The Dyers’ Caravan Park - Danny Dyer Q+A

Danny Dyer has a lot of fond memories of spending his summer holidays in a caravan – and now he’s ready to bring it back for The Dyers’ Caravan Park.

Recruiting daughter Dani to work alongside him, Danny is using his cheeky East End charm (and his wallet) to inject a bit of life into Priory Hill Caravan Park in Kent.

Will he be able to put his training with Harold Pinter to good use? Or will some hard graft crack the geezer before the first week? We’ll soon find out.

Speaking ahead of the series, Danny talks about his successes and failures on the site, why he decided to take the project on, and his date with an older woman on the beach…

I’ve spoken about caravan holidays over the years; I’ve sort of romanticised going down to Canvey Island with my nan and granddad and my cousins. It was a real family thing in the 80s. I was approached because I love caravans so much and was asked if I fancied investing in a caravan site and try to help run it. I was like, “F&^% no.”
And then I sat back and thought: ‘maybe there’s something in this.’ I said, “if I do it, I’d like to get my daughter Dani involved because I think we have a real chemistry, and I love being around her.” It was a wonderful opportunity for me and her to spend the summer together, so I just thought: ‘F&^% it, let’s do it and see if there’s still something in a caravan holiday.’

I’m very frivolous with money and I wanted her to rein me in a bit and be a fresh pair of eyes – otherwise I would’ve built Disneyland there or something. I decided to personally invest in the park itself - but then I started to get very excitable, and I didn’t realise how expensive everything is.

The thing about this generation is the caravans need to have Wi-Fi so everyone can play on their iPads. My whole thing about caravan holidays is you don’t need technology. You can just go down there, get your bikes out as kids and all ride around. You walk along the sea wall, get fresh air in your lungs, and do all the things that I feel this generation of kids don’t do anymore. They’re just sat looking at TikTok all day. I find it so depressing that they – and we’re all guilty of it – don’t know how to communicate with each other.

What I will say about this caravan site is you do hear kids playing and laughing. There’s a sense of community.

Oh yeah! Jimi and Alex who are brother and sister had this caravan site passed down to them – it’s been in their family for 50 years so they take it very, very seriously and it’s struggled since Covid. There’s management there – Darren, Paul and Mark – and this is their livelihoods, so you’ve got to win them over.

We turn up with TV cameras and obviously with me and Dani being famous, they had a perception of us, so we were like, “Listen, we’re not just here to make a TV show, we’ve come here to really try and make a difference.” I had to get my hands dirty to prove to them and Dani that we’re fully committed.

Yeah, all that. I was scrubbing khazis, cutting grass, just the everyday jobs. I mean you’ve got to change the bins of a caravan; that’s a f&^%er. One night, I do the bingo, and you don’t understand how f&^%ing intense doing the bingo is for these old girls. It’s really important but it’s also really difficult because they’re very superstitious. They like their numbers read out at a certain pace, not too quick, not too slow. They sit in the same seats every week. I made the mistake of sitting in somebody’s seat and it nearly kicked off.

I’ve got to say reading out these bingo numbers was more nerve-wracking than doing Pinter at The National. I just about got away with it.

Well, I had to sort out the entertainment, and I won’t give too much away but I made some calls. I had to get some people down there and raise awareness for the club house because we need to sell booze and you’ve got to keep it exciting and not have the same acts over and over again.
They have a lot of tribute acts on caravan sites and they’re all talented people, but I had to try and get some big guns down. So, I went through my phone book, and we had an amazing ‘80s night.
The reason we did ‘80s is because I’ve got a moustache at the moment because I’m shooting Rivals, so I thought I might as well put a shell suit on – and what a night it was!

I’m not going to lie, it was pretty petrifying those first few days, and I didn’t quite know what I was walking into. I didn’t really have a clue about how the site was being run and it became a bit of a public hanging for the staff. I thought a couple of hands would go up and it would be, “Can we cut the grass a bit?” But they wanted change and a lot of it was impossible – like an outdoor swimming pool. I had to sit back and go, “What is possible here in this amount of time?”

The residents are incredibly working class; they have so much charisma and can tell a story. I love the old girls on there – there’s two women called Lyn and Pat that have been going down there for 30-40 years. They’ve all got a Rothmans hanging out their mouth, they love a bit of bingo, they love a drop of vodka, and I sort of miss that a little bit. It reminds me of my youth quite a lot. So, yeah, we had some real characters.
I really did mean everything I said about wanting to change things and give them the best summer they’ve ever had down there – and I really feel I’ve potentially achieved that.

Again, I wanted to do it my way – add a little bit of humour to it. I couldn’t believe they used to do this annual event and then it just stopped. There’s some really big stuff with Jimi and Alex talking about their dad Michael who was the energy of the place. He was that caravan park and then he died and, of course, they’re still grieving – they loved their dad very, very much.
I was very touched when they said I brought that energy back and I just thought, he loved the inaugural sports day, so let’s bring it back but let’s do it my style.

Yeah. When you watch the show, you’ll understand it’s all the same caravan park but they’re on the opposite sides of the road. One’s full of chalets [Priory Hill], one’s full of caravans [Nutts Farm], and they don’t like each other very much, which is very odd to me. So, I thought I’ll bring them together by basically putting them against each other, and it worked!
Everyone put in so much effort. All the kids wanted to win their egg and spoon race and win free slush puppies for a week, and the grandads won a week’s worth of fry ups.

Yeah, and we did have a little date on the beach front, and it was a very pleasant evening. We drank prosecco overlooking the sea in Leysdown.

We do go there later in the series. I test the water because I think it’s important to understand what these water companies are doing – they’re pumping s&^% into our seas. I think we’re one of the few countries that must pay for water. They charge us to drink water, and they charge us every time we flush the chain – and they’re pumping the s&^% and p&^% back into the sea.
There was a lot of stuff we learned about these coastal towns and why they’re struggling so much. They get no support from the government and there’s no encouragement to have a British holiday – so everybody f&^%s off to Magaluf because it’s cheaper.

We had an end of season party and there was a lot of tears actually. It was really heartwarming to hear that some of the people have really enjoyed having us down there – because I didn’t know how it was going to pan out. I didn’t know how people were going to react to me. Maybe we were getting in the way, maybe people were p&^%ed off with us being there.
But, you know, I think my working-class roots and Dani’s semi-working-class roots – she left East London at nine which we do to wind her up about – I do feel these are my kind of people. Although I do live a very middle to upper class life now, my roots and my fanbase are very much working class and I’m very proud of where I’m from.
It’s important, especially now, to give working class people a voice, so I really hope this show does that.