What's the Story/Balamory.

I’m sure that everyone has a special place that is dear to their heart: somewhere visited in childhood perhaps, or a place redolent with the memories of an old love affair. Maybe it’s just a particular pub that has an atmosphere that can’t be replicated anywhere else.

That place for me is Tobermory on the Isle of Mull; a charming village in a sheltered bay with a row of houses painted in different colours. I have happy memories of visiting the place with my parents as a kid and, in later years, decamping to the Fishnish Inn (colloquially known as the Pishnish) with some friends. It was a place that you could go back to year after year, secure in the knowledge that nothing much would have changed.

Alas, the BBC has changed all that. The tot’s TV series, Balamory, has resulted in a deluge of pre school munchkins, anxious to visit the ‘real’ village where their heroes, Miss Hoolie, PC plum, and Archie the inventor reside. It clearly reveals that the term ‘pester power’ is no media invention. Tarquin and Isolde are quite prepared to drive eight hours from Islington in order to walk along a damp and windy seafront with their progeny in tow.

The increased visitor numbers do bring in more tourist cash; but there is a big downside. People tend to visit for the day; they do nothing for the hotel and bed and breakfast trade. Worse still, they put off people who have come to Tobermory year after year. There’s not much peace and quiet to be had when the harbour is thronged with a congregation of screaming toddlers in pink cagoules.

One hotelier got completely pissed off with little kids asking if Josie Jump was in. He told one toddler that he’d killed her and buried her in the back garden. This reached the press, and there were howls of outrage at this display of gross insensitivity. Good on him I say. Someone needed to strike a blow for the poor downtrodden ornithologists and hill walkers who have seen their bucolic island bliss reduced to a fairground.