‘For those who like that sort of thing,” said Miss Jean Brodie in her prime, “that is the sort of thing they like.”
And so to The Secret Life of the Holiday Resort (Channel 4), a documentary filmed last summer at Holiday World, the largest all-inclusive holiday resort on the Costa del Sol. The four-star complex spread over 2 sq km of sunny Spain caters for the sort of people who like that sort of thing, while the documentary caters for people who like watching this sort of thing – or at least those who are forced into it because there is nothing but the World Athletics Championships on the other side.
Holiday World caters for several thousand of the 8 to 10 million visitors Spain has every year. Three-quarters of its guests are British. Holiday World feeds them 10 tonnes of food a day – mostly variations on a carbohydrate theme. “They don’t like a lot of fish, vegetable, or to try Spanish food,” says Antonio on reception, carefully neutral. One of the guests, James from Preston, obliquely confirms this with the proud announcement that he brings his own loo paper from home and, a week in, has yet to finish even the first roll.
The programme has a misleading title because we see nothing secret whatsoever, unless you count the mandatory shots of the housekeeper checking the rooms after her cleaners to make sure they’re up to scratch. You do get occasional hints of the dark underbelly of the beast. A cloudy day, says one of the 500 members of staff, “does affect dramatically the way they speak to us”. But for the most part the staff present a united, rictus-smiling front.
But the rest of the time, we simply join the very unsecretly bickering children and exhausted parents (“Why’ve you got a face on?”) climbing on to sunbeds and into pools in desperate search of relaxation and enough food and drink to make the price of their package fortnight worthwhile. “We argue all the time,” says James’s girlfriend Leanne. “We didn’t speak for two days. We’re not speaking now.”
Only the lovely 10-year-old Danny relieves the tension. An irrepressible lover of “singing, dancing and acting!” he pirouettes his way to his table on pancake night. “When I get lost in it,” he sighs happily, “I get lost in it.” Pancakes and pirouettes – I’m glad someone has found the sort of thing he likes.