A former Mersea islander has started life on a remote, storm-lashed Hebridean island - as a castaway.

Peter Jowers, 52, and his wife Sheila are among 36 men, women and children who volunteered to spend a year on Taransay for the BBC documentary Castaway 2000.

The group, who are having to cope with the most basic of facilities, were met by winds of more than 100mph which ripped off roofs and destroyed a pigsty.

Taransay, off Scotland's Atlantic coast, has been uninhabited for 30 years. The severe weather means that trees do not grow there.

But Mr Jowers' brother John, a West Mersea member of Colchester Council, said his early years without running water or electricity on Bower Hall Farm, East Mersea, would stand the couple in good stead.

And for more than 20 years they have lived a Good Life existence - growing their own vegetables and keeping chickens - with three other families on a 16-acre estate in Gloucestershire.

John Jowers said: "We had a family gathering in Northamptonshire the day before they left, and wished them many happy hurricanes! I was marooned for a month in the Hebrides while out fishing back in 1979, so I have had a foretaste of what it is going to be like for them."

The BBC are filming the castaways, chosen after months of psychological and survival tests, as they learn a totally new way of life with no telephones and letters only once a fortnight.

The first Castaway 2000 programme is due to be broadcast on BBC1 on Tuesday January 18 at 9.30pm.

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