The general reaction here in the Cayman Islands to the BBC TV programme that featured the Cayman Islands in a negative way, has been looked at with surprise by the people that contributed to it and they are also disappointed.

When I heard who was making it, Filmmaker Jacques Peretti, I knew exactly what to expect.

Almost exactly a year ago Peretti made a documentary “The Super Rich And Us” and before that, “The Men Who Made Us Spend”.

He likes being around the Rich and Famous and slants all his filmmaking to suit his own personal views.

In his “The Super Rich And Us” documentary he said:

Regardless of whether their wealth can be counted in the billions or hundreds of millions, the majority have surprisingly simple tastes.
‘Billionaires are expected to own things like Lear Jets, super-yachts and so on. But if you speak to very wealthy people, they see that as a bit tacky.
‘As Tony Fernandes said to me, “Why would I want to spend all my time sitting around on a boat in the ocean? It would be boring!”‘
Instead, what the super rich really want are ‘experiences’. ‘It’s about exclusivity and experiences,’ .
They want things that no-one else can have, like flying to the moon. Bentleys, Rolexes and all that stuff is just blingy and tacky. It’s the sort of thing that a footballer would have.
They all have this impish sense of humour about how people view them. They can be quite eccentric about not doing the things people expect them to do.
‘Tony Fernandes, for instance, likes to go home and have beans on toast.’

So the rich and famous give him an open door and he comes here with his preconceived views of the infamous Cayman Islands with all its wealth all at the expense of those poor little Caymanians.

I noticed he hardly spent an hour with these poor little Caymanians because the rest of the time he was cavorting around on boats and luxury vehicles.

According to Peretti it would be a good thing if the UK would close the Cayman Islands financial services down because they started it in the first place.

The programme was not 100% accurate in his explanation of how to open a bank account in the Cayman Islands making it sound it was a sweet tropical breeze to execute.

Apparently the show was pitched like the long running BBC radio programmes “The Archers” that in my childhood days was called “an everyday story of country folk”. This one was “an everyday story of British expatriates living in the Cayman Islands”.

Surprise, surprise the programme actually focused on our financial industry.

So people are surprised and disappointed. I am surprised they are and disappointed with the ones that chose to appear in it.