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BBC CASTAWAY 2000
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WHAT ELSE IS AT GARDENCROFT??
jailbreak on channel 5 £ BILLY GATES AND DICKIE BRANSON WANT TO RUN THE LOTTERY (I'M SENDING THEM MY SHIRT AS WELL!) INTO V.W BEETLES AND CAMPER VANS? CHECK THIS OUT TESTING BALLISTIC MISSILES ON THE ISLE OF WIGHT?? THEY DID IN THE FIFTIES!! CLICK HERE THE GARDENCROFT HOMEPAGE--ALL THIS AND MORE
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Sunday January 30, 2000
'It's like a scene from Castaway Galore,' he guffawed, rocking his salt-flecked head back in his favourite fraying wicker chair in the Harris hotel. The 43-year-old was watching the latest chapter in the long-running real-life BBC farce, Castaway 2000 - the Dissenters' Cut. It will begin again tomorrow when the last of the castaways, who fled the small island of Taransay after New Year, brave the choppy Atlantic waters and rejoin the 30 people who are crammed into the island's only house. Castaway 2000 was supposed to be the ideal TV experiment - the docusoap to end all docusoaps. The idea was hatched over an egg and cress sandwich in the BBC canteen two years ago. It fitted perfectly with plans put forward by Peter Salmon, controller of BBC1, for 'significant' television to mark the millennium and was planned as a fascinating quasi-scientific look at the way we live. Take 30 people to a deserted, treeless island off the Scottish coast, tell them to form a community, leave a camera crew in their midst and let them get on with it. Film the arguments, the discussions, the efforts to cook and clean and mend the leaking roofs. And then make a series of programmes about it and watch the great ratings roll in. But yesterday's chaotic scenes - more reminiscent of Brigadoon than Local Hero - have left the BBC at the centre of an unscheduled £2.4 million farce. The problems began just days after shooting started. Four of the castaways lost their entire belongings for the year during a bungled airlift and within days of arrival 18 of them abandoned the island for the comforts of the Harris hotel and have so far refused to return. Many families said they had quit because they were furious at the producers' failure to provide the facilities they expected. They had no homes, no toilets, no bedding, no cooking facilities and no heating. After fleeing the island, the castaways spent much of last week holed up in the white-washed Harris hotel - watching the first few episodes of the documentary on TV, as their lives became the focus of both the documentary and the nation's press. The Harris hotel is at the centre of Tarbert, a one-road village in the thrall of its new-found celebrity. When journalists flocked there last week, they found the castaways three deep at the bar. Tarbert used to deal in fishing, icy winds and solitude: now it trades in hire cars, mass hotel bookings and showbiz gossip. One local fisherman said: 'I think Lion TV have handled the publicity of this excellently, they have you guys eating out of their hands. And besides, the isolated life here is nothing new to us: we just get a bit of money for a while taking journalists to the island.' The hotel has been churning out its staple dish of steak and chips at a furious rate for the past week as the Highland wind batters its slate-grey roof. Inside, Fleet Street's finest sit on edge as yet another rumour surfaces of an announcement from the castaways or crew. The corridors are cluttered with camera cases and photographers kneeling before laptops, sending pictures back to London. The one pay phone is constantly in use, the hotel phone the only point of contact for the dozen odd journalists here, for whom the hotel staff act as reluctant secretaries. Mobiles do not work on Harris. In fact, the past month has been one long flurry of television and print media. 'It's been a real pain,' said one hotel worker, 'we spend so long rushing around fetching people it's hard to get along with running the hotel.' Last Friday night the bar was packed as usual but with some newcomers. The band played, the carpet was soaked in lager, but few made a fuss about the arrivals. Eventually the excitement will die down, the castaway island will collapse or the series will simply run its course. As living conditions on Taransay improve, it is becoming harder for the locals to understand what interest lies in artificially recreating the kind of isolated environment they have always known on Harris, and which thousands have fled, but instead with townies and a few cameras. They dismiss the 'landmark observational documentary' as a waste of licence-payers' money. In the hotel bar, Dr Roger Stephenson, and his wife, Rosemary yesterday tried to explain why the volunteers had mutinied. At a press conference called to satisfy the media feeding frenzy the programme has created, Stephenson confirmed that there had been 'nowhere to live on the island'. The one house had been home to up to 16 builders, as the rush to finish the accommodation continued. The Stephensons want the house gutted, its walls and floors scrubbed, before taking their children back to live there. They also revealed that the intended sanitary system, using a small hole in the ground filled with compost, had not worked. 'The island's soil was not deep enough for the design,' said Stephenson. A new system should be introduced next week. With some of the worst weather the islands have seen for years expected in the next few weeks, the local feeling is that the project will be lucky to survive three months. But now the 'ecopods' - the environmentally friendly housing the castaways expected to be ready - are complete spirits have been raised. When they arrive back on Taransay tomorrow the Stephensons acknowledge they are unlikely to receive a warm welcome. They knew, they said yesterday, that the castaways who had chosen to stick out the squalor resented their decision to decamp to the hotel. Many castaways predict it will be hard to get along following last week's media frenzy. 'Some of the castaways have been unhappy about the way they have been portrayed in the documentary,' said one inside source. 'The politics of the island will definitely begin to take shape after this.' The programme's producer, Lion TV head Jeremy Mills, who came up with the Castaway 2000 idea after producing the docusoap Driving School , was last night putting a brave face on the fiasco. He claimed the recent publicity had been 'fantastic for the programme' and condemned the 'pathetic press intrusion on to the island' and said reporters were 'a boil on the face of the project'. 'The castaways have seen untruths printed about themselves,' he said. 'They have never been in the public eye but are now coming to understand the nature of celebrity.' He went on to suggest that they may turn violent if journalists intrude further upon the island. 'I'm worried that the next journalist who goes to the island will be floored,' he said. While the project runs the danger of becoming more about the media than the castaways involved, the Stephensons will busy themselves with preparing the island's school. It is unlikely that the island will remain isolated throughout the year as, even once the press interest dies down, the programme's director, Chris Kelly, expects an invasion of day-trippers once the summer starts. Before the next intended set of programmes in 2001, the island's owner John McKye will sail to the island every fortnight to take the castaways post and supplies. McKye is thought to have been paid £380,000 for the rent of the island and the right to build accommodation for the incomers. Last night, amid speculation that last week's costly decision to helicopter 18 islanders over to Harris to stay in a hotel would put the programme over-budget, Lion TV said such events were taken into consideration when the programme was conceived. The programme's cast of 36 will now have to concentrate on the task in hand - building their own society - and brave the storm of gossip and speculation that surrounds them. Castaways have been found both fighting and having sex, rumour has it, but it is clear they find it hardest to face the isolation and hardship. Deserted islands are less fun than they sound. |
