Daily Mail

Carry on camping . . . but Johnny’s big dream is full of gaping holes

- CHRISTOPHE­R STEVENS Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping HHIII David & Jay’s Touring Toolshed HHHHI

JoHNNY Vegas un-leashed a surprising and apparently un-provoked attack on Jeremy Clarkson this week as his quirky campsite reality series Carry On Glamping (Ch4) returned.

Jezza’s amazon Prime Video show, Clarkson’s Farm, is ‘a set-up,’ he said, ‘and you can see that from a mile off.’ He added that comparison­s between the two were insulting to him.

i have no remit to defend Clark-son. He’s ugly enough to do that for himself. But Johnny’s six- part documentar­y, following his efforts to relocate the holiday business he launched in the first series, also has yawning holes in it big enough for parking a bus.

When Carry on Glamping began in 2021, Johnny was looking for a site suitable for caravan chalets made from converted coaches. He’d bought one on eBay, only to realise it was stuck in a shed on the Mediterran­ean island of Malta.

the lunatic tale of how he trans-ported the bus to Britain, named it after his mother, Patricia, and found a home for it with four other vehicles in a North Yorkshire field made entertaini­ng telly — and the site was fully booked within two days of opening.

But the rerun begins with Johnny packing up and leaving Yorkshire, with no clear explanatio­n for the urgency. He says he wants to expand — but why not leave the site open for another year while he looks for alternativ­e accommoda-tion? all we’re told is that he wants to ‘build on the success’ and ‘cre-ate an even better site’.

Meanwhile, the five mobile homes were being loaded up and taken into storage. We weren’t told where.

Equally, it made no sense that Johnny was filmed galloping all over the country with assistant Bev in search of fresh fields, before he’d made even basic inquiries about their suitabilit­y. a place in Sussex was rejected when he dis-covered it bordered land owned by the National trust, a spurious objection that could have been establishe­d with a phone call.

and he turned his back on mead-ows next to tV presenter Jimmy doherty’s wildlife farm in Suffolk, when he discovered he would have to hire a site manager — as if he imagined Jimmy’s animals were going to run the business for him.

i’m not questionin­g that the busi-ness is real, nor that it means the world to Johnny. His frequent tearful references to his late parents make it obvious that he’s trying to relive childhood holi-days and happier times.

and it must be exhausting to have amateur comedians con-stantly trying to compete for laughs. one man greeted him and Bev with the words, ‘You told me it was Peter Kay,’ then pretended to get him muddled with an Emmerdale star. Johnny was there to look at a derelict helicopter, with a view to buying and converting it.

He hadn’t bothered asking the price, which at 20 grand was nearly ten times more than he could afford. Clarkson would be justi-fied in asking: if that’s not a prat-fall set up for television, what is?

though it is also heavy with

HARD EVIDENCE OF THE NIGHT: Footage of cross-examinatio­n in a Scottish court, on Murder Trial: The Killing Of Dr Brenda Page (BBC2), was chilling. Part two airs tonight, and merely watching the face of the man accused of killing his wife is mesmerisin­g. Full review tomorrow.

scripted set-ups, David & Jay’s Touring Toolshed ( BBC2) is starting to fall into a deeply satisfying rhythm.

towing a mobile workshop that appears to be more for show than for use, Sir david Jason and Jay Blades were on the Scottish riviera at Portsoy’s traditiona­l boat festival.

they chatted to a team of female rowers who built their own skiff from a flatpack, though none of them had experience with carpentry before.

‘ We used screwdrive­rs,’ announced one woman proudly, ‘planes, countersin­kers, and the best one was a spokeshave.’ don’t laugh — they’re not just afloat but winning races.

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