Benidorm Creators Million-Pound Divorce Fallout Revealed

As a pair, they brought so much joy to millions with the popular comedy Benidorm.

The long-running series, set in the Spanish holiday resort, told the hilarious stories of guests staying at the Solana all-inclusive hotel.

But now the laughs have turned to anger as the power couple behind the show have become embroiled in a bitter divorce – which has led to creator Derren Litten having to sell his beloved home on the Costa Blanca, where he wrote the comedy.

Litten vented his anger on social media this week, where he he also shared a link to his £800,000 home.

Alongside it, he wrote: ‘Would you like to buy the house where I wrote the Benidorm TV series?

‘I love this house but thanks to a shameless, career gold digger I have to sell. As the Spanish say, No pasa nada!’

It doesn’t take a supersleuth to work out the identity of this ‘gold digger’. It is, indeed, Litten’s estranged husband Jake Canuso who played the raunchy, hunky barman Mateo Castellanos in the series, which ran from 2007 to 2018 .

Friends of the former couple tell me Litten has to pay his ex £1million in a divorce settlement following their split and he is ‘absolutely furious’ about it.

One said: ‘Derren is absolutely incandescent with rage over it all. He is very open about the fact that he feels that Jake has screwed him over, and has been calling him quite a few names to anyone who will listen.

‘Obviously he is worth quite a lot of money but he feels that £1million is a lot of pay out. He’s having to sell his home to raise the cash. It’s really sad. They were so happy for a long time, and now it’s come to this.

‘Derren loved that house, he has some wonderful, fond memories there, but moreover, it is where he wrote Benidorm of which he is very, very proud.

‘Selling it in these circumstances feels like the whole thing is tarnished now. Benidorm’s millions of viewers delighted in the show, which brought so much laughter and joy. It’s a terrible shame, and bitter irony, that behind the scenes it has all gone to war.’

Litten and Canuso met on the set of Benidorm, which was primarily filmed on location, and they lived together in the country for a decade before their split 18 months ago.

The property now on the market was very much their marital home – although Canuso has since moved out.

‘It holds a special place in Derren’s heart,’ says a source. ‘It’s where the magic was made.’

Indeed, the property is rather idyllic. On the market for a cool €925,000 (£805,600), the property boasts an impressive exterior, including a large private pool with covered terrace as well as a summer kitchen and bar area.

Inside, there is a large living room and separate dining area, with a master bedroom and en suite, and two other bedrooms located at the front of the house.

The listing describes how a separate office space in the garden could be converted into another bedroom. Litten and Canuso would regularly entertain friends there.

While they enjoyed a high profile on the Costa Blanca, due to the success of Benidorm, they preferred to keep their relationship, and marriage, strictly private.

Visitors – and especially journalists – to the Benidorm set were ordered, under no uncertain terms, not to discuss or write about the show’s golden couple.

‘It was an open secret that the pair were married. But his popular character Mateo was a womaniser who would often get in trouble because of his roving eye and sexual antics. They wanted to keep their marriage private and no-one was allowed to write about their off-screen relationship.’

However, when they split, Litten became more outspoken, revealing that he was going through a difficult divorce – hinting that his and Canuso’s split was not amicable.

‘I don’t really talk about my personal life here but the reason I’ve been a bit scarce on the socials is for the last 18 months I’ve been going through a pretty miserable divorce,’ he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

‘So I’m obviously poor now. And you thought we couldn’t have more in common then we already do?!’

When approached by the Daily Mail, Jake Canuso, did not respond to our requests to comment.

While the reason for the split is so far unknown, friends say that the now estranged couple were very different characters.

According to those who know them, Canuso, a 56-year-old Swiss-British dancer who once appeared on Top of the Pops, was the more affable of the pair while Litten, 55, the show’s creator, writer and executive producer, more of a ‘tortured genius’.

He was known for his attention to detail, and would often be re-writing scripts literally hours before filming.

‘Jake was the actor, the fun one who everyone loved having a giggle with. They were very different,’ said one pal.

‘Derren was a perfectionist and wanted to make sure he got things right. At times he was quite difficult to work with, but it was his show and ITV allowed him to do things the way he wanted. And of course he always delivered.’

He certainly did. Benidorm became something of a national treasure when it launched in February 2007.

Starring well-known and respected actors such as Siobhan Finneran, of Happy Valley and Downton Abbey fame, as downtrodden mum Janice Garvey, League of Gentleman creator Steve Pemberton as her husband Mick, Coronation Street’s Sherrie Hewson as manager Joyce Temple-Savage, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’s Tim Healy as transvestite Les Conroy and comedian Johnny Vegas as Geoff Maltby, it quickly became a ratings winner.

The series followed fictional holidaymakers who spend the same week at the Solana Resort every year.

A year after it launched it won a National Television Award for best comedy and again in 2011. It finally ended in 2018 after ten seasons when it was axed amid plummeting ratings and criticism that the ‘jokes weren’t landing’ anymore.

For many years Litten had wielded much power over ITV and was furious when the show was axed, struggling to accept that it had had its day.

The re-runs of Benidorm continue to attract new audiences, as they are shared across Netflix, Disney and the ITVX app, with different seasons on each of the streaming giants. Disney has all ten seasons of the show available to stream.

After Benidorm was axed Litten created another comedy called Scarborough for the BBC, starring Coronation Street’s Catherine Tyldesley and Jason Manford, but it proved to be a huge flop and was axed after just one series.

‘By going to the BBC Derren was sticking two fingers up at ITV, but sadly it just wasn’t very good,’ says a source. ‘It was very upsetting of for him.’

There has, though, been much chatter of a comeback for Benidorm.