There's no one better to listen to when it comes to a debate about the starving poor than a moneyed, ill-informed lizard-hearted Tory who once opined that 'good Christians' wouldn't get Aids.

Despite spending three hours in a Birmingham Foodbank, Edwina Currie refused to believe that anyone in Britain was too poor to afford food.

Perhaps she left her eyes, ears and soul at home.

'Are you telling me people in this country are going hungry? Seriously? Seriously? Do you know, I really have great difficulty believing that,' said Currie, as she punched a kitten in the face.

'I don't think people in this country go hungry. But are these people at the same time maybe buying the odd Lottery ticket? Do they just occasionally have the odd cigarette? Somewhere along the line, does food come as the first priority?'

It genuinely makes me feel quite violent, and – as I've told you before – I am a lover and not a fighter, mainly on the grounds that I am a total coward.

Plain-speaking, bilge-spouting Edwina Currie may not be a total coward, but she definitely is a total cow.

To suggest that the hungry of Britain are all chain-smoking gambling addicts is as ridiculous as suggesting that only slutty girls get cervical cancer and that if you're married, you're immune to it (that's one of hers, too).

Just because it's uncomfortable to accept something doesn't make it any less true.

Our own Foodbank here in Norwich has seen a huge increase in the number of desperate people who have nothing to eat: children going days without meals, pensioners surviving on pitiful rations, veterans who served our country choosing between a meal or heating a single room.

The stories break your heart: one family in Norwich waiting for benefit payments had to survive for a week on one bag of rice, a fact that was only discovered when the young children couldn't stop crying in lessons at school.

It's happening right here, right now, right on our doorstep.

These people aren't just 'a bit hungry', like we are when we're between meals, they're hungry all the time and without fantastic organisations like the Foodbank, they'd be skeletal remains before idiots like Edwina admitted the government has totally failed the people in society that need them most.

Suffice it to say, I imagine that however hungry people were, absolutely no one would fancy a Currie.

I don't ask much of you, other than that you don't send me any more of those letters written in green ink, but if you could do your bit to help the Evening News Fill the Foodbank, I'd be very grateful.

Give them some cash.Give them some food. Give them your time. Give Edwina Currie a hefty two-fingered salute in the process. Find out more at networknorwich.co.uk/NorwichFoodbank.

•This article was original published on November 21, 2011