Down on his luck, Johnny Vegas was facing a midlife crisis. So he bought a bus on eBay and built a glampsite in the Dales…
Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping Wednesday 10.00pm C4
Ed Grenby - 1 May 2021
Heard the one about the comedian who said he wanted to run a campsite? The punchline is… he was serious. “It was my version of a midlife crisis,” explains Johnny Vegas. “The sports car thing is a bit ‘done’, isn’t it? So I bought a knackered old bus that’s been off the road for ten years and converted it for glamping.” But he didn’t stop there, and soon set about finding another four vintage vehicles and a field big and beautiful enough to accommodate them. (If you’re going to call it “glamping”, there’s got to be at least some glamour.) “Everyone told me it was a terrible idea,” he continues, “but they’ve always told me that. When I was going to be a priest: ‘Terrible idea’. A potter: ‘Terrible idea’. Stand-up comic: ‘That’s your worst idea’. There’s a scene [in Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping, which follows him on his two-year mission] where I’m at the pub with all my friends and family… and there’s not one person who believes I have a chance.” Reinforced by what he calls “positive stubbornness” (and a few drinks), Vegas “went on eBay at 2am one drunken, foolish night, and bought this bus. Not one in the UK, mind, but in Malta. If I’d bothered to scroll down I’d have found much cheaper alternatives here in Britain. But that’s not how I roll.”
It’s one of many missteps on the way to opening “Johnny’s Field of Dreams”, as it eventually comes to be named. Some are comical (prize bus crashes into barn… anguished pause… “Is that where you wanted it, Johnny?”) but others are heart-wrenching. In particular, there’s a scene in episode two where Vegas seems on the verge of tears. “The site we’d agreed on had fallen through. I’d just lost my mum, two years after my dad, so due to grief, Covid, being separated, away from my children and the fact I was starting to develop anxiety issues – I’d about had enough. I wouldn’t normally open up that much on camera, but it just came spilling out, and we left it in the programme because I’ve never been a fan of that TV documentary thing where people are like, ‘I’m on telly, so everything goes exactly to plan!’” He’s frank about how much the project means to him. “My career has been a bit unsatisfactory recently. I’d got to a stage, following [his role in BBC1’s Bafta winning 2005 Dickens adaptation] Bleak House, where I thought I’d get more serious acting roles, then there was a period where I planned to take a year out and only direct. But financial positions change. You have to provide for your family. I take great pride in that, but it meant taking jobs I wouldn’t have taken as a single man.
“I felt like I was on a treadmill, and it had been a long time since I’d done anything that inspired me or brought me satisfaction. As a stand-up you make your own work, but I’ve been sleepwalking, waiting for it to come in. And that’s why the glampsite became so important. It was something proactive. I had to work to make it happen, and that was a real boost, especially in lockdown. Friends say they haven’t seen me so animated in years – getting back into my studio, getting the kiln started up, making the tiles and glasswork for the bus.” Vegas gets plenty of help along the way, not least from his long-time assistant Bev, who introduces herself as “the Lynn to Johnny’s Alan Partridge” and is the quiet star of the four-part series. While working on the bus, Vegas was inspired by Joan Miró after being so taken with the Spanish artist’s output in Barcelona that he “started crying in the museum”. Describing the now-finished Maltese bus, he calls it “a work of art and thing of beauty”. None of that means there’s anything gimmicky about the site itself, though, which is located in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding National Beauty in the Yorkshire Dales. “It’s a field on a real working farm,” says Bev, “with sheep, cows, horses, chickens and, right now, about 100 newborn lambs. We’ve done up five vintage horseboxes as bathroom suites, and another will come at weekends to do wood-fired pizza. But that’s it, there’s nothing else there – just 360-degree views of the countryside.” What could be better than that? “Well, I’ve got another idea for our next project,” comes that familiar Vegas rasp. “Helicopter treehouses. The British Army strip them for parts, and you can buy the shells off them.” “Fine,” says Bev. “As long as they don’t come from Malta.”
Heard the one about the comedian who said he wanted to run a campsite? The punchline is… he was serious. “It was my version of a midlife crisis,” explains Johnny Vegas. “The sports car thing is a bit ‘done’, isn’t it? So I bought a knackered old bus that’s been off the road for ten years and converted it for glamping.” But he didn’t stop there, and soon set about finding another four vintage vehicles and a field big and beautiful enough to accommodate them. (If you’re going to call it “glamping”, there’s got to be at least some glamour.) “Everyone told me it was a terrible idea,” he continues, “but they’ve always told me that. When I was going to be a priest: ‘Terrible idea’. A potter: ‘Terrible idea’. Stand-up comic: ‘That’s your worst idea’. There’s a scene [in Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping, which follows him on his two-year mission] where I’m at the pub with all my friends and family… and there’s not one person who believes I have a chance.” Reinforced by what he calls “positive stubbornness” (and a few drinks), Vegas “went on eBay at 2am one drunken, foolish night, and bought this bus. Not one in the UK, mind, but in Malta. If I’d bothered to scroll down I’d have found much cheaper alternatives here in Britain. But that’s not how I roll.”
It’s one of many missteps on the way to opening “Johnny’s Field of Dreams”, as it eventually comes to be named. Some are comical (prize bus crashes into barn… anguished pause… “Is that where you wanted it, Johnny?”) but others are heart-wrenching. In particular, there’s a scene in episode two where Vegas seems on the verge of tears. “The site we’d agreed on had fallen through. I’d just lost my mum, two years after my dad, so due to grief, Covid, being separated, away from my children and the fact I was starting to develop anxiety issues – I’d about had enough. I wouldn’t normally open up that much on camera, but it just came spilling out, and we left it in the programme because I’ve never been a fan of that TV documentary thing where people are like, ‘I’m on telly, so everything goes exactly to plan!’” He’s frank about how much the project means to him. “My career has been a bit unsatisfactory recently. I’d got to a stage, following [his role in BBC1’s Bafta winning 2005 Dickens adaptation] Bleak House, where I thought I’d get more serious acting roles, then there was a period where I planned to take a year out and only direct. But financial positions change. You have to provide for your family. I take great pride in that, but it meant taking jobs I wouldn’t have taken as a single man.
“I felt like I was on a treadmill, and it had been a long time since I’d done anything that inspired me or brought me satisfaction. As a stand-up you make your own work, but I’ve been sleepwalking, waiting for it to come in. And that’s why the glampsite became so important. It was something proactive. I had to work to make it happen, and that was a real boost, especially in lockdown. Friends say they haven’t seen me so animated in years – getting back into my studio, getting the kiln started up, making the tiles and glasswork for the bus.” Vegas gets plenty of help along the way, not least from his long-time assistant Bev, who introduces herself as “the Lynn to Johnny’s Alan Partridge” and is the quiet star of the four-part series. While working on the bus, Vegas was inspired by Joan Miró after being so taken with the Spanish artist’s output in Barcelona that he “started crying in the museum”. Describing the now-finished Maltese bus, he calls it “a work of art and thing of beauty”. None of that means there’s anything gimmicky about the site itself, though, which is located in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding National Beauty in the Yorkshire Dales. “It’s a field on a real working farm,” says Bev, “with sheep, cows, horses, chickens and, right now, about 100 newborn lambs. We’ve done up five vintage horseboxes as bathroom suites, and another will come at weekends to do wood-fired pizza. But that’s it, there’s nothing else there – just 360-degree views of the countryside.” What could be better than that? “Well, I’ve got another idea for our next project,” comes that familiar Vegas rasp. “Helicopter treehouses. The British Army strip them for parts, and you can buy the shells off them.” “Fine,” says Bev. “As long as they don’t come from Malta.”
ED GRENBY