Tourist trap

A NOISY midnight dip in the hotel pool is followed by tourists Tom and Holly disappearing upstairs hand in hand “for a party of their own”, in the words of the narrator of Coach Trip.

So what happened next? Tour guide Brendan is determined to find out. On behalf of viewers, you understand. He takes the direct approach, knocking on the door of Tom’s room early the next morning.

He finds a half-naked Tom, but no sign of Holly. So he hotfoots it to the room allotted to her and friend Taryn. Holly appears at the door to deny anything happened the previous night.

“They’re not telling, but we’ll find out,” says Brendan.

He has plenty of time to keep digging as the coach and its passengers are spending six weeks visiting 30 cities in the series that’s currently forming an unmissable early evening double bill with Come Dine With Me.

This may be trash, low-cost reality TV, but it’s addictive. Coach Trip offers these European holidaymakers the chance to vote off people they don’t like. Geoff and Anne lasted only two days, as the first night’s yellow card was swiftly followed by the second night’s red card – and a ticket to return to the UK.

Romance and rows are the staple diet of the show about the British abroad.

The morning after the night before, Holly and Taryn are giving Tom and his mate Matt a makeover. Or at least painting their nails and putting make-up on their faces. “I think I look like a ponce. A pretty ponce, but a ponce,” says Tom.

Brendan, a born performer, is the man who holds the trip together. He has his hands full. There’s the couple that “want to wee everywhere they go – I think they have wee-itis”.

And there’s the complaints with which he has to deal. Cutbacks at C4 seem to have led to cheaper hotels than in previous series. Even Brendan is moaning about standards.

One woman refuses to stay in her room because it’s so small. You can see her point as she has to turn sideways to get through the door.

There’s not a lot Brendan can do, apart from giggle hysterically, when they visit a pottery factory and the tourists have a go at making cheeky ceramic bird whistles. It proves a minefield of innuendo, involving such instructions as “that’s what you’re going to blow down”.

Each day ends with public voting. This is where it gets nasty. Everyone tries to put on a brave face if the others vote for them to leave the trip, but you can tell from their expressions they’re upset.

They say: “We still like you the same” and: “Thank you, no problem”, but you know they’re really thinking along the lines of: “I’ll vote against you tomorrow”.

IN Come Dine With Me, the backstabbing is usually done to camera when the contestants are talking on their own. Except, this week, hostility has been in the air from the start as the five strangers cook for each other.

They include “PR princess” Amii, who likes older men, doesn’t like fellow contestant Sabrina and declares: “I so want to win because I don’t like losing.”

She’s not looking forward to eating the Persian feast prepared by Sabrina, the events organiser she has previously described as “hideous”.

Surveying the menu, Amii tells us: “I think after having eaten this food I am going to feel quite sick.” This is swiftly followed by: “There’s a lot where she can slip up and I hope she does.”

The big surprise is that she admits to finding the meal fantastic. By the end, she’s done a complete about-turn. “I don’t have a bad word to say about her,” she declares.

Presumably because she used them all up in previous episodes.

It’s left to Greg to turn nasty, berating one and all. Amii has switched her hostility to him. “He’s boring,” she says. “He brings nothing to the table.”