Ben Fogle revels in the romance of ‘van life’ — until nature calls . . .
TAKE a stroll around the suburban streets where I live and there are dozens of them — old furniture vans with doors in the side, converted ambulances, Ford Transits with windows and curtains.
They park in rows for months on end, usually on the wider roads but sometimes on narrow residential streets. Since the start of the pandemic, their numbers have boomed, and usually the inhabitants keep to themselves, making no noticable noise or mess.
This is ‘van life’. For some, it’s a permanent way of life. For others, it’s a short-term fix: one young couple told me last year they were living like this till they could afford a deposit on a flat. They befriended a resident who let them use her bathroom.
Ben Fogle was experiencing the romantic side of van life, on New Lives In The Wild (Ch5). He stayed with 51-year-old divorced father-oftwo Paul, who balanced a part-time factory job in Louth, Lincolnshire, with adventures on the road.
One summer morning, he and Ben sat on the roof of his ex-army truck, ‘Millie’, drinking tea and looking out from sand dunes across the North Sea — no one else for miles around, just seals and gulls.
Inside the van, Paul had a double bed to himself, plus room for his sons to stay at weekends and, to make the place homely, decorations fixed in place: ‘Velcro is your friend,’ he explained.
Then they set off for a meet in the Peak District with other middleaged nomads, stopping on the way for an afternoon’s sword-andshield practice with a Viking re-enactment club.
By the end of the hour, this nonstop holiday lifestyle was in danger of failing its MoT. Freezing rain turned their impromptu campsite to mud. Worse, the lack of toilet facilities was starting to tell.
One woman, Vicky, said she used cat litter, disposing of it in public bins. Horror stories like that are one of the reasons that many householders mistrust the van folk and are only too glad when they move on.
Inevitably, the sight of people taking something for nothing is another gripe. Paul cheerfully declared that one advantage of living on the roadside is that he pays no council tax. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t seem worried about spending more than £100 a time to fill up with diesel.
even Ben, who has lived off-grid in the outlaw shacks of California’s Slab City, expressed reservations about the legality and practicality of all this. He’s too polite to criticise, and too kind to pass judgment. But on an island without the empty plains and deserts of america, he struggled to see how long the authorities could ignore these vans.
a truly toxic lifestyle was uncovered in TikTok: Murders Gone Viral (ITV1), a sordid story of blackmail and sex behind a layer of fake glamour.
Mahek Bukhari, aged 24, and her mother, ansreen, from Stokeon-Trent, posted inane dances and flaunted their make-up on social media, living the life of wannabe celebrities.
But when 46-year-old ansreen’s toyboy lover Saqib, 21, threatened to expose sexually explicit photos of her, they lured him to a supermarket carpark before ramming his car off the road. Saqib and his friend Hashim died in the crash.
There were touching tributes to the dead men from fathers and brothers, though nothing was heard from any women in their families.
aside from this, the documentary had no insights to offer — just an inventory of the facts from detectives, as though they were giving evidence in court, and a chilling glimpse of Mahek’s police interview.
She lied, then changed her story and told different lies. Perhaps she just can’t help it when there’s a camera.
RECYCLED LAUGHS OF THE NIGHT: Comedy channel Dave fills its schedules with old BBC shows like QI, plus a few originals such as David Mitchell’s Outsiders. Now that’s being reused . . . on BBC2. It’s no classic but I suppose it’s eco-friendly.