Rescuing a bat-infested French chateau ... that takes British pluck!
FOR THOSE who didn’t fancy the footie, there was an obvious alternative — the spectacle of plucky Brits struggling against the odds in France, and finding it tough. Former Celebrity MasterChef finalist Dick Strawbridge and his fiancee Angel are renovating a 45room derelict castle in the Loire region, on a budget of nothing, unable to speak the lingo, and with a baby and a toddler to distract them.
Most property makeover shows are a superficial business, but Escape To The Chateau (C4) is a renovation project on a seismic scale.
The only reason the Chateau de la Motte Husson hasn’t fallen down is that, being French, it hasn’t got round to it yet.
This five-storey folly has been derelict for 40 years: when Dick and Angel moved in, there was no running water, no electricity, no heating, cracked window panes held in place with sticky tape and a colony of endangered bats roosting on the top floor. The bats are protected tenants — they can’t be evicted.
The voiceover kept describing Dick as a retired Army colonel, neglecting to mention that he is also a well-known TV presenter on BBC shows such as Coast. Presumably, Channel 4 execs refuse to admit that other broadcasters exist.
Dick’s a gung-ho DIY enthusiast, the sort of chap who isn’t afraid to knock through a 3ft stone wall or wade into a moat in search of a sewage outflow. But what really qualifies him for this job is his enormous moustache, which would do Asterix the Gaul proud.
His girlfriend is a designer and a fan of retro decor, which is convenient since most of their furnishings haven’t looked their best for more than a century.
She goes into raptures about the mouldy wallpaper and the rusting bannisters, and vows to return them to their former glories, but you can’t help feeling she’d have a better chance of bringing an Egyptian mummy back to life.
The schedules are crammed with property programmes — it’s almost impossible to buy a place, fix it up or redecorate it without a film crew on hand. Amateur architects are converting everything from greenhouses to theatres into family homes.
Mostly, the problem with these shows is that the results rarely look habitable, let alone saleable. And that’s true here — a fairytale castle might sound enticing, with its pinnacled towers and moat, but the reality is toxic debris and infestations of vermin.
The real attraction of Escape To The Chateau is not the gothic building, but the couple who bought the dream. Dick and Angel are likeably eccentric, lovey-dovey one moment and bickering the next.
When he’s cross, he calls her ‘Angela’. She flatters him by pretending to be stupid and letting him do the explaining, but all the while she’s wrapping him round her little finger.
The locals think they’re mad for buying the place, let alone paying the full asking price. They plainly intend to exploit them in every way possible: Angel’s efforts at haggling in the market, for example, simply drive prices up. But doomed as they are, you can’t help rooting for them.
While Dick, Angel and (most of) our national football teams are trying to get a foothold in Europe, many other Brits are rather keen to get out. Comedian Russell Kane was attempting his own dramatic version of Brexit, as he tried to escape from special forces in Poland, armed only with his mobile in Stupid Man, Smart Phone (BBC2).
This juvenile, cheapskate series has become something of a shamefaced treat for me. It’s coarse, it’s rigged and, with its fixation on YouTube videos and Twitter debates, it is certainly not aimed at my age group. I know it’s rubbish, but it makes me laugh.
Kane was hiding in a deserted concrete hellhole, once used by the Red Army for urban warfare exercises. His internet followers offered survival advice, on building a fire with steel wool and ninevolt batteries, and cooking ancient tinned meat.
‘Can’t imagine Bear Grylls putting up with this,’ Russell grumbled. ‘He would have hunted himself a wild Spam.’ What Bear wouldn’t do, of course, is laugh at himself. Maybe that’s why I like this show.