Bittersweet Infamy - #4 - Lapland New Forest

Episode Date: December 20, 2020

Holiday special! Taylor tells Josie about the world's worst Christmas village.

Hogtown, The Six, or Toronto. Whatever you call it, you can fly non-stop to Toronto on Porter Airlines. When you fly Porter, you'll enjoy free fast Wi-Fi, and beer, wine, and premium snacks included with every fare. You'll also love that our planes have no middle seats. Discover why Porter has been Eastern Canada's favorite airline for the last 16 years. Visit flyporter.com. Porter, actually enjoy economy. Hello, happy holidays, and welcome to Bitter Sweet Infamy,

the podcast about infamous people, places, and things. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso. And my friend Taylor is going to tell me a story. I don't know what it will be. The only rule, the subject matter must be infamous. So, Taylor, how are you? How are you doing? I'm feeling festive.

I'm feeling the spirit of the season just swelling around me as we sit down to tell a special infamous holiday story. Yeah, this is a little sneak, a sneak episode, a holiday, a cheery, sneaky, I don't know. Like a Grinch. It's a Grinch episode. It's a Grinch. It's a Grepisode. A Grep, if you will. We're both dressed like the residents of Whoville. Absolutely, I've got my nose pushed up.

I've got my hair up in a little topknot, and I promise that by the end of this episode, all of your hearts will have grown three sizes. Cool. Just knew it was telling you cool. Yeah, good shit, Taylor, get to the start. I don't know, I'm just saying. We're quite close to Christmas. Josie and I, Josie, you're a Christmas celebrator. Yes, I'm also a Christmas celebrator.

Yes, I celebrate Christmas, yeah, and you as well. But I mean in the sense that it is the holiday that I put up decorations for, but I celebrate all holidays and the existence thereof. Right, and I begrudgingly think about baby Jesus on his birthday. It's true, you've got to give big ups to baby J. So most of my cheers during this time, like, you know, cheers, it's like cheers to baby Jesus. Actually, yeah. That's good for you. Yeah.

You remember the reason for the season. That's all I do, yeah, that's it. I can hear, wait, I don't know if you can hear it in the background, but every day at 7 p.m., my next door neighbor goes around shaking a maraca, and she's the last holdover from the 7 p.m. cheer. Oh, good for her. A single maraca? Yeah. Not even two maracas. It's like a little shaker, it's like a little bean pod with some dried beans in it or something, and she shakes it.

Good for her. Yeah, no, she's great. Her name's Maureen, she's quite nice. Josephine, what's your favorite holiday song? My favorite holiday song is Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses. Okay, I've never heard this. Do you know that song? No.

Because it's like an 80s pop rock, and it goes like, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, but I'll think I'll miss this one this year, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. No. Really? No, never. Oh my gosh. Maybe the Waitresses didn't achieve peak saturation in Canada. That might be it. Oh gosh, that's so strange.

There's like a good drum beat through it. It doesn't sound like a Christmas song, it sounds like a pop rock song. Ooh, is there any sort of disco flavor in there? I'd say maybe a little, more on the rock side. But yeah, there's a little disco happening too. Are you just saying that because you feel bad that there isn't any and you want to put needies? Maybe. Well, I think disco has a certain Christmas vibe.

Like Christmas vibe as well, or at least holiday vibe. Like the bright, shiny, has a tinsel vibe. My grandma, the only Christmas tape, and it's a tape that she'll listen to, is a Boney M Christmas. Good for her. Do you know Boney M? Oh, I know Boney M. I used to tour with Boney M. I opened for Boney M.

Good for you. I think my favorite, like my two favorite Christmas albums are, I love Gloria, Stefan, Christmas. It's called Abriendo Puertas. Good. Parenthesis, Iserando Erias. Oh. Opening doors, Closing Loons. And then Gun in My Head, my favorite song, probably like Standard is Carol of the Bells, because it's the scariest one.

Yeah, that one is pretty freaky. Oh, those are good, dude. I also like Feliz Navidad for the simplicity. Too, too, too repetitive, too repetitive. No, it's simple. Because it only has the one, it has the one verse that might as well be a chorus, and then it has the chorus, and then it has the one verse. Feliz Navidad. Stop before we have to pay for the rights.

Stop, we still have to pay for the rights. Sorry. Jose Feliciano's lawyers are like hawks, they just listen to every podcast. Gotta get that Christmas money. That's true, if you're Jose Feliciano's lawyer. Yep, that Christmas money. Apparently, Mariah Carey's album, her Christmas album, she, the amount of money that she makes off of that, like, could fund a small island country. Mariah Carey is Christmas, man, and the thing about Mariah Carey, this is the thing that I really think sells Mariah Carey's Christmas albums, is that I buy it.

Like, I buy that this woman loves Christmas. Yeah, like, too much. Yeah. She has a Christmas room in her house that sells constantly. Yeah, maybe some sort of, like, Christmas-based, like, paraffilia, you know, like, it's a problem. But her problem is our victory, because we get to listen to the spoils. That's true. That's how that goes. Man, I wish now all these songs are in my head.

Well, let me drive them right out. Ooh, okay. Nice. That's right. You have a good holiday story for me. I have a good holiday story this week. You don't have to, you're not bringing any story. You just get to sit back and watch the madness unfold. How does that feel? I'm in the holiday mood, so I'm feeling that. That's mainly what I'm getting. I'm getting, like, a, like, soft hints of peppermint bark. Nice. A lot of cinnamon. Nice. And just, like, velvet. Like, velvet on my cheeks.

I don't like the feeling of velvet, but the rest of it, I'm there for you. You don't like velvet? It's too, it's too, it gives me, um, do you ever do the chivalries in elementary school? Dot, dot, line, line. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It gives me that. Yeah. I won't sing it, because, uh, copyright. Yeah, I don't want to pay for the rights. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Tell me the story. All right. So imagine me just opening up, like, a big storybook before I tell you this. Aw, can I be curled up on your lap? A little weird, but yes, absolutely. Okay, maybe, maybe, uh, a couch. A cozy, non-velvet couch. Maybe just, like, breathing, breathing softly on my neck. How about that? Yeah, okay.

There you go. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, Josie, uh, it's a hard reality is that COVID-19 has put a real wrench in our travel plans, but we can still travel using our minds, so close your eyes, Josephine. Okay. And let's take a little trip to the city of romance, the city that never sleeps, Ringwood endorses it in England. Wait, where?

So, uh, Ringwood, the city of romance. Ringwood? That sounds like ringworm. Like, I'm sorry. We've just lost our UK viewership. I'm sorry. Uh, so in 2008, Ringwood was the site of a most remarkable holiday miracle. Lapland, New Forest, a Christmas village where dreams really do come true. So, close your eyes again, because I'm going to describe...

They've been closed the whole time. Open them and close them. Okay. I'm going to describe Lapland, New Forest to you based on the advertisements that circulated ahead of the attractions opening. Okay. So, I want you to picture you and me bundled up, bundled up together, scarves and tuques. No velvet, isn't it? You can have velvet. I'm not.

I'm okay. It might make you feel weird. I'm no velvet. I'm okay. Thank you. You're so supportive. So, we've got some hot cocoa in hand, maybe some mulled wine or hot pretzels from the seasonal food market. What'd you get? Uh, I got some chestnuts. Oh, those look good. Hot.

Nice. Oh, they smell good. They smell good. We're now walking together through a magical tunnel of light enhanced by Hollywood-class special effects. It's so beautiful. You just want to reach out and touch it. What do you see? I'm just imagining small children having seizures, but... So, see that? And... No, this is... I also see...

Imagine if that's the only story you tell. This is just me looping back to the Pokemon story, yes. Yeah. Um, okay. I'm actually kind of seeing... You know that episode or that episode? That scene in the original Trinidad chocolate factory when they go into the tunnel. What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm trying to set you up here for a beautiful idyllic village.

Okay, okay. I see beautiful lights and they're twinkling. You see chickens getting decapitated and worms crawling over people's faces. I'm that kid from American Beauty. I just want to watch the plastic bags go by. Okay, so let's leave the tunnel of light behind because you've ruined that. Okay, sorry. As we exit the tunnel, we encounter some furry friends. Happy huskies and why? That's seven reindeer.

Maybe one of them has a bright red nose. You might have heard about him in a song before. Yeah. Oh, Josie, one of the reindeers trying to nuzzle up to you. Feed him a sugar cube. Is that a good thing for them to eat? Okay, yeah. Here you go, buddy. I'm never taking you to a Christmas village ever again. I'm so sorry.

You are ruining this experience to me. I've been watching a lot of, like, Hallmark Christmas movies that are really bad. And I just, I think as I'm watching them, they're so bad that I keep, like, running into these very contrarian ideas. And they're just ingrained in me. Well, I've got two more paragraphs of this shit. So you better smarten up. Okay, okay, okay. I'm feeding that reindeer a beautiful sugar cube.

Yeah, square, perfectly square. Perfectly square. Okay. Let's get away from the reindeer. Oh, no, no, okay. Nibbling on my palm. It doesn't hurt. It's just, like, a light, like, shoo, shoo, shoo.

It's like a little kiss, yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah. Okay. Now we're skating on an ice rink. Oh. It's like the movie Serendipity.

Okay. Gently snowing, we're whizzing around the rink. Do you remember when we went skating at Burrard Square in Vancouver? Yeah, that was great. It was after your work day. It was right after my work day. Sorry, I'm just ruining things. I'm like, oh yeah.

No, you're enhancing things. Okay. This is what you're here to do, don't worry. Okay. Um, so imagine that, but ten times more enchanted. Stop, Josie, you're going too fast. Wait for me. I love the wind in my hair.

Don't, it's Dinge. Oh, you're, but she's having so much fun. Okay. So, now we're walking amidst the stalls of a bustling Christmas market. What stalls do you see? I see a stall that's filled with friendship bracelets. Okay. That Christmas classic, yes.

Like how the three wise men all kind of rocked matching friendship bracelets. Yeah. Yeah. And little tattoo necklaces. Little tattoo chokers. That was great. They probably had like matching tattoos and like one said snap, one said crackle, one said pop.

It was real cute. Um, I'm also, I'm seeing, I'm seeing a stall that has the nativity scene and little wall nuts. And little walnut halves. Have you seen those? Yeah. Very cute. It's like you read my mind because the next thing we encounter is a nativity scene of

the Virgin Maria and her husband, Jose, welcoming the son of our Lord, baby Jesus Christ. One last stop. As we leave the marketplace, we see huts made out of gingerbread. They're covered in fresh glittering snow and they're decorated with candy canes and gun drops. And who are those wee fellows ducking in and out of the little door? They look like elves. We follow them, stooping to get through the elf size entrance.

And who do we see awaiting us? But the man himself, St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, Father Crimmis, rosy cheeks, red vestments, a big old belly like a bowl full of jelly, and he doesn't ask us what we want for Christmas because it's already coming true. That is what was promised to almost 45,000 customers who paid the 30-pound entrance fee to Lapland, New Forest in 2008. So I've done a little bit of number crunching. That's 41 pounds, 90 pence in today's money, which is 55.86 US and 73 round in Canadian

dollars. I do think in 2008 the exchange rate was different, right? No, but I figured it out. Don't worry. You got math on. Listen, I went to two websites instead of one, alright? But some ticket holders paid as much as 130 pounds according to the Daily Mail. All told, in ticket sales, Lapland, New Forest made over a million pounds, not an insubstantial

chunk of change, but surely you'll agree that a magical winter wonderland experience for you and your family is priceless. Or the kids just are really annoying and won't stop until they get it. Yeah, okay. But Josie, the sad fact is this. They don't make podcast episodes about magical winter wonderlands. This is the story of Lapland, New Forest, the fire festival of holiday attractions. I'm so stunned.

Yes, okay. First of all, the tale of Lapland, New Forest is tantalizing to me because of the lack of information. There are a lot of unanswered questions as to what made this project such a disaster, leaving us to fill in the gaps. There isn't any centralized resource that has all of the information about this catastrophic Christmas village all in one place. Every time you pull up a new story, there is some new horrible detail that you had never

heard before. So I did my best to cobble together the various sources. I really love that because it's either because those are true things that are just leaking out a little bit and they're really trying to hold it all in and not let it out. Or they're lies that people are adding to the mix because it's such a shit show so why not add another crazy lie? But then all of it mixed together, you can't tell which is which and it's just such a beautiful mess.

You've got it spot on honestly because I would read things and then I would go back to fact check them because they were so outlandish and they had so little sourcing. But there's also another reason that things kind of dripped out bit by bit and thus were only covered by one article at a time and that will become apparent later. And it was Santa, that's why. And it was Santa's been leaking shit to TMZ. So to start with, 45,000 people were lining up for hours. But this thing was a disaster from the outset.

So 45K, most of the sources I found put the wait at two to three hours in December outside with your kids. Mommy, when are we getting inside? I want to see Father Christmas! I have to use the loo! That's exactly what they sound like. Yes, we're losing the Ringwood audience in droves. Yeah, I think we're audience, I think that was it.

God help you if you wanted to do an additional wait to go see Santa Claus because apparently that was like four hours on top of what you already waited. I'm not sure how that happened. Maybe they literally only had the one Santa which feels like very poor planning. But I have a feeling that most of this will involve a lot of poor planning. Some of it will involve seemingly no planning at all. Oh, even better than poor planning. So when the guests get inside and they're already like pissed off from the wait,

here's what they found and I'll just take it attraction by attraction in relatively random order because there really is something spectacularly rotten with every single one. I knew it! See, I fucking knew it! Okay, continue. So let's start with the thriving food market. You're not getting your chestnuts. There were two stalls, one of them sold German sausages and the other sold a choice of turkey or pork baguettes.

Okay. No vegetarian options. Right. And if there was particular meat options, like if you didn't want to walk around just like eating a German sausage, basically your only choice was you had to kill and eat something from the petting zoo. Okay, yeah. Which, let's talk about the petting zoo. Oh.

So you remember those reindeer I told you about? Yeah, that lovingly kissed my hand. Yeah, I gave you a little nibble. So I'm going to send you... Okay, podcasts are inherently a... Visual medium. Yes. Podcasts?

Exactly. You know exactly what I'm going to say. So I have tried to limit my stories to ones that don't include pictures, but this picture to me is just so good that I'm just going to send it to you via Zoom here. Okay. And I'm just... And I will describe it. I'm just going to have you describe exactly.

You're right up my alley here. Okay. Yeah. So let me pop this open. So here is a picture of one of the reindeer that was on site. Okay, give me... Take a moment. Three seconds.

Take a moment with that majesty. Okay, I'm going to describe what I see. There's like a nice fresh wall of lumber. The floor is also wood, which I guess you wouldn't really find that in a barn, but there seems to be like some dirt and I don't know, cushion perhaps? Not a lot, I got to say, but an older floor. And then in the crease where the wall meets the floor is some boughs of evergreens, and they're lovely.

And then there is a small stuffed animal reindeer that seems to be plugged into the wall. I also wondered why it was plugged into the wall. I don't know if it's like tethered to the wall or if it's plugged in. It looks like a plug. It's not even standing. I mean, it's laying down with all four of its legs on the floor. So it's not like laying on its side like it might be dead. Like it looks like it might be in a live fake animal, but it's definitely a stuffed animal.

How big? It's also very, very small. Like bread box, I would say. Yes. And then there's some people standing in the frame as well, but their backs are to it because obviously that's nothing to look at. So that's one of our reindeer, yes. No antlers either.

It's like a juvenile reindeer. Yes. It might just be a deer, actually. It might just be a deer. You're right. I put in the reindeer part because of the evergreen ferns. Wow, they know what they're doing. So yes.

Okay, so that went so successfully. I had a second image. It's not of the reindeer, but I have a second image I'll show you because I feel like you described that very well. But I also heard tell that there may have been real live reindeer, but all of their antlers were broken and they all seemed very sad. Like they smoke two packs a day kind of reindeer? Camels, yes.

Don't, don't. Merry Christmas everyone. Tip your waiter. So I also, there were polar bears that were there, but they were like plastic statues of polar bears. Okay. Slightly bigger and more impressive than the reindeer. Very obviously fake. Like they were just like, hi.

Like standing polar bears waving at you. The Huskies were real. There were about a half a dozen of them chained to stakes in the middle of a muddy pit. And the conditions. See that's, and now that I'm concerned about like any real animals there. Oh. No, don't bring them because they're not going to be well taken care of. Next to you Joe, multiple visitors called the RSPCA.

I believe the animals may have been repossessed. I'm not sure, but I do know that if you go to YouTube to and search Lapland, New Forest, and find one of the many videos about this catastrophe, there's one of them where, so to get ahead of myself and spoil myself a bit. Oh goody. So there, eventually the negative media reaction to this becomes such a sensation that there's a media blackout and reporters are banned from the premises. Whoa.

At one point there's this one clip of a reporter who's doing like a talking head. But rather than being right up front by the gates, he's like around the corner. You just see trees behind him. And all you hear is like 10 miserable Huskies in the distance, just like a chorus of them. I'm hopeful that those Huskies were okay. I believe this thing is such a shit show that I have to think that if a Husky died, it would have been reported on. So I believe all the Huskies came out fine, so don't worry.

Okay. Okay. Mud pits seem to be a real theme at Lapland, New Forest. I'm going to send you now a picture of the Nativity. A lot of good Christmas mud pit, you know? We love a Christmas mud pit. I just want you to describe what you see. Okay.

I just see a muddy parking lot with no cars. It's just a big field of mud. And in the far distance, there seems to be a painting, like kind of long stretched out. I think it might be like a portable. A few yards. A portable? Like alongside maybe two portables put together. Yeah.

Two or three maybe. And on one end of the portable is some like orange mountains with the three Wisemen and turquoise robes on camels, and then they're moving and then the next panel is like white desert sand and then the last third involves, yeah, Joseph, Mary, baby J, the star, the thing. On a scale of one to ten, and let's say that ten is the most reverent of the majesty of the birth of Christ that one could possibly be. And then one is heathenism. Where would you put this Nativity compared to some of the other ones you've seen?

Oh, maybe like a 1.5? I agree. I was going to say not a pure one because it feels like the actual painting on the portable of the Nativity isn't terrible. It's pretty far, so we could be missing some crucial details here. But I also, I also live in Texas where like roadside Nativity scenes are relatively common and they can be aesthetically poor, we'll say that. They can be true ones.

Yes. It's true, not true ones, I know. But this is also, it's also like in a clearing surrounded by trees, like evergreen trees. Yeah, but it looks like someone's been like dirt biking right in front of it. Right, yeah, these huge tire tracks going through it all. Yeah, it's also just very far. I would just not be walking there even if there was a nicely laid out path. That was a common complaint, Josie, was people being like, the Nativity was very far away.

Really? Yes. Oh yeah! It was on a trailer for some reason, I don't know, we just kept going. But why not bring it closer? Why not cover up all the mud? I think you're going to find a lot of why nots as this story progresses and you're going to be disappointed because I don't have good answers for you.

So some of the other attractions that were lacking, the ice rink was broken. That's dangerous. The playground equipment was broken. Dangerous. The toys that Santa gave out were broken. And had small knives shoved in them? I'm sure, maybe it's like a loose bag of razor blades, I don't know. Yeah, broken.

The bustling Christmas market was four tables covered in blankets inside an empty white tent. Friendship bracelets abound, I suppose, right? I'm sure the friendship bracelet stall made it in. Good, good. You can't call it a Christmas market without the friendship bracelet stall, really. The gingerbread houses and Santa's grotto seemed actually to just be prefab garden sheds. Okay. Like, you know, if you're like a real, if you're me, if you're really like, I suppose

the fact that this person is building a garden shed to begin with makes it not me. But imagine that I want to build a garden shed. And I don't really want to fucking deal with it so I can just go to Home Depot and I can get one of those vinyl ones that comes in four pieces in a big box and you just kind of put them together. Yeah. It was a tunnel of lights. It was a six foot string of Christmas lights suspended between two trees.

I think that one might be my favorite. So good. Oh, God, that's, yeah, I would do that. I would do that. That's your version of the prefab garden shed, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, that's me for sure. Oh, I feel seen. Here's new forest patron Stephen DeMond describing it quote.

It was only at the end that we realized we had gone through it. I didn't recognize it and I walked straight past it. My wife looked around and said, I think we've just walked through the tunnel of light. There also seems to have been multiple instances of violence at this park. I feel like tensions would be high. People got really, okay, so the beauty. I mean, Christmas is stressful. So there's that.

Part of the snowball effect, and I say that under advisement, but part of the snowball effect of this park is the calamity of people's reactions to what they, like, because if you paid 130 pounds for this and you've been waiting in line or as they say over there queuing with your kids for, you know, two, three hours, it just all comes to a boil and people really seem to have no compulsion about getting incredibly violent when this happened, despite the presence of their children. I get it. So two fathers got into a fight in one of the gingerbread shed, like a fist fight.

I will also say that there are an inordinate amount of fights that happen at Chuck E. Cheese, which is also- Really? Yes, yes, apparently like- How do you know this? I read something where they had to stop serving beer at Chuck E. Cheese because they were just way too many- They were serving parents beer at Chuck E. Cheese.

Yeah, okay. No, I caught that. So wait, why are- Do you know- Okay, is this because people are getting worked up about the games or because people are getting worked up about their children or because, like, Chuck E. Cheese is an inherently depressing and triggering environment? Like, what is it?

I think- I don't know. I don't know for certain. I don't have the researched answer for you, but I think it's a mix of all of it. I think there's a sense of, like, remembering yourself as a kid and being so excited about those places. And then you get there as an adult and you're like, this is shitty.

I like this. And there's also this, like, I love my kid. I want them to have the best. Or, like, I never see my kid. I only see them every, you know, every other weekend. I want them to have the best time. And I want to, like, I don't know. No, it's true.

There's a lot of psychological unpacking to do there for people who are paid much better than we are. And the pizza's not very good. No, no, that's enough. That right there will get you 75% of the way there. So I just, I don't know. I can see how this very, very horrendous, I don't know, dumpster fire of a Christmas festival.

Yes. Violent night, if you'd like. I just came up with it right now. I'm real happy with it. That was nice. That was good. Three elves seem to have been involved in violent altercations. One of them, Emma Craven, reports that a mother and father attacked her.

Quote, the lady and gentlemen involved were obviously very upset and their children were very, very cold and were crying as many of them were. She started screaming, I can't believe you've done this. Look what you've done to my children. They're crying. Their fingers are blue. You're rip off merchants.

You're taking the Mickey out of us. This is our money taken. She ran the buggy into my legs and he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and showed it in my face. And with that, he slapped me. Oh my, baby Jesus. That is so gnarly.

Obviously that elf does not run the Christmas fair. Here's what happened. The elves, I think, ended up taking a lot of heat as the messengers. Yeah, I imagine that happens all the time. On top of all that, one furious visitor punched Santa in the face. I don't have any more information on that, but I feel like it all... I don't know why I find that funnier than the elf thing. I want to speak to your manager.

Yeah. That wasn't the only piece of Santa-related drama as children reportedly stumbled on him taking a smoke break in full costume outside of Port-a-Potty. And it was Billy Bob Thornton. Is that it? It was Billy Bob Thornton, yes. There's a lot of Be Real again on YouTube of smoking elves.

There was a lot of... Because for whatever reason, all the elves would come out to the main customer parking in full costume to hack a dart. That's probably a no-planning situation, not just poor planning. That's a no-planning right there. There you go. Gotta give the elves their little smoking... Elves gotta have a smoke-o too, man.

Another visitor took his children to get free gifts from Santa only to encounter an elf who told them to turn around because all the good gifts were gone. Oh. Yeah. There was also an incident where a few days into the attraction, so this is after our media blackout has already happened, where they, because of everything I'm telling you,

which has very much made the news, they've said no more reporters, none. And a radio presenter dressed as an elf tried to get into the park with a ticket, and he got manhandled out in front of everybody by security, while a woman who worked at the park screamed at him and others who had gathered that, quote, Okay.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. Santa hadn't actually died to any young listeners who may be enjoying this. Also, I don't know, dude. Go talk to your parents about listening to this. Yeah, maybe don't.

Maybe stop listening to this. Happy holidays. Go away. Holy cow. But it happened that with less than a week of being open, so we're on like day five or six or something like that, the park suddenly and without warning closed for business, locking out families who had shown up,

many having driven for hours expecting their tickets to be honored. Director Victor Mears blamed the closure on, quote, intentional organized crowd manipulation and event sabotage. He also blamed unscrupulous, inaccurate, and negative media broadcasts, leading to widespread public concern, frenzy, and disrupt. Wait, wouldn't his first point just be like, I fucked up? If you said that they didn't plan it well?

No, but he didn't, he didn't fuck up. You don't understand. He did his best. Oh. The crowd, what happened here, we're really looking at a large scale crowd manipulation situation where, similar to conspiracy theories such as QAnon, these people had been misled into thinking that the perfectly adequate

Lapland village for which they had paid, frankly not enough, was in any way disorganized. I see. I see. You see how that happens. You see it all the time. Social media. Social media, yeah.

Zuckerberg, Merry Christmas. So, by the time the park had closed after less than a week of being opened, thousands of people had complained to trading standards officers, which is basically like... Better business bureau kind of thing. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, yeah. An investigation was opened, and as a result, we're getting an improbable bittersweet infamy first.

We're going a trial. Going a trial? Take a shot if you're drinking along at home. Chug that eggnog. I'll rise. There we go. That is the spot. So, the brothers behind Lapland need for us were two guys named Victor and Henry Mears,

brothers in their 70s. Or no, sorry, they were in their 60s. They faced five charges of engaging in a commercial practice, which is a misleading action, and three charges of engaging in a commercial practice, which is a misleading omission. So basically eight charges of you didn't deliver on what you said you would. Okay, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

In court, prosecutor Malcolm Gibney gave a scathing opening statement, quote, the only feeling of wow that many of the consumers felt was wow, what a con. At trial, Victor Mears blamed a consultant named Charlie Cooper, whom he said had sabotaged the ice rink. Charlie Cooper, get off the ice rink. Charlie Cooper, what are you doing over there? All the ice is melting. Pal, we need the people to skate on that.

Yes, but in British. Were they Americans or were they British? Absolutely none of them. And nor was it 1923, so just none of that was true. They also alleged that Mr. Cooper had barred the vendors of the Christmas market from entering. And when prosecution asked if Mears would call any of these vendors as witnesses, he said he'd lost their contact information. Conveniently lost.

He had conveniently, it was in the ice rink. And we all know that didn't work. And melted. He zamboni'd it. All the contact info had been zamboni'd into the ice. It was hard to zamboni too because the ice rink was broken, so it was just like dragging up sparks from the concrete. It was tough.

That's the tunnel of light. There you go. See, he just condensed some of the attractions. You should be thanking him. Mr. Cooper rebutted these accusations saying that Victor Mears was a con man who never paid him and quote, he is using me as a scapegoat. They've got the money. They've probably got it somewhere.

It's probably under the bed. Under the bed? One of my great missed opportunities of this thing. And like I said, the reason that all of this kind of dribbed and drabbed out in little bits and pieces is a lot of kind of what I've relayed back to you is stuff that was testified to in court. So as the trial went on, you know, people knew details would emerge and whatever. But there really seems to have been a real like mud slinging shit show between this guy, Charlie Cooper and this other guy, Victor Mears, where they were just like dragging each other to shit throughout this trial.

Some happened here and we don't have the full story. Yeah, they had some history or something. The other thing that I should mention, and again much to my chagrin, and this is the second time that this has happened to me while researching for this podcast, apparently that BBC did a documentary on all this called The Men Who Stole Christmas. And I bet it's really good. Good title, BBC. Great title.

It's really good, but I couldn't track it down. Oh, that's OK. That happens. If anyone listening to this happens to track down the BBC documentary, I think it's from like 2011 or 2012 called The Men Who Stole Christmas. Hit me up bittersweetinfameagmail.com. I was surprised. That was one of my questions. Like, where is the Netflix documentary? Where is like the Christmas movie? I think we've gotten to this one.

I think we've gotten to this one before it reached mass saturation in North America. I think this is quite an infamous story in the UK. OK, yeah. Because you can find a lot of like, if you look at on YouTube, you can find clips of like the late night chat shows and all this, like, you know those like panel shows they have where it's like kind of the week in weird and people are busting on kind of outlandish news stories? Yeah.

There's a few of those about this. So I think that it was, I think it did the rounds, especially one as it was happening and then two a couple years later, the trial. Yeah. OK. Brother Henry. So this is not Victor's the older brother. He's like 67 or so at the time, I think.

And then Brother Henry is about six or seven years younger than him. He says that he was originally brought on only to do the marketing for the park, and he was forced to run the show when Victor fell ill. And he acknowledged that the park had fallen short on nearly every attraction, but shrugged it off saying, quote, whatever you do, you'll find the public complain about something. That's what I say every day. Me too.

I look in the mirror. That's what I say. Two men having a fist fight in my shed. I'm like, oh, tell us what else is new, you know. In my poorly constructed prefab shed. Ginger in my ginger shed. So unfortunately for the Mears brothers, a parade of unhappy witnesses sealed their doom.

Although the trial was almost thrown out when it was revealed that one juror had been receiving text messages from her boyfriend who was sitting in the gallery. One of these messages simply read, quote, guilty. Good use of technology there. I like that. When asked to explain himself, the boyfriend indicated that he had cheated on his diet that morning by eating a fried breakfast and was letting his girlfriend know how guilty he was.

Guilty, ate a donut. Guilty? Did no context. Just guilty. I'm going to send you texts like that for the rest of the Christmas season. Just guilty. Please. Unexplained guilty texts.

That is my favorite detail of this story. But like the whole thing almost like after all of this fucking avalanche again under advisement, this avalanche of just like damning witnesses, the whole thing almost gets canned because I'm guilty. So obviously noise was made about recalling the jury or whatever, but Judge Mark Horton was literally just like, no, we're wrapping this up. Nope. I'm done.

I agree with the man who ate the donut. Yes. Guilty donut. Let's go. Wrap it up. Yeah. You know what? He's right.

Let's go. So they end up going ahead with 11 jurors. I think he dismisses the juror who was receiving text messages from her partner, but in his head he's like, I just did some quick math and honestly, I think we're fine. So in the end, the Mears brothers were found guilty on all eight charges of misleading the public, and they were sentenced to 13 months in jail. They were also banned from being company directors of any company for five years.

They were banned from Christmas. They were straight up banned. They were sent to, what's the mountain that the Grinch lays on? I don't know. Okay. Well, they were sent there. Here's what Judge Horton said during the sentencing. Horton hears the who is also.

No, no, Dr. Seuss. Listen, it's not Christmas, but it's Dr. Seuss, Seuss to Grinch, Grinch to Christmas. I had literally that exact same thought just now. Don't worry. You're right there. You're fine. Kevin Bacon. Exactly.

Kevin Bacon is Horton. So here's what Judge Horton said during the sentencing. Quote, you promised customers in your advertising an amazing snow-covered Lapland village, which was, in your own wonderful words, where dreams really do come true, and where we have prided ourselves on attention to detail. You told consumers that it would light up those who most loved Christmas. You said you would go through the magical tunnel of light coming out in a winter wonderland. What you actually provided was something that looked like an averagely managed summer car boot sale.

Horton. Horton heard a who and he was like, no bitch, my question is why. Elegant turn of phrase by Judge Horton. But for the purposes of this podcast, I will give the final word to Daryl Yarwood, who played one of Santa's many beleaguered elves, said Daryl to the BBC after the whole thing was over. Quote, I never want to see an elf costume ever again. And that is the story of Lapland New Forest. Oh, that's beautiful.

That's okay. Here's the question though. Yes. If they did it again, would you go? Yes. Oh my God. You know what? Doing this research has made me realize because I got these very romantic notions in my head now that we're all under lockdown more or less. And I'm in my little studio and the walls are closing in on me a bit.

No, they're not. They're okay. They're fine. You're right. They're the same place they always were. It's just me going mad. He's joking, right? I have these very romantic notions about I want to go to a music festival. I want to go to a bar. I want to go to just a big rave or something. And then reading this story made me realize how much I don't miss poorly managed live events.

Like, do you remember? Do you remember? And this is not necessarily an indictment of Playland. It's just that there were a lot of people there. But do you remember when we went to Fright Nights at Playland and it was pouring rain? It was dark and we stood in line for that haunted house for a very long time. Thank God there were tarps up or whatever, but it was freezing. Yeah. This gives me that vibe of like that, but it goes on twice as long.

It's even colder and there's a lot of children involved and everyone is like at peak adrenaline with just anger. And it's also, I think there's something like if it's Halloween, it's supposed to be spooky. There's something kind of like explainable in my in my little. I want to hate this. I came here. Yeah. Yeah. But if it's Christmas, it's like, no, it's cozy and sweet and perfectly squashed sugar cubes and reindeer kisses. And then all of a sudden it's like a mud patch and a string of lights that are blinking strangely.

Like that angers me. Like if that were a horror thing, you know, like Halloween, Fright Night Deal, I'd be like, okay, yeah, yeah, shitty, but okay. But the Christmas that just pisses me off, you know. I think too, because I don't know where New Forest kind of outside of Dorset or whatever is located. But the way that the reporting made it seem was that it was a little bit of an out of the way location, especially if you happen to come and be like, God forbid you came in from fucking whales or something to go to this thing as opposed to if you're in the nearby village, you're probably fine or whatever. But I think the fact that I was if I was in the middle of nowhere and I waited this long ass time and then I got inside of my only options of food or sausage or turkey and pork baguette, none of which I eat. I would just be like, oh man, I'm starving and I'm angry.

And then I can kind of see where the low level rioting started to occur. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do have to say this, if they did it round two, I feel like the people who would go would be like hipsters. Yeah, the people itching for like, here's the string of tunnel, here's the light tunnel. I don't like that imitation you're viewing of me. It was me in my head, so don't feel bad. No, like the thing is, to me, those are the stories where once you're actually, you don't want that to be the case. I don't know that I would ever drive all that far out of my way to go to a Christmas village to begin with.

But obviously, would I rather have an unironically good Christmas village? Yes, absolutely. Although having said that, I've been to like one or two and I kind of find that they're all the same and none of them really do it for me. I don't like hot alcohol. I'm not really wanting to buy crafts. So like, what am I there for other than the general vibe of Christmas? Yeah. Taylor, I'm so sorry.

You're going to hate your Christmas present. What's my Christmas present? I got you tickets to Lapland Christmas Fair Vancouver edition. That's great. The only thing really that could make this story better slash worse is if there was a pandemic raging while it happened. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, everyone's wearing masks, but not wearing masks. These people aren't wearing masks.

The people from this story, one of those fathers slapped a lady up. Yeah. Who was pinned by a trolley. Yeah, no. Because she just got bashed in like the shins, which man, have you ever like shinned yourself on like a razor scooter? That shit sucks. I feel bad for that person. We don't have a razor scooter.

You never shinned yourself on like a scooter in 1997? What were you doing? Ah, shinning myself on scooters. I was. Making friendship bracelets and shinning myself. I feel like we've talked extensively about what we were doing in 1997 as a matter of fact. So let's just leave that. That's true.

Okay, so then what is the moral of this story, Taylor? I feel like there's a real Buddhist message in all of this about the impermanence of things and, you know, we can accumulate as many tchotchkes as we want. But at the end of the day, yeah, I got nothing. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree.

Don't go outside if it's cold. I think maybe that's maybe that's our pandemic moral here. Yeah. The pet. You know what? I think there we go. Crowds blow. There you go.

We've closed it on our moral, which is. Let me finish my glass of wine. Crowds blow. I think that we sit there and we think about all of the things that we're missing due to the pandemic, many of them very real. And my heart goes out to obviously everyone who's not going to be able to see their family over the holidays or their grandparents or anything like that. And you have all of my love, but on the very off chance that the thing that you're missing, the thing that you're specifically missing is you really wish that you could go to some big festive Christmas event. Maybe you would be going to Lapland, New Forest. Yeah, that's very in the moment.

I think that's Buddhist. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Taylor, that was beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for hunting that down and sharing that.

I was in the Christmas spirit in the holiday mood and now I'm even more so. I'm so happy. That was my goal. I was listening to my Gloria kind of before we did this. Yeah. And I hope that everyone at home who's listening, whatever holiday you're celebrating, if you're celebrating anything at all, that you're doing it safely, that you're doing it warmly. And then maybe you got a little bit of a kick of us talking about this. Heck yeah.

And if you want more infamy, we release episodes every other Sunday on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and at bittersweetinfamy.com. Stay sweet. The sources that I availed myself of for this most magical holiday episodes include Crap Land. Brothers convicted of a million pound scam after trying to convince thousands that broken ice rink and plastic polar bear was Christmas Wonderland. It's by Paul Harris for the Daily Mail on February 19th, 2011. Other articles include Do You Remember Lapland New Forest from the Daily Echo, December 5th, 2018? How Crowds Were Lured to Lapland New Forest by Eleanor Williams for the BBC, February 18th, 2011? Brothers jailed over Lapland New Forest Park, BBC, March 18th, 2011?

Lapland New Forest Brother not intimately involved, BBC, February 7th, 2011? Lapland New Forest Park was sabotaged, BBC, February 4th, 2011? And Lapland New Forest Saga Brothers warned they could face jail. From the Dorset Echo, February 19th, 2011? You can also find on YouTube, and I didn't mention this during the podcast, but I'd like to now. The original Lapland New Forest YouTube is still active, and you can see a weird 11 minute long video of somebody claiming that all of the press against Lapland New Forest was false. So you can get there side of the story by going to Lapland New Forest at YouTube. The song you're listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Happy Holidays!

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