And the BMW was on full finance and the telly was in the wife's name? My ex, a barrister, had a client who was then (late 1970s) the man who was made bankrupt in the biggest sum ever recorded in a British court, something in the order of £20 million. She was somewhat surprised to find that he was arriving for conferences with her by private helicopter!
As so often, the most brazen defaulters are the ones who get away with it. I.like most, I can't expect to persuade my bank to lend me a £1,000 over the limit for a month, but I've represented people of no means at all who'd opened accounts and taken a bank for hundreds of thousands before anyone noticed; some got away with it.