Gogglebox star Sandra Martin has revealed that she’s finally off benefits after landing a job at a funeral parlour.

The TV personality, 61, told in March this year that she was back on benefits after having fallen on hard times – despite claiming that she ‘earned more than anyone else’ during her stint on the Channel 4 show. 

But Sandra has now turned her life around once more and is earning a wage as a cleaner at her friend’s business – a job she started just three weeks ago. 

In a new interview, the bubbly TV star told how she initially rejected a role as a receptionist at the funeral parlour as it would’ve been ‘too emotional’, but is happy to show ‘respect for the deceased’ by keeping the place clean.

She told The Sun: ‘I’m 61 and a grandmother. Three weeks ago I was on benefits and looking for work. Now, I’m going to be cleaning a funeral parlour after a friend opened one in Hastings.’ 

She went on to say that she’s due to begin a training course on ‘confidence and communication’ in a bid to develop new skills should she want to move onto receptionist work, but for now, she felt happier to be a cleaner.

Sandra explained: ‘I don’t want to do the reception work at the start, I think it will be too emotional. 

‘But at least for now I’m happy to keep the place clean out of respect for the deceased. I think it will be respectful.’

Sandra, who lives in Hastings but originally hails from Brixton, has been on and off benefits since leaving Gogglebox in 2018 – which the exception of a brief stint at Midlands’ train station.

The TV star told how she found it difficult to work that as she would be ‘constantly’ stopped for selfies. 

In March, Sandra revealed she was ‘paid more than anyone else’ during her time on the Channel 4 series . 

Sandra and her best friend Sandi Bogle, 58, became one of the most popular duos on the show when it began in 2013.

But in 2017, Sandi left the show to pursue her singing career and was replaced by Sandra’s daughter Chanchez, before she too left show soon after. 

Speaking to The Sun she claimed as ‘star of the show’ she was paid more than any other cast member, allowing her to enjoy a ‘luxury lifestyle’. 

She said: ‘I got more than everybody else, because everybody else was working, but I was on benefits, and I was the best one that was making the show’.

‘I got the contract, and they paid my rent, council tax, TV licence, electricity, gas, all the bills you need’.

Before adding: ‘I was living a luxury lifestyle.’

The fan favourite said she had blown her earnings from the show – thought to be around £1,500-a-month – on takeaways and getting her hair done. 

Earlier that month she revealed she had been forced back onto benefits after hitting hard times. 

Sandra won the British public over with her infectious cackle and love of Pot Noodles during her time on the show but by 2018 she had ended up homeless.

Despite the setback, Sandra revealed that after 50 years they remain friends: ‘No matter what we go through, she’s always got a room here for her, and she’s always got a room for me.

‘We’re besties. We’ve been through, ups, downs, thick and thin, the worst, the wears, the tears, the bumps, the laughs.’

Explaining how she quickly burned through her pay, Sandra previously told Loose Women: ‘The money was coming in. The bank account was big, being in the community, all my friends on the social.’

‘I never got help, but the money was squandering. The money went, taxis, hair, take away, friends that wanted money. The money just went. It was natural to help, I don’t regret it.’

Sandra added that at some points she wished she had never found fame, explaining: ‘I wanted to burn it all and go back to it. I’m not the celebrity person. I do lots of charity work, they don’t pay me, Sandi likes doing the red carpet.’

We all know that doing regular exercise is good for us, but some people struggle with mobility while others just struggle to find the motivation.

Mindful particularly of the former, scientists have been looking at ways that provide the benefits of exercise —without actually doing it.

THINK YOURSELF STRONGER

To get stronger you’d normally expect to do some form of resistance exercise, such as press-ups or weightlifting. But there’s evidence that you can also ‘think yourself stronger’. This relies on motor imagery — where you can get better at doing something by just imagining yourself doing it. It’s commonly used by elite athletes to improve their performance, such as before the big race.

But it can help mere mortals, too. A few years ago I took part in a study with the University of Northampton, where a group of non-exercisers were given a ‘training’ regimen. For 15 minutes a day, five days a week, they had to imagine contracting their calf muscles as hard as possible, but without actually doing so.

They did this for four weeks: despite the fact they’d done no extra physical exercise, their calf muscles were, on average, 8 per cent stronger, and one guy had increased his strength by 34 per cent!

Their muscles hadn’t got bigger: they were now using far more of the muscle fibres in their calves.

I’m not suggesting mental imagery can replace exercise, but it could prove an effective way to reduce the loss of muscle when someone is laid up by injury or illness. In a study at Ohio University in 2014, 29 volunteers were asked to wear a cast that immobilised their hand and wrist: half the group spent a few minutes a day imagining they were moving their wrist.

After four weeks, all the volunteers had lost some strength in their immobilised limb, but the people who’d practised mental imagery exercises were only 25 per cent weaker, compared with 45 per cent in the other group.

BOB UP AND DOWN

Japanese researchers have developed a chair that moves you up and down twice a second, mimicking the movements of jogging. A new study has shown that the chair led to improvements in volunteers’ blood pressure.

The researchers, from the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities in Tokorozawa, believe the up and down movement causes fluid surrounding the brain to slosh around and that seems to impact molecules that help control blood pressure. So when you’re sitting at your computer or watching TV, do try to bob up and down a bit.

THE COUCH POTATO PILL

It may sound like the stuff of futuristic fantasy, but a pill that mimics many of the benefits of exercise may soon be a reality.

Scientists at Stanford University in the U.S. have found that injecting mice with a protein called clusterin — which is released by our muscles when we exercise — boosted memory and mental sharpness the same way a workout would, according to results published in Nature.

Another U.S. team is looking at whether jabs of irisin — another hormone released by muscles during exercise — can convert white fat (which makes up most of the fat in our bodies) into healthier brown fat (which burns it off). And finally, experts at Southampton University have identified a manmade chemical, compound 14, which ‘tricks’ muscle cells into thinking the body is exercising, making them burn up excess blood sugar levels and potentially treating type 2 diabetes.

MUSCLE-ZAPPING CHAIR

When you go for a run, or lift weights, the reason your muscles move is because the nerves that supply those muscles have told them to twitch. But you can bypass the nerves, using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS). This is an established treatment for multiple sclerosis or following a stroke, and helps strengthen muscles by making them repeatedly contract.

There is some evidence that EMS can improve performance in elite athletes, but where it really scores is in improving pelvic floor muscles. There’s now a chair, called Emsella, that emits electronic pulses designed to make your pelvic floor muscles contract hundreds of times a minute. You sit on it, fully clothed, for 30 minutes at a time (it takes about six sessions to make a difference).

So how well does it work? In a three-week study, published in the journal Energy Based Therapeutics and Diagnostics in 2019, 80 per cent of middle-aged women with urinary incontinence who underwent the treatment reported significant improvement in their symptoms.

CHORES AS EXERCISE

Most of us don’t think of household chores such as vacuuming as exercise. But maybe we should: a study carried out by a friend of mine, Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, found that if you view housework as a workout it improves the physical effect it has on the body. In a study published in Psychological Science, she interviewed 84 hotel maids about their jobs: none thought of themselves as fit or active, although what they were doing met recommended daily exercise levels. She revealed this to half the group, while the remainder were left in the dark.

A month later, repeat tests showed that the maids who had been told their jobs made them fit had lost 2 lb each and, according to measures such as blood pressure, ‘were significantly healthier’.

One explanation is that if you believe you’re exercising, your body responds as if it is.

THE ‘WALL SIT’ CHEAT

EARLIER this week a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine revealed that staying still — well, doing wall sits (squats against a wall) or planks — reduces blood pressure even more than aerobic exercise such as running.

This may be because of the rush of blood after the muscles are released. If you can’t do either you could try clenching and relaxing your calf muscles, a bit like the exercises you do on a long-haul flight.

I’d rather look old than suffer mental confusion 

A downside of getting older is that I struggle with my hearing. In pubs or noisy restaurants, I can find myself nodding or shouting ‘what, WHAT?’ And at home, I use the subtitles on the TV to ensure I can follow the plot.

I’ve had my hearing tested and it’s OK, but I suspect that before long I’ll be investing in hearing aids. Which should improve my hearing, but may also be good for my brain.

It’s estimated that a whopping 6.7 million people in the UK would benefit from a hearing aid, but only two million actually have one. That’s partly because of the stigma of ‘looking old and frail’ and because a lot of people don’t realise how bad their hearing is.

We’ve known for some time that poor hearing puts older people at much greater risk of dementia. In a key study in 2011, U.S. researchers found that mild hearing loss doubled dementia risk; severe hearing loss made it five times more likely.

But until recently no one had assessed whether a hearing aid made a difference. Now researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the U.S. have done just that: and they found that when older people (70+) were given hearing aids, it halved their risk of developing dementia.

One reason hearing is so important for brain health is that — as you become more deaf — your inner ear starts sending garbled signals to your brain, causing mental confusion.

I’m more worried about that than ‘looking old’, so I’ll happily wear hearing aids when needed.

Trolley to test heart health 

Trailing around a supermarket doesn’t sound like a health activity, but researchers from Liverpool John Moores University have done an ingenious experiment to show it could be.

They fitted the handles of ten supermarket trolleys with electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors, devices that can pick up irregular heartbeats. Shoppers were asked to hold the handlebar for at least 60 seconds as they shopped: if it lit up red, they were seen by a pharmacist, and, if necessary, sent to a cardiologist.

Over three months, the trolleys picked up 39 new cases of atrial fibrillation (AF), a condition that causes an irregular and often abnormally fast heart rate. AF increases your risk of stroke five-fold but, tragically, most people don’t know they’ve got it until they have a stroke.

Tragedy of wasted talent: Government must make it its top priority to get people off benefits and back into work, says MAGGIE PAGANO

By Maggie Pagano For The Daily Mail

Published: 16:52 EDT, 9 May 2023 | Updated: 17:10 EDT, 9 May 2023

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