Reality TV comes to quiet Fife village

By Cara Sulieman

A QUIET coastal village has been shortlisted as the setting for a new reality TV show, leaving residents worried that they will be manipulated to make good television.

Aberdour has been earmarked as the potential location for a new Channel 4 programme following four couples who are fighting to win a house in the picturesque village.

The 2,000 current residents would vote for the winning couple after they’ve lived there for eight weeks.

But villagers now say that they were initially told it the production company wanted to film a documentary – and that they knew nothing about the reality aspect.

Hotel turns into rescue centre

John Wallace and the "girls"

By Cara Sulieman

THREE little piggies destined for the chop after being sold to a Scots hotel so customers could enjoy home reared bacon have had a surprise stay of execution – after becoming firm favourites of staff and guests.

The Dryburgh Abbey Hotel in St Boswell’s, Melrose, bought the pigs – nicknamed ‘The Girls’ – at a local butchery to be reared then slaughtered on the 10-acre estate to help with ingredients for their speciality dishes, including smoked bacon foam.

But now financial controller Mark Wallace and colleagues at the 38-bed hotel set on the banks of the River Tweed are having second thoughts after getting too attached to the animals over the past 11-weeks.

So much so they have also now ‘rescued’ a clutch of 22 chickens from a battery farm that have been laying dozens of fresh eggs every day as they breathe new life into the walled gardens.