Remember when you were a child and you went on holiday, you inevitably ended up making best friends with some other family, spent two weeks doing everything together and then promised to meet back up when you got home. And never did.
But what of the other berks you met out there: The beer-bellied, tattooed chap wearing Union Flags anywhere possible, drinking in English pubs and eating English food. While in France. Or the perma-drunks, slurring their complaints at the waiter, while not even bothering to learn a single word of Spanish? Or the wife-swapping tapas eaters that didn’t notice their daughter had been abducted? What if you had the power to make them bugger off back home and stop spoiling your week away from reality?
This is the premise behind Channel 4’s Coach Trip, a reality show that follows a handful of couples on a free holiday around Europe.
Each day is contained within an episode, focusing on the activities that they’re forced to enjoy: the sort of wine-tasting, tower-climbing, art gallery appreciating things that package holiday tourists are herded through like cattle every single day.
All this is presided over by Brendan, a tour operator so camp that even Butlins would have reservations about having him sing the YMCA. His comments should be rudely sarcastic, putting down anyone who doesn’t want to get involved or has a bit too much to drink, but because he’s so amazingly camp, it comes across like Kenneth Williams inviting you to a fight to the death.
At the end of each day, the couples stand around dramatically in a semi-circle, and vote each other off. Yep, that old Welsh couple that stand around in their cagoules moaning? Cheerio. Or the bloke who’s a little bit too competitive and hilariously shouts “shotgun” as he barges everyone else out of the way to get the seats at the back of the coach? Bye.
The voting process, unlike tamer reality shows like Big Brother, is done in front of the rest of the group, and hilariously edited so that the polite, public reason (which is always “we haven’t gelled” or “we’ve not really spoken to you”) is shown directly before the bitchy private one, filmed away from the group: “he’s a bit of an obnoxious bell-end, really”. The response is invariably a good old stoic, British, “well, that’s fair enough.” Before voting for them the following day.
The couple with the most votes earns a yellow card, shown in Schindler’s List style black-and-white with the card in full technicolour, making the whole thing seem far more meaningful than it actually is. TV would be improved if every programme were contractually obliged to do at least one scene in this style.
The following day sees the couple with a yellow card doing their best to be matey with everyone else, throwing around “no hard feelings”, while secretly plotting, stewing and going mad with the insecurity of being least popular.
A second yellow card and they’re off home, which is usually dealt with in the spirit of the show,with the dominant partner bitterly warning that “well, we didn’t really like any of you anyway. Not our sort of people, right Jean?” And Jean nods meekly in agreement with her ogre of a husband who has publicly humiliated her and ruined another holiday, but offers the security that stops her begging for a divorce. At least they didn’t have to do pottery in Lichtenstein.
Coach Trip is fun, doesn’t take itself seriously and there’s enough of a turnaround of people that everyone ends up facing someone they hate. And isn’t that the real essence of a holiday: being trapped in a cramped environment, being forced to enjoy yourself, with people you’d rather just get away from?
This was a guest blog by Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows. Other publications espousing the verbal abuse of cattle are available.
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