Holiday disasters make for compelling viewing

TV Watch with Bernie Ni Fhlatharta

The great thing about watching programmes like Holiday Homes from Hell is the comfort of not being directly affected by the problem.

However, it was no joke for the victims of a £3 million scam in Cyprus covered in a TV3 programme on Tuesday.

My first thoughts watching it was relief that I hadn’t succumbed to buying a little holiday home in the boom years now that I hear about all the problems associated with homes abroad.

There were a lot of couples scammed by British businessman Ian Beaumont, who took money off people to build homes in Cyprus.

Incredibly, the man called a meeting of all these couples and promised them all he was going to sort it out, give them back their money and not do a runner as he was not a crook.

Well, the thing was, he lied as he had been convicted a decade earlier for a similar scam in Kuwait. Why didn’t any of these people Google his name before doing business with him, I asked myself.

Then there was the English couple with young children who built their dream villa on a mountainside in Greece. They filmed it on their first day. It looked beautiful. The children played on the balcony overlooking a valley and a little infinity pool. Lovely.

But two days into their first holiday, forest fires erupted destroying many homes and killing a local family of four who perished in their house. The English family had to take refuge in a taverna further up the mountain. But luckily for them the fire stopped short of their new home, which was by now standing in a scene that looked post Apocolyptic.

The same happened to another couple in Tenerife only their holiday home was destroyed.

Of course, when these disasters happen in a foreign land, the red tape for insurance etc is the real nightmare.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.