A true labour of Love
PICK OF THE WEEK: Country Strife: Abz on the Farm, BBC 2, Monday, 9.45pm.
ACK in the late Nineties, pop singer Abz Love was in his 5ive heyday. Jetting around the world, he and his band mates would play to packedout arenas, belting out hits like Slam Dunk ( Da Funk), When the Lights Go Out and Everybody Get Up to screaming crowds, while their faces adorned posters in teenage bedrooms up and down the country.
Then, in 2001, the band split. Years passed by, solo albums came and went, and eventually in 2013, the group partially reunited as a four-piece for ITV2’s The Big Reunion, which saw their pop peers Atomic Kitten, 911 and B*Witched also come back together for a national tour.
Since this brief reunion though, Love has swerved into a new career direction entirely – he’s become a farmer. Or at least he’s attempting to.
Together with his partner Vicky Fallon, he has upped sticks from their city dwelling to the Welsh countryside, where they are living off the land as novice farmers. They also invited the TV cameras to follow their attempts at embracing rural living and the results will be shown in BBC Two’s new three-part series Country Strife: Abz On The Farm beginning on BBC2 on Monday.
When the couple arrive in Wales the first job is to buy and renovate their very own smallholding. With a little help from their new neighbours, they take on a world of mud, rain, livestock and vegetable planting and learn what it takes to survive in the countryside on a shoestring.
Abz and Vicky are determined to realise their dream of self-sufficiency, but with plans bigger than their pockets and very limited farming know-how, will their ambitions and enthusiasm withstand the harsh reality of living off-grid?
“Moving to Wales was a complete shock to the system,” says London-born Love. “The house, the chickens, the horses, the foxes, the cats, the splinters, the leaks, the grass, the gates, the fence, the rain... This being said, I have met some wonderful people with beautiful insights. I currently love my life,” adds the 36-year-old, who also took part in the 2013 series of Celebrity Big Brother (he was runner-up behind Charlotte Crosby).
Love is not the first celebrity to have embraced the good life, but like many have discovered to their cost achieving the perfection of the rural idyll is not easy.
Tom McDonald, who works in the BBC’s Natural History department, says “Country Strife is a warm, engaging series following a charming, open-hearted couple try to live the good life against all odds – with no knowledge of country life, very limited funds and a series of increasingly outlandish ambitions and plans, Abz and Vicky are in for an often hilarious reality check as they touch down in rural Wales.
“Through their eyes, the BBC Two audience will get a real sense of what it really takes to make a go of the countryside dream.”