EastEnders star Danny Dyer, despite his long-held affection for caravan holidays, initially rejected the idea of reviving a holiday park for a new Sky One series.
However, the 48-year-old actor soon had a change of heart, enlisting his daughter, Love Island’s Dani Dyer, 29, to help transform Priory Hill in Leysdown, Kent.
Their mission, documented in the new six-part series The Dyers’ Caravan Park, is to restore the site to the kind of vibrant destination Danny fondly remembered from his 1980s holidays.
The father-daughter duo faces the challenge of revamping the park, improving its business, and winning over sceptical residents and staff, all with the aim of breathing new life into the British holiday tradition.
Ahead of the series release, both Danny and Dani have reflected on their personal experiences with caravan park holidays, the dynamics of working together, and the significant importance this project holds for them.
What is it about caravan parks the evoke such memories for you?
DANNY DYER: That’s all I ever knew as a child; that was our holiday every year. It’s a very working-class holiday. I would hang out with my nan, grandad, my aunts and uncles and cousins, it’s such a beautiful thing for me.
And it wasn’t about money. It was just very simple.
Weirdly, I went back to film in Canvey Island recently, and there was tarmac on the beach, how f****** depressing is that. So there’s tarmac and then the sea.
But when I was a kid, it wasn’t all that. It was a bit pebbly. My brother and I used to walk along the sea wall because you could see the little arcade at the seafront, and we’d have a handful of change in our hands.
They were very simple days that I really do miss. So I thought, with the might of Sky behind me, let’s see if we can make caravans interesting again to some people, with my firstborn child, of course.
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Dani, why do you enjoy working with your dad so much? What was it like filming this series with him?
DANI DYER: We have worked together quite a few times. We’ve travelled around Italy, and that was one of the first main things we did together. We’ve also done Gogglebox too.
We get on so well. The filming days can be really long sometimes, but we just make each other laugh, and we get each other through it. I think we both bring something so different to the show. And like I always say, he’s like, a bit naughty. We have to rein him in a little bit.
He’s very cheeky, but the residents love him, and I think it was so lovely for them to be around him and us, and bring something different to the caravan park. It’s just easy. It doesn’t feel like work when we’re together. He would say something different.
DANNY DYER: No, we’re just two Danny Dyers trying to make the whole thing work. I needed her to calm me down a little bit because I struggle to run a business, trying to juggle a lot of jobs at once. So this was the only time we could do it.
I was in Bristol most of the week, and then came back and did the lay-downs on Saturday and Sunday. So it was sometimes quite difficult to always be happy.
DANI DYER: We always knew when he was moody.
DANNY DYER: Well, it adds to the show somewhat, because I am slightly wacky about it, but I really want to do the right thing. It was a baptism of fire because we didn’t have a f****** clue what we were doing, and it comes across. But I think we got a few things right as well. It’s a comforting show to watch.
This is a big investment. It’s quite high stakes. You really need to want to do something like this?
DANNY DYER: If you want to get involved, get involved. I’m very frivolous. S*** with money. But I was spunky and ready, which is not a good motto to have. That’s why I needed Dani by my side to rein me in slightly. I didn’t know how much these things cost, but we do talk about it in the show, how expensive everything is now. Look at how much butter is, Lurpak is seven quid.
DANI DYER: But he has two open Lurpaks in his fridge.
DANNY DYER: You can tell how much a man is earning by how many Lurpaks he has.
You are showing an aspect of British culture that isn’t always seen on screen. Why was that important to you?
DANNY DYER: I think not enough working-class voices are on television. And this is a very, very British show. People are also struggling with what being British is, at the moment. But these are real characters, and without them, this show doesn’t work. So you’ve got Dani and me trying to do the right thing.
But these characters, they take their caravans very, very seriously, as they should; they spend a lot of money on them. It’s four and a half grand a year for ground rent, but they want one of the best holidays they possibly can. So they got over having two famous people minting about pretty quickly.
DANI DYER: We would walk in with cameras, and probably some people did think, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen now?’ But they all warmed to us.
Dani, did you go on caravan holidays too?
DANI DYER: Yeah, I went with my friends. That was my first teenage holiday, and my first bit of freedom, really, being able to just go up to the clubhouse and go over to the pier, and just be with my best friend. I felt like an adult at 12.
The Dyers’ Caravan Park comes to Sky One and NOW on Tuesday, February 24
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