NFAMOUS BUST-UP WITH A CHAIR AND SUING THE BBC
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women and children ve for a year on the island for a social staway 2000 project. islanders, including gle, as they built their nity, grew their food, up their own school. d an idyllic existence. on, who had fled after d his life was wrecked. r, he said: “When we staway, no one really on was. an outgoing, friendly soul of the party. On n such a bad way that were bullied at school ated in a supermarket. w, I had people spit on me and it got to the ant to leave the house. eality TV shows that her, the X Factor and wo former contestants
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Ron, who took his collie Charlie with him to the island, was devastated when his dog died and quit six months early.
But when the series aired, watched by more than eight million people, his life changed overnight.
Ron, who was the only openly gay islander, said: “Charlie had been my best friend and constant companion for 13 years.
“When she took ill, I took her to a vet on the mainland. She was diagnosed with advanced cancer and had to be put to sleep.
“I was devastated but the following day one of the production team presented me
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“Offering sessions of counselling after the show is finished is like putting a plaster on a deep festering wound.
“There should be real help available – free counselling for at least a year.” Ron hasn’t yet decided whether he will join the former islanders and production team at a reunion on Taransay this summer to mark 20 years since the show was made. But he knows he will return one day. He said: “Charlie is buried on the island and when I die, I’ve left instructions that my ashes should be put beside her.”
Roxanne Pallet