Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents: BBC3, 9pm

The lads/lasses holiday is a British institution. It is a chance for horny kids to leave their parents for a week and go bananas. It is also an opportunity to stay in a sh*tty hotel/mobile home/tent, get hammered every night, wake up at 14:00 and start the whole process again . For 17 year olds this is enormous fun. If you are really lucky you might cop of with a drunken, sunburnt hairdresser from Preston.

The pocket money paying for this teenage rite of passage has succeeded in remodelling the whole Mediterranean, transforming it into an adolescent paradise. It really doesn’t matter what resort you decide to visit these days; Kavos, Faliraki or Playa De Las Americas; they are all pretty much identical now. From Spain right through to Turkey, the coast has changed from sleepy fishing villages to tacky Brit pubs, McDonalds and vomit strewn streets of debauchery.

I had my own slice of teenage rebellion between the ages of 17 and 19 as I organised a 6 man trip to Canet Plage (defining memory: trying to pull to the sounds of Baby D’s Let Me Be Your Fantasy ), a 12 man trip to Sanguli (jumping into a fountain, puking up bile, ants in the tent, strutting my stuff at a male model contest) and an 18 man trip to Lloret Del Mar (talking camp security out of arresting some of the group). All of them involved booze, birds, scrapes and assorted high jinks. As a teen it has to be done. However, looking at the scenes in Malia it seems that things have ratcheted up a notch since my comparatively innocent generation.

Following the grand tradition of programmes where those less inclined to wave their penis about on the street can gawp with bemused fascination at the comings and goings of today’s holiday making youth (Ibiza Uncovered and UK Club Reps) Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents: BBC3, 9pm takes us on a weeklong bender with two groups of teens as they “let their hair down”. The twist is that their parents are also invited along to spy on the kids from discreet vantage points as the spew, pull and carouse their way around the town.

Why anyone would want to watch there kids get up to the sort of things defeats me but I guess they all got a free holiday out of it.

In the first of the series we follow the exploits of parents of 18-year-old Joe and Millie in Malia; a god forsaken hell hole in Crete.

Joe seems like a intelligent lad but things take a turn as on a drunken night out he gets separated from his group. Bare chested, dressed in a tutu and wearing pink nail varnish he is accosted by a couple of lads who seem to sexually assault him as they force him to snog one of them and simulate buggery. When confronted by this event in the cold light of the day Joe has no recollection of the encounter. When Joe’s Dad watches his highlights you can see the colour drain from his face.











In fact there is lot of “male bonding” in Joe’s supposedly straight group and there seems to be a lot of hand-holding, hugging and mock-kissing. What’s wrong with a good old fashioned hand shake? With that rugby club logic it seems the height of masculinity must be noshing off your mates in order to prove how heterosexual you really are.

After some drinking games lead to prolonged puking in a toilet Joe explains that he feels rejuvenated when he is sick and “can go again”.

On the second to last night one of Joe’s friends get smacked in the face by a random passerby for no apparent reason and has to have an operation that hospitalises him and stops him flying back with the others. It’s all in a weeks fun when you are with the lads.

Millie’s group were much more innocent and despite a bit of innocent flirting with the water-ski instructor (nicknamed “Adonis”) which peters out when they don’t instantly fellate him and some drunken late nights no one was filmed legs akimbo in the middle of Malia high-street. Millie’s over-protective Mum is forced to admit that perhaps her daughter is becoming a woman and can be trusted to leave the nest without getting murdered.

Perhaps the producers wanted to show that not all teens are mindless hedonists. I venture that show would have been more eye-opening with a lot more sex and filth if the producers had selected a couple of chavs rather then some well-bred middle class darlings and it wasn’t shown on BBC3. Perhaps they are saving that delight for a cable channel.












A couple of moments really made me LOL. First was Joe stocking up on Pot Noodle from the local English shop in order to save money for booze. As he isn’t a complete pikey he decides to spice up this culinary delight with some frozen mussels but he doesn’t know how to cook them. The kindly hotel owner gives him a recipe but he decides it is too much hassle.

“The good thing about Pot Noodle is that it has spices, chicken and sweet corn all mixed in it already”

To take things further he pours the gruesome contents from the pot onto a plate as to his eyes

“It looks more gourmet”

The second hilarious moment is when the nervous parents walk down Malia high street on their way to one of the clubs and whilst witnessing the carnage around them a random guy pulls down his pants in front of the camera, tucks his knob between his legs and shouts

“LOOK AT MY MANGINA”

Surely a place on the Malia Tourist Board beckons.