How ‘dream life’ TV family – chased out of Portugal by villagers who called them ‘English pigs’ and killed their pets – ended up homeless, penniless and living on food banks after fleeing back to the UK after losing EVERYTHING

A British family chased out of Portugal by locals who branded them ‘English pigs’ were told their situation was ‘not desperate enough’ to deserve help after they fled back to the UK, a friend has revealed.

Lynn and Richard Appleby-Brisco moved to the Mediterranean’s Guarda district in 2016 with plans to start a more ‘affordable’ life with their two young daughters.

But family that contributed to Channel 4‘s Our Wildest Dreams, were forced to return to the UK not long after the show aired when their life in a remote village became their worst nightmare.

Lynn’s close friend Denny Lewis told MailOnline: ‘She landed at Heathrow with her two young girls and had to take the night bus to Bedford and went to a local Premier Inn.

‘I visited her and we got her some clothes sent down by a friend and other people. But the local housing authorities said, and I quote, that their situation ‘wasn’t bad enough’.’

Mrs Lewis added: ‘She apparently wasn’t in a desperate state to be helped so she started going to food banks and we’ve now started a GoFundMe page.

Lynn had no money, nowhere to live and she would have been on the streets. The local government would have left her on the street with two young girls and they still won’t help her now.

‘She had been paying her taxes for 30 years before she went to Portugal. She was literally on the streets and with very little money.

‘So when they wouldn’t help her, a friend and I found her in a little place in Kempston. It’s like a little holiday cabin.

So she and the girls moved in there, but she couldn’t get any help from the government.

“But Lynn is not a shirker, so the minute she walked into the hotel she was setting up interviews to get a job.”

Mrs Lewis said her friend was joined by her husband, who had made the trip back from Portugal by road and with some of their belongings.

She said the mother-of-two now works as a chef in a pub restaurant, doing 12-hour shifts.

“It hasn’t been good, she and Richard were definitely left on the sidelines,” she said.

The couple’s harrowing experience in Portugal reached a harrowing climax when angry locals attacked the family’s dog Cu – an estrela mountain cross retriever – who later died aged four.

Appleby-Brisco’s ordeal has chilling echoes of Orla Dargan, who faced years of threatening behavior from a neighbor and found her rescue dog dead in a shallow well after she moved to Portugal in 2016.

The family of four from Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, say their goats were poisoned after a local admitted stealing their cat Ponyo and her kitten Bubbles in January.

Mrs Appleby-Brisco, 51, said when she confronted a villager about the mysterious deaths, she was told: ‘We’ve taken your pets and you’re next.’

She told The sun: ‘I just couldn’t take it anymore and that was my absolute lowest point.

‘I was scared to be in the house alone so I would hang around the biggest local town all day to feel safe.

“It was so bad that when I went down to the farm I would have a knife with me and I consider myself a pacifist.”

The family believe they inadvertently put a target on their backs after their episode aired in 2018.

Among the outrageous incidents of harassment, the family were spat on and called ‘English pigs’ – while rumors spread that Mrs Appleby-Brisco was a devil-worshiping prostitute after she planted flowers outside their home.

The family flew home to the UK in February with a small suitcase containing a change of clothes and pyjamas.

Mrs Appleby-Brisco and her children, Emily, 12, and Yvie, 10, now live in a one-bed flat while their father is still trying to sell the property in Portugal and bring back all their belongings.

It comes after a former City investment banker who retired to the Algarve told MailOnline of her year of hell after an ‘aggressive’ neighbor took over her land and kicked her out of her home, forcing her to hide.

Orla Dargan bought her Portuguese dream villa for around €600,000 in 2016, and lived there happily for several years before her neighbour, an estate agent she describes as a ‘dangerous’ man, moved in next door.

The mother-of-two said she was warned about his ‘temperament’ and continued years of threatening behaviour, including an alleged attempt to run her off the road near her home.

Her beloved rescue dog was also found dead, floating in a shallow well with horrific injuries.

Appleby-Briscos have raised £3,800 through a GoFundMe side to try to recover from the failed plan to move abroad.

On the page, Ms Appleby-Brisco wrote: ‘We arrived in Portugal almost eight years ago full of excitement to start a new, sustainable life. We were followed by the film crew from Channel Four’s Our Wildest Dreams as we wanted to inspire others.

“Initially our life was great, we wanted to integrate locally so we didn’t mix so much with the expatriates, put our girls in the village school, bought a small farm on the outskirts of the village, started to learn the language better, did everything, what we thought right.

‘We didn’t know there was a storm of anger against us in the village, we hadn’t done anything wrong so why should we even question it.’

Channel 4 has been contacted for comment.