They say you don’t really know someone until you live with them. Well it seems you don’t necessarily have to live with them too long either. Just try taking a two week holiday with them and you’ll soon have the inside scoop on what they are really like.
My new favourite reality show is called Holiday Showdown and it screens on BBC Prime on Mondays and Fridays at 19H00, South African time. It repeats later in the evening at 23H00 if you don’t get to the first viewing but I’ve found of late, that I make time to watch this show or make sure to tape it.
Basically the premise is for two British families, who don’t know each other to go on holiday together. For the first week the families go on the first family’s favourite holiday and the second family has to fit in and go with the flow. But the next week they swap over and go on their preferred holiday and the other family has to tow the line.
I really enjoy the show because it’s an amazing insight into human behaviour and you get a real voyeuristic peek into real people’s lives. Plus you get to see different holiday places and locations.
Of course the families that are paired up are usually vastly different, in terms of their lifestyles, behaviour and holiday choices and often even in relation to their social status. It makes for fascinating viewing.
The first one I watched that made a huge impression on me featured a family where the father ran a Valet company and he was involved with driving celebrities and executives around. He was married to a bit of a wannabe snob who had two daughters from a previous marriage and two children from her current marriage to him. She had somehow managed to ensure that the family holidays were always on luxury cruises and so their preferred holiday that they shared with the second family was a luxury cruise from Russia along the coast and past the Baltic countries.
It was everything you imagine, plus more. Sumptuous eight course meals, twenty four hours a day room service, dazzling entertainment, sunning on the pool deck, fancy themed evenings that required different types of dress and absolutely every need catered to, including waiters cutting up lazy children’s food. I kid you not. It was indulgence of the highest order, and to be honest, something I thought would be nice to try on a once off. But that the family that went with them were more of a Bohemian lot, who lived a very casual and budget conscious lifestyle. They didn’t have the required clothes to take on board for all the fancy shmancy stuff planned and that had to be made available for them so they could fit in. To be truthful, the father admitted eventually to being seduced into the lifestyle and the kids had no problem adapting whatsoever. Only the mother held out resolutely, proclaiming how bad a life of over indulgence and people pandering to your every whim was.
When they got back to Britain she relished showed them exactly what she meant. This family’s preferred holiday was meandering around Britain on their own red bus. And I think the reality of it all hit home when they told the other family to pack light – preferably only a back pack’s worth of stuff in case they broke down because it was lighter to carry. Lavish snob wife from the first family realized immediately that she should leave her Versace sandals behind. And a very sound decision that was too.
To be fair, although the bus was not in prime condition, it did seem to get them around and apparently only packed up on the final trip home. But to say it was cramped was the understatement of the year. Two families that amounted to thirteen people squashed in one double decker bus, with a toilet that was dodgy was what week two was made up of.
Shopping for food was done at local supermarkets on the way and it was pretty basic stuff, mainly in cans and quick to rustle up. In fact, their first meal was prepared while parked in the parking lot of a shopping centre. Public toilets and showers were used at truck stops and the previous week of decadent luxury must have seemed like a lifetime away for the spoilt family.
But the big surprise was yet to be revealed! After chugging around in the bus at a sedate speed the climax of the trip was still to come. It was a couple of days stopover at the Happy Days Music Festival in Cornwall, obviously their version of Woodstock.
Well, the shock and horror of it all for the second family was a sight to behold. Hundreds of laid back types and aged hippies lounged around, chilling to the music and totally getting into the zone. It was hilarious and a real challenge in terms of adapting. A line of portable toilets and two very basic showers made up the ablution facilities. A far cry from the luxury on-suite cruise bathrooms.The posh family even had to go to the local flea market stall at the festival and buy some clothes to fit in. Their colour coordinated branded gear made them stick out like sore thumbs.
Funnily enough when they had done that and were dressed down in clothes that ordinarily they wouldn’t be seen dead in, they managed to relax a little and have fun. Snob wife kept complaining that it was not a holiday but her husband and kids managed to get into the groove and chill.
At the end, they have a final dinner where both families chat about the two holidays. On this particular show it was revealed that the first holiday on the cruise ship for all thirteen people cost a mind boggling 57, 000 pounds, an amount that was almost equal to the cost of the hippy family’s home. The cost of the cruise was apparently between 3, 000 and 5,000 pounds a person, while the bus holiday inclusive of petrol, food and extra’s cost around 2, 500 pounds in total.
That kind of puts it into glaring perspective, doesn’t it?
Some of the other shows have featured trips to Euro Disney, Spain, Dubai and Morocco but of course there have also been the ones to Blackpool and slow barge trips down dirty canals. All in all, the challenge remains the same. Shut up and put up to survive the experience.
Strangely enough, some of the most unlikely people really learn or change from the experience and others who you believe will cope, don’t. One episode featured a family with two psychologists who couldn’t cut it and went home early.
What always intrigues me as well is the choices people make. Some families go to the same place year after year and do exactly the same thing year after year. For example one family has been going to the same place on the Spanish coast for the last 15 years and all they do is suntan at the hotel pool deck for eight hours a day without venturing anywhere near the beach. That’s their dream holiday, go figure.
I guess it’s all about different strokes for different folk and adapt or die. Well not die exactly, but some of them have been nightmarish.
You seldom see diversity and challenges for families more vividly exposed than on this show. I recommend it as an entertaining way to spend an hour on the couch and get an inside look at how the other half lives.
It’ll certainly have you thinking twice about accepting a “free” family holiday with strangers.
*** Catch Holiday Showdown on Channel 40 – BBC Prime, on Mondays and Fridays at 19H00
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