It’s February in Britain so ‘tis the season to get booking your summer holiday. With E4’s Gap Year – Tom Basden’s comedy-drama about a motley crew of travellers exploring Asia touching down on the channel this month and bringing us some much needed winter sun, the C4 press team thought we’d share some holiday memories. There’s Delhi belly, New York City cops (and cheesecake), lashings of cringe-worthy, toe-curling cliches. Enjoy our holiday horrors dear reader! 

Benjie Goodhart, Press Site Editor 

I travelled round India for six weeks in 1989. I had my passport and all my money stolen on a train. Then I got typhoid and amoebic dysentery while swimming in a lake in Kashmir. By the time I returned to Bombay, I was too weak to stand. I remember them trying to get some liquid and sugar into me by giving me a bright green lemonade-type drink called Limca. Moments after drinking it, I had the same bright green drink emerge from, ah, lower down, and it was still fizzy in the toilet.

I went into hospital, where none of the nurses spoke any English. Every time I asked for a commode to crap in (which was so, so often) they brought me a cup of tea instead. The only book they had in English was a philosophical work by Jean-Paul Sartre. After a few days, a man was brought in to the bed next to me. He was 87 and had had a stroke. They didn’t think he’d make it. He was released from the hospital before me. I missed the start of term because I was still in hospital. It was the start of my last year at school, and I was to be made head boy, and read the lesson in Westminster Abbey, a great symbolic moment in my young life. Instead, I was on a hospital bed next to a man who had the worst flatulence I have ever encountered, before or since.

Kate Conway, Factual Entertainment, Features, Formats, Daytime, Education and Music press

I was sleeping in a dorm with bunk beds while in Byron Bay. On the first night the English Gap Year kid in the bunk above me brought a girl back and proceeded to have vigorous and vocal sex above me all night. The following night he got so drunk he peed himself and I had hot wee dripping on me through the mattress. I left Byron Bay the next morning…

Marion Bentley, Factual and News & Current Affairs

I was in Aiya Napa, or it could have been Falaraki, and had met the love of my life, whose name was [REDACTED] on a bar crawl. After one too many fishbowl cocktails, I decided to grace him with a goodnight kiss, but first I needed to freshen up a bit so he couldn’t taste the kebab I’d just inhaled. I scrambled into my cockroach infested ‘apartment’, into the bathroom, couldn’t find the light switch, so reached for what I thought was the toothpaste and toothbrush in the dark. Started brushing my teeth when after a while felt the toothpaste was a little cement-like, furry, and tasted rank. I stumbled out into the light to see that I was brushing my teeth with Immac hair removal cream. Should have just settled for kebab breath. Pure class over here...

Lesley Land, Factual Entertainment, Features, Formats, Daytime, Education and Music press

The one and only time I ever flew Ryanair I got in a verbal fight with a particularly hideous passenger over his revolting children who kept kicking my seat and the cabin crew had to restrain me and tell me that if I didn’t shut up they would ensure the police would be waiting for me at the gate when we landed back at Gatwick and I would be escorted off the plane first in handcuffs (hey, at least I’d be off the plane first…)

Victoria Gillespie, Group PR Lead – Corporate 

I once left a nightclub in New York in the small hours with a massive need for cheesecake. I spotted a police car and asked if they could point me and my pal in the direction of the finest cheesecake establishment known to man. They offered to take us to one in Brooklyn and pick us up again when we were done so we hopped in. On the return journey, we were stuffed with cheesecake when they were alerted to a shooting nearby - with the ‘shooter’ at large! The blue lights started up and off we raced. They then spotted the fiend with the gun, yelled ‘GIRLS, STAY DOWN AND STAY IN THE CAR!!!’ like we were tempted to get out and join in - and ran out of the car waving their guns and yelling! They managed to wrestle the guy to the ground (from what we could see ducked in the back of the squad car!) and then we had to wait in the thick of the chaos for back up to take the guy away as our friendly NYPD chaps had to explain that they already had two pished Brits on board following a cheesecake mercy mission. 

Harpreet Gill, Factual Entertainment, Features, Formats, Daytime, Education and Music press

I found myself in an interesting situation on a family holiday in India. For the return flight we had standby tickets, it was a super-busy time of year and were unlikely to get seats for a day or two. To make sure I got back in time for school my dad bribed someone (naturally) at the check-in desk to get me on the next flight out. Bribe secured, I was about to travel by myself for the first time, the check-in agent had allocated me a seat, as I boarded the plane it turned out the seat I’d been allocated was in the cockpit!

After a very cool take off and seeing all the lights of India twinkle from my cockpit view of the country, the captain of this Lufthansa flight turned to me and asked how my training was going. ‘My training? Oh I’m not training, I’m just… I’m just a member of the public…’. I saw the look of fear in his eyes as he called the air hostess, and ordered her to find me any other seat in the aircraft. Turns out you have to be air-crew-in-training to have a seat in the cockpit. I was a bit shaken to find out that I was in a ‘high risk’ situation but the staff managed to find me another seat. Oh and I was 13 at the time….

Donna Mathews, Group PR Lead – Content and Programmes

Back in 1999, in Ayia Napa, my mates and I were chased out of a restaurant and down the street (full pelt) by an angry chef after my friend innocently found a pubic hair in her moussaka. 

A few hours and a few Malibu and cokes later we took revenge by ‘rearranging’ his outdoor furniture and updating his menu boards to include the chef’s special, ‘pube-ssaka’

Ryan Davies, Drama, Comedy and Acquisitions press 

I got a little sunburnt in Peru once… and spent the rest of the holiday comparing my skin hue to the surrounding environment. The evidence:

Whilst travelling in Borneo I had what rates as one of the best experiences of my life, swiftly followed by one of the worst. My then boyfriend and I stayed at an orangutan sanctuary. That evening we were offered a night wildlife walk and a visit to some of the younger orangutans in the nursery. As we were looking at some of the toddler ‘tans we came across a beautiful 7 year-old who had been released into the wild but wasn’t so keen on independence. He seemed to crave human affection and I was ecstatic when he cuddled up to me. Serious life high point hence blissed out face.

Eventually the ranger insisted we move on. He had to forcibly remove the orangutan and myself but off we set on the walk. I had been warned about the various creepy crawlies and snakes in the jungle canopy so had sensibly opted for long trousers, shoes, and a long sleeved top. What I hadn’t banked on was the leeches. Or the possibility they could drop down my v-neck top. Moments into the walk I felt the first attach it itself, then another and another. I could feel them moving across my chest and stomach. Accompanied by a ranger, it didn’t feel appropriate to rip off my top or make a scene, plus I was really enjoying the wildlife (flying foxes!!) so, apart from hissing various obscenities about the situation I made it calmly back to the hotel. It was only when we got back to the room and I stripped that we realised the extent of the infestation.

Literally dozens of leeches had suckered on, leaving bloody trails across my torso and legs – and horror of horrors, one was busy burrowing under my pants. My indomitable stoicism evaporated as my boyfriend heroically flicked them off with a stick then captured them as they jumped about the room, flushing them down to the loo. Despite being a qualified doctor, even he turned a little pale when he discovered the extremely inflated one that had gorged on a large vein on the back of my knee.

Leeches finally removed we headed to dinner where I gently bled throughout both courses, the little critters having left anti-coagulants in each of the tiny wounds.

Gap Year touches down to E4 this February. View the trailer here (opens in a new window)