Stephen Mangan

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1:07Hello and welcome to the Travel Diaries podcast and to the season 15 finale. I'm your host, Holly Rubenstein, and here each week I'll be speaking to a very special guest about the seven chapters in their life's travel diaries. From their all-time favourite destination and their hidden gem to their worst travel experience and what's at the top of their travel bucket list, we'll be uncovering their adventures around the world and the travel experiences and destinations that have shaped their lives. Before we get started, I just wanted to say a heartfelt thank you for the support and love you've shown this season and of course a huge thank you to all of my fabulous guests as well and I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be pressing pause here on the podcast for a little while I'm about to have a baby as you might know literally any day now so I'll be taking a longer break than usual between seasons to focus on that for a bit and I'll be back with a few special episodes in the coming months that I've already got lined up so do keep an eye out and of course I'd love you to stay in touch too over on Instagram and TikTok.

2:19You know where I am. I'm at Holly Rubenstein. You know, I will miss you guys over the next few months. Let's get started though with today's guest because what a guest he is to close the season. Today I'm joined by the brilliant Stephen Mangan, actor, presenter, writer and someone with a truly adventurous travel spirit. You'll know him from a vast array of TV and stage hits, the split, green wing episodes, portrait and landscape artist of the year and most recently as the host of ITV's hit game show The Fortune Hotel filmed in the beautiful Caribbean which is back for its second season. Stephen is just such a natural storyteller and in this conversation we really get to go on a journey from long cassette filled car trips back to his family's roots and wild windswept County Mayo where he has 53 first cousins to body surfing at the Atlantic with his kids, sleeping under the redwoods in California, living on£4 a day while inter-aiding across Europe and living in an ultra-luxury hotel in Grenada in the Caribbean for a month.

3:25Stephen has truly embraced travel in all its forms. So let's get started. Here he is. Here's Stephen.

3:41Stephen Mangan welcome to the Travel Diaries podcast it is amazing to see you how are you I'm very well thank you very much thanks for having us I feel as though having done a bit of a deep dive into the Stephen Mangan life that you've done a lot of traveling I have done a lot traveling actually are you a keen traveler I really am yeah I I traveled a huge amount in my sort of 20s and 30s I mean even well even as a teenager I suppose very lucky I always was interested in going away I married and had children quite late so for a long time I was kind of free to you know it's much harder to say I mean you know as an actor I'd never did panto for example and if it ever got to sort of November time and I wasn't working over Christmas I kind of knew I wasn't going to get a job over that period so I would just go away and often I'd go to I'd look up where England were playing cricket and go there and watch England play cricket so you end up in some amazing places doing that they get they're always in lovely sunny climbs aren't they the cricket matches so you could just tour from one gorgeous place to another basically yeah well it's always summer um wherever you're going and it's always yeah I mean it's the Indian subcontinent or it's South Africa or it's Australia or the West India you know so it's yeah they're not shabby places to go and visit at all and the great thing about cricket is you watch four or five days of a cricket match and then there's normally 10 days before the next match in a different city in that country so you'd meet some people especially if I went on my own I'd meet some people we'd travel over land for you know a week or 10 days to the next venue and then you You know, watch cricket again.

5:25It was just a treat. Yeah, so nice. Well, obviously, we're going to be chatting today about the Fortune Hotel, which innately is going to inspire Wanderlust in lots of us. But we are also, while doing that, going to go on a journey through the seven chapters of your life's travel diaries. And we always go back to the very beginning to kick off with chapter one. And that is your earliest childhood travel memory. What would that be? Well, my parents were both Irish. They were from the west coast of Ireland, County Mayo, and both came to London when they were teenagers. And we would go back to Ireland every summer for a summer holiday.

6:05So, you know, back then, if you wanted to, I mean, there was no, planes were just far too expensive. So you would drive. You'd have to drive from London to Liverpool, which took five or six hours, get an overnight ferry from Liverpool to Dublin, which is an eight or nine hour ferry ride. arrive early morning in Dublin and then it was another six and a half hours from Dublin so it took a day and a half to get it felt like you're going to the other side of the planet I mean it really did go to Australia it just it just felt like an epic journey especially when you're five or six so I think those long long car journeys with my two sisters I've got two sisters Anita and Lisa who are both a little bit younger than me listening to cassettes we used to listen to Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin and all these fairy stories and this is pre-seatbelts in the back there just weren't any pre kind of any so you know we'd be lying you know across the back seat or even on the parcel shelf at the back of the car for hour after hour after hour listening to fairy stories and heading back to Ireland you know so that's that's my first memory yeah and and was that exciting did you look forward to the journey did that kind of evoke anticipation in everyone or was it a bit of a schlep I think there was excitement to start with but then very quickly that was superseded by boredom travel sickness hunger um you know so it was a mixture of excitement I mean I can still remember the smell of that cross Irish Sea ferry as you stepped onto it, as the cars loaded on and there was a guy there directing you to park an inch from the car in front and you'd get out.

7:55We'd have a berth, so we'd have little beds. I mean, it was really exciting and also tedious. It was all the same. As a child, you feel all those emotions at once almost, don't you? Yeah. I couldn't wait to get back to Ireland because my grandparents were there and my uncles and aunts were there and my cousins were there and there were beaches and the sea and you know it was just exciting I mean there was a ready-made I mean I've got 53 first cousins 53 53 my dad was one of nine mum was one of seven we were a big family and because my parents are from villages two miles apart you know they were all concentrated

8:30Stephen Mangan: in that one small bit of rural island wow so it really did feel like I mean everywhere you went people seem to be either related to you or knew who you were from a tiny age because you know you were from that part of the world and everyone knew my parents so yeah that's so nice so it's like a sense of homecoming every time you went there exactly and I I still go there I mean if I'm going next week with my two youngest we I get over every year and my cousins all head back there's a there's a bank holiday in August in Ireland that that's the week we all tend to go back and it's still as exciting now as it was then but only now I can fly to Knock International Airport and drive an hour and a half and I'm there so it's a it's much less of a schlep.

9:15So can you paint a picture of the the specific kind of village that you go to? It's in County Mayo? It's in County Mayo my parents were my dad was from a little village called Dahoma and my mum was from a village two miles away called Tullahan Duff. Tullahan Duff was really small i mean it's probably a dozen maybe 15 houses um on the coast looking out across the atlantic towards akal island um dad's town was a little bit bigger i mean they had two pubs for example whereas mum didn't have any pubs two pubs a church and we would stay at my grandparents house often another one of dad's siblings would be there with their family so you know we would go down to the beach I mean it's this the beaches and the the surrounding countryside is stunning I mean it's quite bleak you know it's you're getting the full force of the Atlantic you are really right on the corner of Ireland if you look at Ireland there's a sort of I always think of it like a koala bear there's a sort of head which is northern Ireland and then there's a sort of a corner that sticks out in the top left hand bit which is where we're from right in that far corner so it's you know there are no trees because they just the wind will knock them down uh there are peat bogs that you cross to get there but when the sun is out it is the most stunning place on earth and they have these two mile long beaches that nobody is on uh so when the weather is good it's like heaven on earth you know sometimes you stick your head out of the back door and risk having all the hair on your head blown off because the wind is so fierce but often i don't know it's just it's beautiful um so it's really remote uh the stars at night are incredibly vivid because there's no light pollution um you're 15 miles from the nearest town bell mullet and even that isn't particularly big that's kind of two or three streets worth of of a town um so yeah it does feel and it's not on the way to anywhere else you know there's no passing traffic so you're not there's no one it's not thundering lorries there's no tourists that just happen to you either going there or you're not going there so it does feel like a little secret it feels like a kind of a hidden away gem that people just don't know about and it must be so nice to then be going there with your children like the next generation on a good weather day how would you typically you know spend a day with with them on say this trip coming up so uh there's some great body surfing to be done on the Atlantic side of this Black Sod which is a kind of peninsula that comes down on the Atlantic side there are two or three bays that are safe for you know body surfing if you you know you have to time you have to do it when the tide's coming in you have to be careful because obviously it's the Atlantic and you've got to be respectful of of how powerful it is but we might go body surfing we'll go down to the beach we will there's lots of canoeing oh lovely so lots of outdoor activities lots of outdoor activity they might go um it's the one used paddle boarding in the bay but then my uncles I've got three uncles who live on the same road along the side of the shore and so my children love the fact we live in the center of London but the fact back there they can say to me dad we're just going down to uncle Eamon's house and I'll be like fine and they'll totter off down the road by themselves which shouldn't be an exciting thing to do but unfortunately you know in london that just doesn't happen and the freedom they feel and that i felt when i was there because you're you've got a ready-made pack of friends you've got all these cousins or second cousins who are your mates and who you know you've got a gang who's just instantly you know that that you know you you can sort of plug into and and play with so yeah they'll enjoy the freedom of wandering up and down the road i'll you know visit people or um go for a walk there's some epic walks uh up on various points some cliffs so yeah there's plenty to do oh so lovely that's so nice to just have a ready-made community to just dip in and out of whatever you want to i mean that's such a a privilege our second chapter chapter two is the first place that you fell in love with aside from the west coast of Ireland which obviously I guess captured your heart from the younger stage.

13:45Where then was so special next? Before I went to university I took a year, a gap year because I did better in my A-levels than I think anyone thought I was going to do. So I was then going to apply after my A-level. So I had a year in between. And I worked in London for a few months and earned enough money to go away to America for seven or eight months with my cousin, who's my dad's brother's son, but his mum was American. And we had all these addresses around America that we could go and stay. She had an uncle in Florida. She had a best friend in New Orleans she had another friend in Arizona we then met her someone there who drove us up to Denver we got trained from Denver to San Francisco and we stayed with her cousin in Northern California up in the Redwoods about an hour and a half north of San Francisco yeah Sonoma County it's called on the on the coast and it is to this day I think still the most stunning place I've ever been to I mean I was 18 it's got quite a hippie sort of vibe to it you know there's there's lots of you know people live among the woods we were camping in a field in a tent for I think two months um two months in a tent two months in a tent the weather is really yeah well it's the weather is really benign we were 18 we got a job working we were staying with a carpenter called Dennis and he basically you know got us some work doing you know some manual labor so we'd work during the day come back in the evening and sit outside our tent in the trees in the meadows these incredible tall trees with a stunning coastline nearby I just thought it was absolute heaven and I still think it's heaven and I still fantasize to this day about moving back there and living there really yeah Sonoma is beautiful and I think that you know typically tourists favor Napa which is like the neighboring wine country destination don't they um it's more famous but actually Sonoma's farm well not only have you got the Redwoods nearby but it's got that more kind of rugged authenticity to it but actually really now there are lots of quite swanky places you can stay there as well and boutique-y places too.

16:24Yes, and this is back in the 80s, I think, when it was slightly different. I haven't been there for about 15 years. But it did feel, because San Francisco is obviously a very wealthy city, and just north of it, across the Golden Lake Bridge, you've got Marin County, as you know, which is where they're super rich, kind of all have their places. And then Sonoma is a bit further out. It's a bit too far to commute to San Francisco, so it never quite... There's a lovely town called Mendocino, slightly further north which is again known for its kind of laid back I mean that whole coast you go up to Portland and Oregon and it's known for its kind of slightly liberal laid back hippie-ish nature innately relaxing destination isn't it just fantastic we had a strong hammer cup between two redwoods you know sometimes you'd wake up or there'd be deer nibbling the guy ropes of the tent And, you know, just in my mind, it's this absolute gorgeous, carefree thing.

17:18And when you're that young and you're doing something, you know, physical during the day, you know, digging or carrying stuff around, you know, very unskilled work, but physical work, you know, you really feel, you feel like a grown up. I think maybe that's what it was for the first time. I felt like I had a job and I was living this, you know, new life. I'd just finished my A-levels, you know, six months before. And suddenly here I was, you know, sleeping in a tent in the middle of a stunning place. Yeah, it just felt so exotic and exciting. Well, if you ever head back there, Stephen, one of my favourite hidden gem recommendations is an absolutely picture-perfect, idyllic Sonoma wine country house called Beltane Ranch.

18:12they make their own wine there there's you know cats sprawling on the porch and uh you know picnics among the vines and it is one of the most beautiful places i've ever visited so you need to add that to your list if you ever go back l 'altaine ranch wow and speaking of falling in love steven as we're in this chapter i have to address the elephant in the room you know that if you google steven manga now the first thing that comes up is is steven manga in a throuple

18:46really that's hilarious well i mean i was obviously because uh i did a play in the west end earlier this year when i was in the throuple in the play with nicola walker and erin doherty that's hilarious yeah i mean it just shows how the internet or the world kind of takes a bit of information and just slightly twists it into something else but yeah I did a bit scary whole play in the west end about being in a thruple uh which was eye-opening and also you know fascinating we got to meet quite a few people who were in thruples came to see it and would tell us no way how we were getting you know whether we're getting stuff right or not or um yeah so how did how did you kind of what advice did they give you no they just I think mostly they were like relieved that we weren't because of course the sensation you know it's not just about the sexual side of it it's also you know a throuple is really about the relationship uh so it's not a kind of one night stand kind of thing where you might end up in bed with more than one person it's about a sustained relationship uh with more than one person which to me i can't imagine myself ever but you know that's the joy of being an actor is you get to examine all these other different lives that you are not living and you know putting yourself in that situation uh in a in a in a theoretical you know way so yeah that must have been a really interesting one to kind of psycho analyze and pull apart as an actor yeah I mean and it you know a lot about throuple kind of makes sense you know because I think we do sometimes get different things from different people um i think i think possibly the the most confusing thing to me is you know it may work for one person you know they get but it's got to work for all three and that seems like a big ask but it clearly does we met people who have been in throuple for you know 30 years uh and we're very happy with the three of them together you know and and relationships are all i mean they're very complex and you know every kind of relationship is sort of a secret between well I was going to say those two people but possibly between those three people or those four people or five people or whatever so um yeah it was it was really interesting to sort of do a what if what if I was that actually was my life how would it feel and in the play my character couldn't get his head around it so in a way you know it was quite because I sort of can't get my head around it either so that all sort of worked out quite well so so interesting and of course you I mean you've had such a broad and varied career that this was obviously on the stage but you know we know you from tv from radio from from film where do you now all these years into your career feel most at home would you say oh I mean I still I think I would probably do nothing but theatre if I had the chance I just really really enjoy the occasion of it I enjoy the the interaction you know if you if you're trying you're trying to create a mood and whatever you're doing you're trying to you know you're trying to make people laugh or you're trying to move them or you're you're trying of grab their attention and you can feel whether you're being successful or not viscerally in the theatre you can you can feel it in the air you can hear them laugh or you can hear them on the edge of their seats you can hear a pin drop when you when you act on screen you know people are watching it months or years later in their living room and they may be loving it or weeping or crying with laughter but you don't know because you're not there you know you you get the response secondhand people come up to me and say I really enjoyed the split or you know I like this or that but there's something about the occasion the excitement of sitting in a dressing room and hearing the audience filling up a theatre and then knowing that you know you're gonna have to go out there and entertain them it's really exciting but it theatre is very tough on family life you know you're working six nights of the week you're out all day Saturday it's really hard to do that and have a marriage and children frankly you know because you're working three three boys three boys and it's very difficult to do that um and you know if you're away when everyone else is at home they're out all day at school and then the minute they get back you're off to the theater so you just don't see them and so I have to ration what plays I do very carefully what do you find that you get most recognized from ah that's interesting it kind of depends on what's been on recently I mean at the moment Celebrity Gogglebox has just been on the air so people are coming up to me about that and saying um that they watch it and or I suppose the split was seemed to really uh you know move a lot of people people were really into that show and I still get even though you know we filmed the last one over a year ago I think people still feel very connected to that show and what the characters in it yeah the fortune hotel was a big hit and people enjoy that people enjoy portrait artist of the year so yeah there's all sorts of things it depends really that's what I mean it's so varied I mean like we encounter you in so many different guises I mean I'm a big portrait and landscape artist of the year fan I think I've watched most of those series are you are you artistic do you paint no not at all I wish I was I'm so jealous of people who can and do me too I mean I think you know my job on that show is is partly to talk to the artists and sort of you know help them reveal what sort of people they are because we we we cast it for their art they're not there because they have a wacky personality or because they've got a terribly sad backstory or whatever they're there because they're good at art and so you get all sorts of people all sorts of personalities and it's my job to chat to them and put them at their ease and for people to discover what they're like but my other job is to be the person who doesn't know about art who doesn't know the art jargon who doesn't know art history who isn't it doesn't isn't familiar with the concept of negative space or tonality or whatever and to go I'm sorry what do you mean when you say that I just don't know what you mean I'm the sort of bridge between these experts and the public who might not have a degree in art history so yeah so do you ever find that they that the judges go for the one that you kind of least rate yourself because I feel as though like there's often like a quite a wacky artistic entry and I'm like I bet the judges go for that one but it's not like the one that's my taste you know because it's it's a bit avant-garde all the time I mean I very rarely can guess who they're going to go for and then it's my job to get them to explain why why they've picked a portrait that I don't think looks like the sitter why have they picked a landscape that looks like you know it just doesn't for me do anything and sometimes that's difficult because we look at paintings and you just like one painting and don't like another you know that's just the way we are and sometimes it's difficult to put into words but that's what we need to do is try and get them to put into words what it is about one painting that they enjoyed and another one that they didn't and I think it's part of the fun of the show is sitting there and you know people sometimes are throwing things at their telly and going, that other portrait was so much better.

26:33But wouldn't it be boring if everyone agreed all the time and just all went, well, that's clearly the winner.

26:42Stephen Mangan: Hey, it's your ceiling vent, so I'm dripping. Could be the rain, could be the upstairs bathroom. Yikes. You could hire the guy your neighbour recommended, but I'm pretty sure that's just his cousin. Do we know if he's licensed? or does he just own a ladder? Listen to your home. Go with Thumbtack. Upload a photo or voice note and we'll diagnose your project and match you with the right pro for the job. Thumbtack. We know homes. Hire the right pro today. I mean, you've gone all around the country for Landscape Artist of the Year. Have you, in doing so, discovered any real special spots that you weren't aware of previously that you would recommend people to travel to?

27:30Oh, all the time. And often it's, I mean, you know, we were in Derwent Water a couple of weeks ago in the Lake District, which is, of course, famously a beauty spot. But I hadn't been there for 40 years, probably. Wow, it is, what a stunning place. And we were there on a day where there was not a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind, just absolute still blazing summer day but there are all sorts of spots we were at dover castle this year we were at the aqueduct the viaduct in haywood's heath this is a really varied even somewhere like felixstowe the container ships coming in and out of that port these incredible mountains of containers uh it's stunning i you know we were at the full kirk wheel last week again not somewhere i knew about had heard about had ever visited no reason to go to what's that where is that fall kirk well fall kirk is in scotland between halfway between sort of glasgow and edinburgh and in 2001 they they had a there was a series of i think 11 or 12 locks connecting a lower bit of canal to a much higher bit of canal but over the years because canal traffic was so few and far between that they were they'd fallen into disrepair so in 2001 they built a revolving wheel uh which basically you know you a boat goes into the bottom bit and the boat goes into the top bit and the whole thing revolves and the lower boat is lifted up to the higher bit of the canal and the higher boat is revolved down to the bottom and it's astonishing it uses almost no power it's all done on kind of archimedes principle and gravity and gears and and it's this stunning piece of engineering um in a in a gorgeous setting up in falkirk so yeah it's um oh that's fascinating it's a treat it's a treat of a show to be involved in because you know we're constantly being my eye being open to the gems around the country yeah absolutely well let's let's pause there and move on to chapter three which is a place where you learn the most about yourself is there a place or a journey that that maybe helped you figure out who you were or what you wanted I think an interrailing trip just after I finished my a-levels we were on one of those we've got four pounds a day for food and accommodation and we don't have any more uh it's kind of trips again like your own race across the world yeah literally no resources no way of getting any more money so we ended up for example we went through Portugal I remember one night in Portugal finding someone who'd offered us a room for 50p each for the night but then we found somewhere else was offering it for 30p and it was basically a sort of trodden down bit of earth in their back garden with a corrugated iron cover so we're sleeping on the ground essentially outside and I found a small there's a small rise in the in the ground and we had we went out we had a few drinks came back I sort of used that as a sort of natural pillow and woke up an hour later covered from head to toe in ants I'd basically rested my head on an anthill in my nose in my ears in my mouth everywhere oh my god what and how were you were you okay oh I mean I just I got up and yeah completely freaked out it was actually trying to work out what was going on you know for a start but then we did that we ended up sleeping we ran out of money in France and we ended up sleeping on the beach at Nice for five or six nights uh getting hosed off by the police every morning at 4 a.m or they would have cattle prods and they'd come and they'd poke you awake with a sort of electric shock.

31:31Sleeping in a circle with our rucksacks in the middle. You know, so it was a kind of, it was a really, you know, about as low budget as you could possibly get without actually having no money at all. And I think, you know, I think I learned how to be, you know, I'd had a very fortunate upbringing. You know, we just were very, I was very lucky in the sort of middle class family. My dad was a builder and, you know, gone into business with his family and done OK. And, you know, we hadn't really wanted for anything. And I think it was just interesting to have to be suddenly to be left on your own and have to kind of try and work out how to survive.

32:08I mean, you know, we were never in any danger. I don't want to overplay it. I wasn't I wasn't living rough on the streets of London. But, you know, it's the first time I sort of learned to stand on my own two feet and kind of work out how to get through, how to make the little money I had work. It was a real eye-opening experience. And, yeah, it was great fun as well at the same time. Well, from, you know, Ant Hill Pillows to ultra-luxury hotels in the Caribbean. Yeah. You paid your dues. You paid your dues there. And now we are back for a second season of the Fortune Hotel, which must have been a hardship to film.

32:47Oh, well, I mean, it's November. We film it in November, which is not a month anyone minds missing in the UK, I don't think. So, yeah, we filmed it in Grenada, in the Caribbean. For four weeks, we are staying in the hotel that it's filmed in, the fortune hotel it's a luxury five-star place i mean about 31 degrees consistently every single day without fail the hotel's right on the beach i mean i could try and pretend it was a tough gig but that would be a stretch and it's and it's an exciting game show because we're obviously living the game show as it's going on you know when you film a drama on telly or a comedy you're often jumping around might film the end scene first and then you know you and it's all knitted together in the edit with this it's an actual competition that we are living through so we start with 20 well actually this time 22 people 11 couples and every night we lose another couple I mean the format of the show if people haven't seen it there are everyone gets a each couple gets a suitcase in the suitcases one of them has an early checkout card one of them has a quarter of a million pounds in cash and the rest are empty each night in the in the bar you get to swap you're trying to work out who's got the money who's got the early checkout card if you get the early checkout card and you're left with at the end of the day you're going home if you end up with the money at the end of the series you earn a quarter of a million pounds so it's the stakes are so high it's so dramatic so high and it instantly captures you I've seen the first couple of I've been sent a preview of the first couple of episodes so I was lucky enough to watch those and it sucks you in immediately it is a really compelling format for anyone who hasn't watched it so it must be so so exciting uh do you feel like you know when you're kind of like do you end up dreaming about it while you're there like because you're almost like living in this kind of parallel universe where this game is taking place the whole time well the thing is you you get to know the contestants and you really like, you know, and you know that the money can mean an awful lot to people.

34:58Yeah. It gets very dramatic. There are some scenes and some nights when I literally wonder if I'm going to, my heart's going to stop beating. It's so exciting. And you don't know what's going to happen. So you're sort of living it with them. And I'm very bad. I find confrontation or, you know, I want people to get on. That's my default setting. I'm not someone who relishes drama or relishes people fighting. I know some people really sort of enjoy that. And of course, a show like that lives on that kind of stuff. You want it to get exciting and dramatic. So I have to quell that urge in myself to go, hey, everybody's going to be all right, you know, because that's the stuff that's really thrilling to watch at home.

35:37And you're heartbroken for the contestants who get knocked out. You really are. And you, you know, yeah, it's and you genuinely don't know what's going to happen. And people, the way people react under stress is extraordinary. Some people suddenly have a clarity of focus. Other people just go to pieces and start making really weird decisions. It is so gripping. It is such a great show. I really highly recommend it myself as well. Also, the show is, as you mentioned, filmed in Grenada. And it really is like, you know, an ad for the tourist board, essentially. it's a love letter to the island it really shows it off so beautifully so now that you're almost an honorary local having spent two months there I guess a total how would you spend your a perfect day off in Grenada like what would be your recommendation well it is so hot I think I would get onto the water probably I would get a boat of some sort and maybe you know because there are so many beaches that you can just glide up to hop out of the boat uh find a shady bar and i mean you just don't want to be doing too much it's not one of those places where you want to be hiking around i'm a big runner for example i would never run outdoors there because you wouldn't make 50 yards without collapsing in a pool of your own sort of sweat so i would too humid it's just too hot so i think everything is geared to just taking it easy and you can see why it's such a great holiday destination it's so relaxing the light is incredible so I would find a bar that's looking west because the sunsets are utterly spectacular find a shady spot and sit and watch an epic sundown and then maybe hop on the boat just before the light goes and get taken back to wherever you're staying I think that's how I'd spend a day I'd get a book I'd get a book I'd sit somewhere shady I'd keep you know keep hydrated however however that you want to do that whatever appeals to you whatever your poison is and just don't do too much and did you get to enjoy the hotel itself because you know it's the fortune hotel I don't know if I'm allowed to reveal this I know it working in travel but it's when it's off duty it's the famous silver sands hotel it's one of the hotels that's on my bucket list known for its incredibly long the longest swimming pool in the the Caribbean isn't it I think long yeah did you get to enjoy the facilities and kind of like well I mean I know the tiny violins are going to come out for me everywhere but this hotel is not functioning when we do it as a hotel so the bar is not up and running the restaurant's not up and running because we're filming everything it's like a set it's like a set there are cameras everywhere so we are eating for example in the staff canteen uh me and the crew um and then all the kind of luxury because they've got these incredible three-bedroom bungalows with their own swimming pools they are taken over by the camera department for example so you know the three-bedroom bungalow will be or villa will be full of camera equipment and another one will have hair and makeup and costume in it and another one will have the producers in it and the production team or the editors so the whole place is like there are cables cables everywhere um yeah and we are sort of kept separate from the contestants in the evening and they're they're they eat together but then they're kept separate again because they want all the strategizing all the chat all the you know theorizing between them about the game to be done on camera so we're not missing anything so yeah it's not like uh the hotel is functioning as it normally would um but having said that you just step out onto the beach turn left walk 50 yards and there's a very nice run bar so yeah I don't think anyone's going to feel sorry for me for having to spend a month out there in November well we move on to chapter four which is the big one your all-time favorite destination where comes to mind for that today out of everywhere you've been it's so hard to answer that I mean I've traveled I've driven across the states twice I've been to Central America I've been to China I mean all those places have incredible things to offer but I think I mean it's all it seems like a cheat offering it up as a single destination am I allowed India as a as a yeah I think India of course which feels like a cheat because it's about 60 countries in one yeah so diverse so you go to some of the northern Himalayan regions you think of Delhi go down to Bangalore or I mean I've been three times to India twice to follow England playing cricket the first time I went we started they had a test match in Delhi at the end of the test match the England lost I hung around way after the game had finished I was pretty much the only English supporter left I think by the end or certainly the only white supporter left and a whole stand of Indians sang London Bridge is Falling Down at me which was hilarious and then I got to travel to Rajasthan and through Jaipur and all those you know down to Ahmedabad which again was its own whole thing and then after that test finished the next one was in Bangalore so I went down the coast through Kerala and to the southern bit of India it just it's just a worlds within worlds within worlds india is it's just uh you know it's one of those countries people say you could spend a lifetime exploring and you'd never touch the surface and it's genuinely true about india that it's um it's such a mysterious fascinating place i mean each of the cities you could probably spend a lifetime in getting to know uh so yeah i think india would be my all-time favorite destination whether you want a beach holiday you want to go to goa or kerala and just hang out by the beach and eat great food and sit on the beach whether you want to explore ancient cities or ruins or you go to the mountains or the yeah it's just it's just it's just too much to get your head around yeah uh so much an offer for somebody who hasn't been what would you say what would you recommend from the places that you visited would be like a great starting point to dip your toe in there I think Rajasthan is probably, you know, India can be, I mean, it's an easy place to travel in that it's set up very well for travelling.

42:17But it's not, it's an experience unlike any other, really. The sort of salt on your senses, on your sensibilities is, you know, it's a lot. It's a country. It's not a serene, well, it can be, it's very hard to explain because it's all so different. But if you want a kind of beach holiday, Goa, obviously, or Kerala would be the first places I would recommend. If you want to examine the sort of sights and sounds and beautiful, historical, then I think Rajasthan would be the place. Jaipur, Jaisalmir, those kind of cities. And the architecture, yeah. The architecture is amazing. They've got incredible histories.

43:01you know the the the the climate can be bearable you know if you go at the right time of year it's not too hot it's not too difficult to cope with i think some of the cities can be i mean mumbai is an amazing place to visit but again you know the traffic the noise the people it's it's it's very i'm you know it's very hard i'm finding it very hard to describe i think because it is so much and so complex i think your feelings about it are complex obviously you know this country has a has a history with india that is complicated uh you know that colonial thing ironically something which makes the country an easy place to travel to because everyone speaks english and uh you know for in that respect it makes it easy it's it's a complicated thing and i'm not this is not the place to get into the rights and wrongs of colonialism and it leaves you feeling all sorts of things that are sometimes bewildering and overwhelming and you can feel overwhelming as a place to visit it can feel too much almost but at the same time the people you meet the sites you see the kind of energy of the place now is a sort of really you know powerhouse an economic powerhouse you know a country that is developing really quickly i mean enormous as well so big it's very hard well i think it's up to is it two billion now or so in the population it's something extraordinary um you go down to bangalore and the kind of tech hub that that is and the and all that that means i found you could feel all sorts of you know you could find great serenity peace see great beauty you could be appalled by the poverty by the disparity and the wealth and the poor it's really stark there and it can be upsetting at times with some of the things you see um but the but yeah it's it's it feels like everything has been turned up to 11 all the dials are just turned up and up and up um that's the perfect analogy you get all the beauty overwhelming beauty you get some stuff that isn't so easy to stomach it's just extraordinary it's an extraordinary place to visit.

45:13It's a country full of hidden gems and chapter five is that your hidden gem, your best kept travel secret. Is there a place there or somewhere further, somewhere elsewhere that you think is underrated that you think people should know about? Well, this is a bit of a cheat because it's a hidden gem that is actually a difficult place to get to um a difficult place to be allowed in i was lucky enough to go there as a uh to do a travel program years ago is bhutan um which uh you know is a small himalayan country that has restricted for years the number of people who are allowed to go in there uh i went there to do a travel program and it's just astonishing and i think i think i haven't checked recently i think they're allowing more people from outside to go and see it but i mean even the journey there are hotels there are right and there are uh but there's still quite a high tourism tax so that limits the number of people that come into the country which i think is very wise yes to preserve it it's to preserve it i mean you even the journey there we flew from bangkok to get in there we flew past mount everest um you know literally look out the left hand side of the plane you'll see the peak of mount everest it's not something that you come across every day unbelievable flying into the into the airport in bhutan you know it's in the himalayas it's in it's in a valley you are the plane is literally having to follow the valley banking steeply, really steeply to avoid hitting solid earth.

46:58So even the journey in, your mind is already blown. But then this incredible hidden, it's been sort of preserved in Aspic almost, this country that hasn't been influenced. And it's very hard to find places in the world like that nowadays. that doesn't have coca-cola signs everywhere you go or uh or mcdonald's or mcdonald's um yeah it's it's stunning scenery um a feeling of great peace and a feeling that it's very hard to come across that you don't you know we we all think of ourselves as travelers and we don't want to think of ourselves as tourists we all feel that we're looking for that experience where we're seeing something that isn't that you know that hasn't been done a billion times before but of course it's impossible because I mean you know there are very few places now you you can go to you can google everywhere before you go we're not surprised anymore or it's more difficult to be surprised and Bhutan felt like a kind of a little hidden gem that I was incredibly fortunate and privileged to get to see.

48:16And the happiest, some of the happiest people on Earth as well. Absolutely delightful, joyous people, who I suppose haven't been, you know, a lot of places you go, they're having to deal with tourists in their thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. And, you know, you hope most people are kind and respectful, and, you know, but not everybody is. and it can lead people who live in those places that are tourist destinations. It can be tough to be dealing with the sort of traffic you get and the kind of people sometimes you have to deal with. So I suppose to find a place that hasn't been over tourist defied, if that's a word, you feel very lucky to have had a chance to go there.

49:06Yeah, very special place. Well, our penultimate chapter, Stephen, is chapter six. And that is a place that you would never go back to or your worst travel experience that sat in your mind till now. I think and often, you know, these things are. But I did find Morocco a difficult place to travel around. And I know a lot of people love it. And I've got people who live there, friends of mine who live there and say nothing. And I think maybe it was just the whole. I just found it, I think Casablanca, which has such great, you know, romantic connotations in my mind because of the film, of course, I found it a really difficult place.

49:46And it's interesting because, you know, you're not left alone in Morocco. People are constantly on you to try and buy stuff. And, you know, the same is true in India. You know, you're not left alone. I just found it a disappointing place. I didn't find Casablanca as, didn't feel my romantic notions of it. I found myself getting very irritated by the amount of hassle I was getting. So yeah, it was a bit of a letdown for me. I feel like the film Casablanca has a lot to answer for. They should have called it like Marrakesh or one of the other cities that is perhaps like slightly more aesthetically pleasing.

50:26yeah yeah so yeah so that was a that was a shame but you know maybe i'd go back there now and find it completely different but um there are you know there are so there's a big world out there isn't it there are so many places to see uh and sometimes like i said you just bring the wrong energy to a maybe to a holiday or you're expecting something and you just you know i think the great secret of traveling is to adapt you know to adapt your expectations to to go with an open mind and an open heart and to visit places and to take them on their own merits and sometimes you just don't and I didn't on that case so it's half of its I'm sure down to me.

51:04Well it has been such a joy to chat to you about your travel diary Stephen. We are on to chapter seven the final chapter of your travel diaries and that is the destination that remains at the top of your travel bucket list. Is there somewhere you're yet to discover that you're dying to visit? Oh Japan. I've never been to Japan I and my actually my eldest son he has a friend who's half Japanese and he's going there for a couple of weeks with him this summer and I'm so envious I just I'm not sure why I haven't done it I think perhaps you're having three children suddenly going on family holidays becomes quite a thing and our youngest is only nine now so you know the thought of when they we're younger taking a four or five year old on a on a long long plane journey always fills you with horror you know you don't want to it just feels like too much work so you tend to stay more local but I've just heard so much about Japan the cities sound fascinating the countryside the the trains the people the culture I mean I think what I'm looking for when I travel is somewhere really different from what I've experienced before I did I was lucky enough to spend some time in China when I was younger I had a friend who worked as a journalist in Shanghai so I got to spend some time in Shanghai and Beijing with him that's as close as I've got to Japan but Japan holds this sort of mythical place in my imagination yeah and even the food is just incredible that I've had here, you know.

52:43Yeah, so the whole thing, I think somewhere I'd love to go. The most popular all-time favourite destination choice by my guests on the podcast as well. Oh, is it? That's interesting. By a mile. So it will live up to your expectations when you get there. And I hope you get there sometime soon. I think nine, nine, ten is probably a good age to start contemplating it. He's ready. He's ready. Oh, thank you so much. Stephen Mangan those were your travel diaries it has been a joy to chat to you thank you thank you thank you well what a joy that was Stephen Mangan everyone the Fortune Hotel continues with its second season on Wednesday the 13th and Thursday the 14th of August on ITV1 and ITVX and you can catch up on the first few episodes of the series right now on ITVX and that's it from me for now as I mentioned at the start, I'll be taking a bit of a break as I prepare to welcome my baby boy into the world.

53:45But I'll be back with some special episodes in the coming months. And of course, a brand new season a little further down the line. Thank you so much for listening and for all your support this season. It honestly means the world. If you're new to the podcast, remember that you've got the whole back catalogue to discover over 155 episodes to keep you busy until I'm back with a new season. Until next time, everyone, take care. Keep dreaming of those adventures and safe travels.