At teatime today, as they do most weekdays, a fair share of those with leisure on their hands will be flopping down with a cup of tea and a biscuit and tuning into A Place in the Sun.
Not, for those out of the loop, the classic weepie starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, but Channel 4's hugely successful series which finds homes in exotic locations - Marrakesh is the destination today - for Brits who fancy a change of scene.
Figures released by the Office of National Statistics suggest that such programmes are not simply a vicarious pleasure: a steadily increasing number of British people - and not just elderly retirees - are actually packing their bags and moving abroad.
According to the figures, 361,000 people left the UK last year. Of these, just under 191,000 were British, the highest level since the current method of collating the figures was introduced in the early 1990s.
The ONS statistics show that in 1994 only 125,000 British people upped and went, a figure which increased steadily until the late 1990s when there was a slight drop. In 2000 161,000 people packed their bags, and in 2002 186,000 left.
Of the 161,000, around a quarter were aged over 45 - and therefore likely to be members of the A Place in the Sun brigade. The other three-quarters, researchers believe, are made up primarily of adult workers moving abroad for a new challenge, or new posting, and their families.
John Salt, of the migration unit at University College London, said: "It's clear a sizeable majority are the sort who are buying a farmhouse in France and will, no doubt, appear on one of those TV programmes.
"But many more are younger people who are always in demand because they are English speakers and English speakers are always in demand. I think the improvement in the world economy over the last few years, in places like the US, Europe, Japan and Australia, has resulted in more people going."
Professor Salt, who has analysed the ONS figures, said the average age of those coming into the UK tended to be lower than that of those leaving.
Paul Arthur, director of the Cheshire-based Emigration Group which helps people leave the UK for New Zealand and Australia, was not surprised by the figures.
He said: "The number of inquiries we get from people who are interested in emigrating doubled last year and has grown by 25% again this. One of the most striking features is that three-quarters of the people who want to go to New Zealand or Australia to live have never even been there.
"It's not as if they've fallen in love with a place and want to go ... they've had enough of where they live and want away. We deal with a lot of younger families who have worries about the way the country is going."
The Place in the Sun gang are well catered for by companies such as Surrey-based Parador Properties, which runs "inspection tours" every week.
It is estimated that around 6,500 couples to Spain alone to try to find their dream homes. The general manager, Nick Hamilton, said that of those around 40% would make moves to buy one of the places they had seen.
Parador Properties commissioned research from Mintel which found that Britons bought 84,000 homes in Spain between 2001 and 2003.
