Reality TV star Mark Wright, his brother and his dad embark on a UK adventure that they’ll never forget
A Wright Family Holiday Thursday 8.00pm BBC1
Kirsten Lester - 9 June 2023
Fancy a road trip with former The Only Way Is Essex star Mark Wright? His brother Josh and dad Mark Senior did – and so did BBC1, which is why you can currently watch the trio waterfall-jumping, kitesurfing and generally high-jinksing around the UK’s most stunning holiday hot spots. The series is inspiring, uplifting and at times completely crackers – and here’s the inside track from the boys themselves.
Whose idea was this series?
Mark: It was mine! When Josh and I were kids, Dad used to take us around the country to watch us play football. We spent a lot of time together as a three and it hasn’t happened in the past 20 years. After lockdown, I realised I’d been very driven, chasing my dreams and not being present. Dad and Josh were also going through their own situations, mentally. Dad lost his brother to Covid and was in hospital with it himself. I wanted to show him that it didn’t mean the end of his life. Josh was thinking of retiring from professional football, so it was about introducing him to new experiences.
Mark Senior: I didn’t think the show would happen, but when it did, I wanted to know what we’d be doing. I was told nothing until five minutes before each activity, so most of the time I was in shock. We were skydiving, downhill cycling… I was refusing, but for the boys’ sake I did everything. It was daunting.
Josh: Dad’s first response to whatever was thrown at him was: “I’m not doing it. Forget it.” But in the end, after some convincing, he always did…
Tell us more. What was the biggest challenge?
Josh: Going down the Victorian slate mines in Snowdonia. We were a few hundred metres down for 24 hours and knew we couldn’t turn back. With the bungee jumps and the skydives, there’s a buzz and it’s over quickly. With the mines, getting to where we spent the night down there and being cold, wet and tired was hard, but fascinating.
Mark: It was hell – petrifying. And it was physically tough.
Mark Senior: For me, it was the bungee jump in Scotland – there are no words to describe how I felt. There was no time to prepare, which is probably how I got through it.
Mark: Watching Dad do that bungee jump was one of the scariest moments of our lives. His body went floppy and we were panicking that he’d had a heart attack. The crew were on standby with a defibrillator. He’d passed out, but he was OK in the end.
Hardly a relaxing family holiday, then?
Mark: The thing is, this trip showed us how beautiful the UK is and that you don’t have to get on a plane to make memories. Travel makes you feel euphoric; away from the day-to-day slog, you’re relaxed, enjoying the moment. It’s great for the mind. It helped us – three alpha males – open up as a family.
Josh: It really showed us how important it is to get things off your chest and not to let them build up. We all noticed how much better we felt after we’d opened up to each other.
Surely you must have driven each other a teensy bit mad with all that driving?
Mark: Nah, not really. That said, you pick up on people’s irritating traits in the car, such as noisy eating habits.
Mark Senior: The car journeys were a real laugh. I was showing them the sights, the history, but they were bored to tears.
Josh: Everywhere we drove, Dad would say, “Look at that, it’s blah blah….” Even if he didn’t know what it was.
Mark: We obviously prank our dad a lot, and in the Peak District he fell asleep in his tent, snoring loudly…
Mark Senior: It was midnight, by the way, so I was in bed.
Mark: We got a pin and pushed it through the tent into the side of his blow-up bed, then ran back to our tents. Once it went flat, we heard, “Josh! Who’s popped my bed?” It was so funny.
Mark Senior: It wasn’t funny for me, I can assure you.
Is there anywhere you visited that you would rush back to?
Mark Senior: I’m going to take my wife to every place we went; wonderful locations that I never knew existed. I can’t wait to get back in the car. Pitlochry in Scotland was fantastic – lovely people. We’ll start there, then drive down to Northumberland, which is amazing.
Josh: I would say Scotland, too. It was a massive eye-opener. The mountains, the views and the lochs are so different from where we live and grew up.
Mark: The Peak District and Snowdonia. But honestly, we just had the time of our lives everywhere, and made memories we could only have dreamt of. We feel very privileged and grateful that we got to do something like this – we don’t take it lightly, you know? And it’s brought our dad back to who he was before Covid.
Fancy a road trip with former The Only Way Is Essex star Mark Wright? His brother Josh and dad Mark Senior did – and so did BBC1, which is why you can currently watch the trio waterfall-jumping, kitesurfing and generally high-jinksing around the UK’s most stunning holiday hot spots. The series is inspiring, uplifting and at times completely crackers – and here’s the inside track from the boys themselves.
Whose idea was this series?
Mark: It was mine! When Josh and I were kids, Dad used to take us around the country to watch us play football. We spent a lot of time together as a three and it hasn’t happened in the past 20 years. After lockdown, I realised I’d been very driven, chasing my dreams and not being present. Dad and Josh were also going through their own situations, mentally. Dad lost his brother to Covid and was in hospital with it himself. I wanted to show him that it didn’t mean the end of his life. Josh was thinking of retiring from professional football, so it was about introducing him to new experiences.