Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
FOUR GO MAD IN FLORIDA ( AND JAPAN)
The Real Marigold Hotel returns as our senior citizen celebrities size up more retirement prospects around the world – with some surprising results
When the BBC sent a group of eight senior cit izen celebrities out to India for a reality show called The Real Marigold Hotel, none of them had any idea it would become such a hit. The programme, broadcast earlier this year, was inspired by 2012’s hit film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, in which an eclectic group of retirees take up residence in an Indian hotel. The small-screen version saw an equally varied group of some of the UK’s best-known OAPs settling into an Indian mansion for a few weeks to see if they’d consider seeing out their twilight years there.
The show pulled in four million viewers a week and won a prestigious Rose D’Or award. ‘We all thought it would be a turkey,’ says actress Miriam Margolyes, 75. ‘So imagine our amazement when it took off.’ Its success has resulted in two Christmas specials in which the group – now a hardy foursome of Miriam, former darts player Bobby George, 71, cook Rosemary Shrager, 65, and former ballet dancer Wayne Sleep, 68 – road-test two places reputed to be among the best in the world to grow old. One trip took the cast to the gated communities of Florida, the other to Japan, home to some of the world’s longest-living and healthiest citizens.
One of the pleasures of the first series was seeing these previously unlikely bedfellows (‘We’re all mad as hatters,’ says Wayne Sleep) rub along so well. ‘We all stayed in touch over the past year,’ says Bobby. ‘We have different personalities but everyone gets on well. Rosemary’s loud but she’s got a softer side. And Miriam tries to be posher than she is, but she can swear better than me!’ Miriam agrees. ‘I’d gladly go on another trip with any of them,’ she says.
First stop this time round was Florida, to join the millions of Americans seeing out their golden years in vast gated communities that offer sunshine, swimming and golf. A slice of paradise then? Not quite. ‘It was hideous,’ says Miriam, who usually resides in leafy south-west London. ‘There were some lovely people, but a lot of ghastly ones as well.’ Says Bobby, ‘There are lots of regulations. And the people all do the same thing at the same time. At 5am they were all running. Then they all go swimming and play golf. Then they all go back to bed before getting up later for tea and bingo.’
One stop was at the Polo Club, a retirement community where residents pay more than £65,000 a year to be members. ‘It was like The Stepford Wives,’ says Rosemary. ‘It was a cultural desert and none of us fitted in.’
‘They were pretty disgusted by us,’ giggles Wayne. ‘To fit in you had to have vast amounts of money, and it had to show. If I lived there I’d have to think about what I was wearing every day – it’s like you’re performing and the curtain never comes down.’
Miriam admits she spent a lot of time in Florida feeling cross, and even ended up in what she calls a ‘very juicy altercation. I won’t spoil it for the viewers, but it was caught on camera,’ she says. ‘These people cared more about externals than anything else. They cared about how they looked, how much money they had and what kind of car they drove, but not about the inside things that I care about.’
Rosemary was tempted to go native, visiting a cosmetic surgeon. ‘I had fillers done,’ she confides. ‘I thought it was great, but Bobby said if he was me he’d ask for his money back.’ Rosemary thought there was a lesson to be learned from the Sunshine State. ‘People save up for old age and it’s in their psyche from early on,’ she says. ‘In the UK we try not to think about it.’
Still, none of them were sad to board their flight to Japan. No gated communities here – instead the four stayed in the Kyoto home of two youthful-looking 73-year- old twin sisters. Aside from Wayne, who had visited Japan while touring with the Royal Ballet, it was the first time in the country for all of them and they were blown away. ‘It’s unbelievably clean,’ says Bobby. ‘Even the toilets are amazing – you can press a button to warm your feet.’
Wayne was struck by how fit the eld- Wayne in the Japanese city of Kyoto erly were. ‘In the mornings they broadcast keep-fit exercises on a speaker on the river bank. I talked to a 70-year-old lady who’d just taken up a martial art called Iaido. It sometimes feels like things close down for older people in the UK; they open up more in Japan.’
For Rosemary, it was the respect for the elderly that stood out. ‘Everyone we met was so kind and there’s mutual respect between the generations. They still have jobs for the over-sixties as they think people are worthy of it.’ Indeed, Wayne and Rosemary tried their hands at work, with Rosemary going to the kitchen of a sushi restaurant and Wayne waiting on tables – not very effectively, it turns out. ‘My Japanese is nil so communicating wasn’t easy,’ he recalls. ‘I was told to say the words “washing machine” very fast twice as it sounds like their greeting!’
It must be said Bobby didn’t get on with the cuisine. ‘Most of it’s not for me,’ he says. ‘A lot of it was awful – dandelion leaves and raw octopus.’ Even Rosemary found it ‘a bit much’.
In fact, while all of them loved Japan, India still exerts a grip on their imaginations. ‘If I was looking for somewhere to spend a few months a year, India’s the place,’ says Wayne. ‘Japan’s beautiful and the people are lovely but it’s very different.’
For Bobby, there’s no place like home. ‘In India you can live comfortably on a pension and you have the weather. In America you can live well if you have money,’ he says. ‘In Japan they look after older people but there’s a language barrier. There’s a lot of things we don’t appreciate at home – we have a lot to be thankful for.’
‘Florida was hideous, and there were a lot of ghastly people too’
The Real Marigold On Tour, Tuesday 27 December and Friday 30 December, 9pm, BBC2.