Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Hi and thanks for downloading Witness History from the BBC World Service.

I'm Lucy Burns and today I'm taking you back to the summer of 1950 and the launch of a new kind

of all-inclusive holiday that would spread all over the world. This is the story of Club Med.

If you're cold and fed up with the wintry weather, join us on a trip to the sun.

Here on the Mediterranean playground, visitors from all over the world can guarantee to relax and have fun in an atmosphere of sun, sand and sea.

My mother was just going out of a business school. She didn't want to work in a bank or anything.

She was a bit unconventional, I would say.

This is Pierre Xavier Bucre, whose mother Terez worked on the first ever Club Med Holiday.

And she saw an ad in a newspaper for a secretary for a new leisure organization in Mayoka.

So Terez set off a New Yorker, an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain.

She had a fiance called Jean-Pierre, later Pierre Xavier's father, who was traveling around Europe at the time.

And then she said, why don't you come to my York?

So that's what he did.

In fact, he remained more than 40 years.

And what was it that they found when they got there?

I would say nearly nothing.

...