Fancy buying a holiday home? Just whack it on the credit card
Everyone winces when this month’s credit card statement lands on the mat. It’s a reminder of all those guilty impulse purchases — that meal out, the shoe splurge . . . or the property in Bulgaria.
Incredibly, British couple Simon and Philip confessed to presenter Julia Bradbury on The £10K Holiday Home (ITv) that they bought a two-bedroomed cottage in the east european coast of the Black Sea on their Barclaycard.
With grape vines around the front door and goats with bells in the neighbouring field, the two-storey house in a rural Bulgarian village set Simon back £7,000, in 2004. He paid off the card within four years, they said. It’s a heck of a way to get maxed out.
At first, the idea seems wildly extravagant and financially reckless. But credit card borrowing has risen steeply this year, which implies millions of families have paid for their annual trip to Turkey or Spain by putting the fortnight’s bill on tick. once the holiday is over, the money’s gone.
A property abroad can be a whacking great liability. There’s the upkeep, the local taxes, not to mention the hassle of letting it out. But how marvellous to know there’s a place waiting for you, any time you can get away, where the vino is cheap.
The £10K Holiday Home makes it look so easy that, after half an hour, I was left worrying about the hidden catches. True, Julia isn’t urging everyone to move abroad for good, with no thought of health care — unlike BBC1’s The real Marigold Hotel, which wants us all to emigrate to India.
And the tumbledown idylls she discovered in the Portuguese mountains, far from the fashionable Algarve, were gorgeous.
But when she bought a musty little two-bed house in a remote village for £5,700, there was alarmingly little thought about the practicalities.
Did it have running water or electricity? How far was it from the airport, and was there any public transport? I had immediate visions of a two-hour flight followed by two days on buses, to arrive at a derelict squat infested with rats as big as piglets.
Instead of answering these questions, the show wasted its second half by looking at ways to convert your caravan into an Americanstyle trailer home — something that not one viewer in a million will want to attempt. Still, Bulgaria on the never-never cards did look tempting. Imagine the interest charges, though.
It’s quicker and easier to go bankrupt in the Mirrorbel salon, where the four warring sisters who run the place will sell you a four-figure course of Botox, fillers and face peels before you’ve even settled into the fauxleather seats, on Age Before Beauty (BBC1).
What they can’t sell you is any semblance of a credible story. What started last week as a highly charged melodrama went into hormonal overdrive, where the only woman who wasn’t a full-blown psycho was Dayna, the superstar footballer’s fiancee. And I bet she won’t stay sane for long.
Bel (Polly Walker) knows for certain that her husband is having an affair. But instead of confronting him or chucking him out, she’s adopted a new identity and started stalking his mistress.
Meanwhile, her spectacularly unpleasant teenage daughter is telling everyone that it’s Bel who is sleeping around. And her mum (the wonderful Sue Johnston) is even more wanton and nasty.
Like another humdrum drama, Keeping Faith, this show would be much shorter without the musical interludes. For sheer silliness, though, it’s in a league of its own.