ROWLAND Rivron admits that at first glance he is an unlikely poster boy for the caravanning movement.

But the comedian and presenter, who is hosting the Caravan and Motorhome Show at Manchester’s Event City. has long been a convert to the joys of having a home on wheels.

“It is pretty left field isn’t it?” he laughed. “But it’s been a joy.”

Rowland got his introduction to the world of caravanning through the BBC’s Holiday programme.

“Over 20 years ago I was a regular presenter on the show and one week they rang up asking ‘would you be up for doing a holiday film with a caravan and your family for a long weekend in northern France?’

“At the time I was the only presenter on the show with a real family – my kids were five, three and 18 months or so.

“When I mentioned it to my wife her face dropped. I can genuinely say in the 10 years that we’d known each other at that point, the word caravan had never entered into our conversations at any point.

“So begrudgingly she said OK. I went and did a towing course and knocked over lots of bollards and then eventually we hooked up with this caravan and had the kids in the car, panicking for the first three hours driving down to Dover and getting the ferry.

“All the while we were thinking it was going to be a nightmare. But we got there and pitched up in this little campsite and within six hours or so the kids had fallen in love with this place – and so had my wife. She realised that having a caravan was like having a Wendy house in the garden but a bit bigger.”

From that one trip, the pattern was set for every Rivron family holiday ever since.

“It completely opened our eyes,” said Rowland. “Literally from that moment on we have only gone on caravan holidays.”

Now Rowland and his wife Monica have a six-berth caravan permanently stored near Biarritz in Southern France.

“It’s all very civilised,” he said. “We tell the storage people when we are coming for a holiday and they deliver it to the campsite that we fell in love with 15 years ago.

“To be honest we’ve never really got into the idea of touring with a caravan. I you have got a caravan which you can keep on the drive I can see the merits of that but we live in London which makes that really difficult.”

Rowland admits that caravanning does have something of an image problem.

“People are sceptical of caravanning,” he said. “To be honest I don’t think it’s every going to fully shake off its image – maybe in two generations’ time it might. But it’s only when you’ve done it do you realise it’s the most amazing thing. It’s so reassuring to know that your holidays are all sorted. We’ve just booked a week in June and we’re already making plans for what we’ll be doing.”

Passionate as he is about his caravanning - wife Monica, a trained chef, has even written The Caravan Cookbook - Rowland is not out to convert people.

“I just want to let them in on my world which I’m very happy about,” he said.

As well as hosting the show this week in Manchester and another show at the NEC in Birmingham in March, Rowland is also in talks about a film.

“I just do whatever comes my way,” he said. “What’s great is I don’ know what’s round the corner. It makes things more interesting.”

The Caravan and Motorhome Show, Event City, Manchester, until Sunday. Details from www.caravanshows.com