Dani and Danny Dyer’s big caravan adventure

It’s sheeting down in central London. Hyde Park is an empty, soggy, muddy mess. Valiant snowdrops and crocuses, bent in the wind, are rare pops of colour in this grim greyscape. It’s exactly the kind of day when you want to escape the UK for… well, anywhere else, really.

And yet here, plonked side-by-side in a static caravan parked in a rain-filled gutter near the royal park’s Victoria Gate, we find Danny and Dani Dyer, trying to flog us what they’re calling ​“the Great British holiday”. For the purposes of a new TV reality show, the actor, 48, and his TV presenter daughter, 29, have teamed up to try reboot and revitalise a beloved but embattled ​“resort” on Kent’s Isle of Sheppey. They’re putting their reputation on the line – and their money where their mouth is – in a heroic attempt to persuade us to sack off Ibiza and vacation closer to home. In a caravan.

This is The Dyers’ Caravan Park, and it’s Danny’s way of leaning into both British nostalgia and the East Londoner’s own family heritage, into memories of childhood holidays ​“down the van” on England’s southeast coast.

Danny admits that when he was approached with the idea by a TV producer, he was initially reluctant. This is made apparent in the series, which begins with him cocking about at last year’s BRIT Awards, presenting an award to Chappell Roan when he should have been opening ​“his” caravan park for the season, meeting the owners, staff and long-term residents for the first time.

As one disgruntled punter puts it, Danny’s no-show crystallises their thoughts on the former EastEnders stalwart: ​“This man cannot run a bath.” And his new business venture? Destined to fail within a month.

“I’m a very busy man, and I’m doing some wonderful work, acting-wise,” Danny explains of his failure to turn up at the start of his own show, talking as he nears completion on filming on the second series of Disney+ TV series Rivals. ​“I’m fulfilling all my juices. So when this guy came and put this [idea] to me, I was like: ​‘No, not for me. I do love the idea of caravans. But do I want to invest in them? Not really. Have I got time to do it? No.’”

Then, in the middle of our conversation, with Danny squished up next to his daughter on a couch in this caravan – hired for the day by Sky – the power fails. We’re now sitting in the gloom in a rain-lashed mobile home. Wish you were here? Hardly.

So, Danny: why run a caravan park?

Danny: We’re all a little bit nostalgic at the moment, thinking about the good old days, considering how fucked the world is. So I thought, why not do it? But I can’t do it without Dani. We’ve got a unique relationship. We’ve got a podcast together, we’ve done stuff together before. I feel that I needed her – because caravans are about families. It’s about socialising with your family all together. Cousins, aunts, uncles, nans, granddads. So, we need to come at this as a family. Not just me on me Jack, fucking about. She actually reined me in quite a lot, from my very frivolous manner. I do tend to spunk a lot of money on shite.

Like, as Dani reveals in the show, an old man’s drawer.

Danny: A dead man’s drawer! But there could have been an old coin in there worth [something]. But there was fuck all. Coupla thimbles and a harmonica. Bit of gob in there as well. Or was it gob? Old man’s spunk…?

Danny’s nostalgic about caravans because those were his holiday experiences as a kid. I’m guessing you, Dani, didn’t do so many of those holidays?

Dani: I wouldn’t say I did them as much as my dad done them. But when I was about 12, 13, my best friend had a chalet on a caravan park. So I used to go down there for a week in the summer holidays. It was my first freedom away from my family. I absolutely loved it. And there wasn’t social media or anything back then. It was just us going around all day long. We’d wake up in the morning, have our bacon baguettes. I absolutely loved doing that. It’s just simple. You’ve got your arcades, your clubhouse, the entertainment…

Danny: There’s a lot of snobbiness isn’t there, though?

Dani: You’ve got to take it for what it is and have a laugh. You hear so much laughter when you’re walking around, from the chalets, the caravans. That’s what it’s about. Not standing on a table with your bottle of Grey Goose.

Danny: There’s not enough working-class voices on the television at the moment. So this is a very working-class British show. That’s why I’m really proud of it. Some of the characters in this show, you don’t see on television. And they need to be on television, because there’s a lot of charisma. And there’s powerful matriarchs, strong older women. And geezers as well.

There’s something about it that says to me, [something] that’s quite comforting, that the backbone of this country are the working classes who have been forgotten about… And listen, they didn’t give a fuck about the cameras, by the way. There’s no one playing up to the camera here. This is people just being themselves. And they’re all funny as fuck.

This time last year, Danny, when you were meant to be opening the caravan park, you were instead having it large as a presenter at the BRITs.

Danny: I was, but I’d also been shooting Rivals. It’s a 10-month job. I’m very nearly finished there. But I was doing five days a week in Bristol, coming back and then getting picked up on a Saturday to go to Leysdown [on the Isle of Sheppy]. A bit ratty, I’m not gonna fucking lie. With a moustache. An angry man with his belly hanging out and a fucking moustache, trying to run a caravan site – it’s good television, I don’t give a fuck what you say.

Dani: Who did I call you from An Idiot Abroad? Karl Pilkington!

Are you really on the hook for some dough here, or is it all Sky’s money?

Danny: Oh, no, you can’t do these things and say you’ve put money in without putting money in. And also, it makes me a little bit more serious about it. This is a gamble for me. But there was only so much I was allowed to spend legally.

Dani: Otherwise he would be bankrupt.

Your dad, Danny, appears in the first episode, talking about having a tourer caravan back in the day. You and your dad’s relationship is complex, to say the least. Was that another throughline in this for you: connecting with good memories of the old man?

Danny: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he’s old school. It’s [old school] masculinity, and he doesn’t open up about his feelings. But it was important to have him in. Because he is the man that introduced me to caravans. We had a diddy little fucker he paid 300 quid for. It had an awning on the side of it. I love my dad. He’s an important part of my life. We make mistakes, and I think it’s important to acknowledge it and try to be a better person for it. Instead of living in this world of complete cancel culture [where] if you do fuck up, you can be completely elbowed from your industry. Depending on what it is, of course.

But what is life? We’re not here that long. You’ve got to learn from mistakes and grow as a human being. And ultimately, just be a kind, gentle, considerate human being. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? Bring up decent human beings. I haven’t done a bad job with you, darling, did I?

Dani: You did alright. I fleed the nest.

Danny: Fleed it? Or flew it?

That point about cancel culture and living in a social media bubble, Dani: your dad gets away with saying what he says because of who he is. But with your generation, you’re very much in that world. Do you need to police yourself more carefully in terms of what you say?

Dani: He is a lot more opinionated. He knows a lot more about politics than I ever would. I’m waking up and my telly is CBeebies. I wish I was a little bit more educated when it comes to that sort of stuff…

Danny: It’s pretty simple, darling. Most politicians are cunts. It’s not that complicated. There’s a lot of virtue signalling going on as well. People going: ​“Oh, I’m just gonna jump on this bandwagon…” Listen: I don’t like to entertain social media. I use it as a promotional tool. If you meet me in real life, we’ll have a conversation about what I feel and what my feelings are. But for me to talk about stuff on social media, purely for that reason – I can’t be fucked.

What is social media? It’s basically reading other people’s inner thoughts. But really, our thoughts should be kept to our fucking selves. It doesn’t work. Because all it breeds is hatred and division. And if these social media companies could come together instead of just worrying about sponsorship and money, they could really bring us together somewhat. Instead of algorithms.

Dani: The algorithm – it listens to your phone, doesn’t it?

Danny: It’s fucking listening to us! The amount of shit I get put up [on my feed] – [it’s] consumerism. Testosterone pills to try and get rid of me tits. Or a hair transplant.

Haemorrhoid creams?

Danny: No, I’m alright for haemorrhoids to be fair.

The Dyers’ Caravan Park is on Sky One now