines and the extension of the Congestion Charge for minicabs are also prohibitive.

“I hate the sound of the letterbox,” says Cairns. “I got two tickets on one day a few months ago. That’s £130 – you virtually work all day for nothing.”

Drivers have protested the Congestion Charge and the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, which represents drivers and of which Cairns is an active member, is fighting the Mayor of London in court over the policy. It this week lost in the High Court, but said it would appeal on the grounds that the charge represents unlawful discrimination.

“It could cost drivers £3,000 per year, when some of them are really struggling,” says Cairns. “It made me really angry – I went to all the demonstrations.” He adds that the policy in fact encourages drivers to spend more time in the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone, to earn the £11.50 back from Uber, which pays them £1 extra per pick-up in the area. A spokesman from Uber said, "Drivers are at the heart of our service ─ we can’t succeed without them ─ and thousands of people come into work at Uber every day focused on how to make their experience better, on and off the road."

Even though he turns 61 this year and knows he won’t be able to retire, Cairns hopes there will be another chapter in his career after Uber. He has started running historical tours for American tourists at Blenheim Palace and Chartwell, and is putting one together a Battle of Britain one.

“It’s a much nicer day out,” he says. “I still do some work with my camera from time to time too, but nothing like in the old days.”

He has one final scheme up his sleeve: to write a “devastating bestseller and become the next Tom Wolfe”. His first novel, The Glass Trumpet, caught the attention of a well-known literary agent, but he self-published it having already had 1,000 copies printed. The second is called God Only Knows and charts the tribulations of an atheist blogger who’s poor and lives in Islington.

“It’s going to be a fantastic book if I ever finish it,” he says. “I can’t write a book and drive… But I’m not done yet.” He’ll keep “buggering on”.

Broke aired on BBC Two last night at 9pm. Read our 4 star review here.