When I was growing up, my favourite TV shows were All in the Family, Welcome Back, Kotter, Sanford and Son, and King of Kensington. The people on those shows were not glamorous, and my life reflected that lack of glamour. If I was a victim of media influence, then I was shaped into a person of modest tastes and off-colour humour.

I was lucky, but there were those not so fortunate as to have Al Waxman and Redd Foxx for inspiration. The kids born a half-dozen years after me grew up on the excess-laden illusions of Dynasty and Falconcrest and Melrose Place. Many of those people can thank their viewing habits for their huge credit-card balances now, and a very screwed-up version of reality.

I feel blessed that I was a northern Canadian child of the '70s, because even though I was a fashion nightmare, I never knew it, and ignorance proved to be the mother of good fortune. I never thought about going after a big-time ritzy lifestyle because I didn't even know it existed. Even the richest guy in my world - Howard Hughes - seemed like an unkempt bum. Everyone around me seemed to be happy to be scrappy, and that's how I wanted to be, too.

So I never became a lawyer or the Prime Minister or the Pope. I became a social convenor and a snow shoveler and then a drifter and writer of oddly unpalatable little stories. I never made much money, and if I ever did get ahead, I squirreled away the cash to live off when I didn't feel like working just then.

Now, years later, I am at exactly the same spot on the financial ladder that I always was: somewhere between the second and third rung from the bottom. There's a lot of good people hanging around that rung with me, and things are just fine. But, in the same way that reality shows eventually took over from glitzy prime-time soaps, the global financial meltdown has changed the channel, so to speak, on a lot of imaginarily rich bastards, and all of the sudden, the ladder just got a little shorter.

How ironic is it that, by doing nothing, by not trying in the least to get ahead, all of us housecoaters moved up the ladder this month just because a whole bunch of fat-cat phony-balonies got knocked down it? Is that beautiful or what?

I think the next wave of TV shows should help the not-so-rich-anymore by doing things such as having Restaurant Makeover scale down a four-star bistro to a 99-cent pizza-slice joint, and The Biggest Loser should focus on Wall Street instead of what we eat.

Look, it's not like I don't feel bad for people who lose their money in stock market crashes, and I'm well aware that there are people out there with tastes like mine who are suffering through something that isn't at all their fault. I'm just saying, hey, I'm glad I've always been happy with the simple life - and I don't mean the Paris Hilton version.

John Scoles is president and janitor of the Times Change(d) High & Lonesome Club.