Old age drove Lexy Campbell, the last resident, off Taransay. But for the rest of her life, there wasn't a day when she didn't look back over the short, green stretch of sea from her new home at Seilebost on nearby Harris. Neighbours say she would have stayed out on Taransay all her days if she could have, instead of passing her final two decades watching from the window when the light was good.

Quite what Lexy would have made of the comings and goings on the remote island of Taransay these past few weeks is anyone's guess. Most think she would have been bemused. Some say she would have been horrified.

Others suspect she might have enjoyed it all, especially the lights at night, shining out across the darkness of the sound - proof of a new community on her beloved island.

But the truth is that not everybody is home on Taransay. In fact a pretty large proportion of the BBC's celebrated castaways actually seem to be here, 11/2 miles away across the water on the island of Harris. Ensconced in the warmth of the Harris Hotel in Tarbert, they are taking tea and arguing about the ablutions on their temporary home.

"Public health are coming to have a look at it and once they see there's only one toilet for 50 people, they'll see how bad it is," says one woman in a smart waterproof.

"Five scones, please," says another, as the waitress hovers patiently for their order.

They seem to have acquired a dog - Charlie, a collie - and make plans to watch themselves on TV later from the sofas in the residents' lounge. They themselves to other guests as the castaways, and ask if they can switch to BBC1.

Charlie gets walked in the hotel garden and the children chase around the chairs and tables, getting bored and restless. A helicopter, specially chartered by the programme makers, shifts them back and forward from the island; commuting, really. This is clearly not how it was supposed to be and it's getting dreadfully tense.

It must have looked good on paper, though. Drop 36 people on an uninhabited island on Hogmanay, give them some help to build their eco-pod homes, film them for the first few weeks, then give them a video camera, leave them to it and watch the ratings rise. They weren't supposed to come off the island. At least not this often.

On Wednesday, with the press gathering in hordes in the hotel's public bar, the show's executive producer, Jeremy Mills, held an impromptu news conference and admitted that the community had become split between those who were staying on the island and those staying in the hotel.

He lists 18 people who have been off the island for some or most of the time. Most are families, some are ill. Jeremy thinks this is a good thing. He won't accept that the BBC's £2.4 million flagship millennium project, Castaways, is disintegrating into farce before his eyes.

"From my point of view all that is fantastic material," he says brightly. "The pressure that it's put them all under as two groups of people has brought out some utterly fascinating insights into human nature and human relationships from a TV point of view. That's the key thing."

The castaways in the hotel don't look so sure. They say they'd love to talk, that all is not well, but contracts are keeping them quiet. Jeremy says if they did talk they would have to leave.

When the castaways got there, Taransay itself was much as Lexy had left it. A few small buildings falling to ruin, a sheltered beach - and sheep. Now they have a washing machine - cold water only - shower facilities and a school.

But there's also been the flu, and forces of nature, and roofs blown off, and crates of belongings dropped in the sea, and housing blocks not ready, and chickens which never came and personalities that didn't mesh.

Just round the corner from the hotel, in the kitchen of her neat terraced house, Mary Munro (88) makes you tea and laughs gently at the complete absurdity of it all. She can remember being on Taransay with Lexy, her second cousin, when they were children, spending hours scraping crotal, a form of lichen, off the rocks to dye the Harris tweed.

"There were about 12 to 14 houses then, and a community," she says. "It was lovely. It is very different now. We were used to doing without water. There was no washing machine. You just had to get on and do it all. We were quite happy with it, doing everything. You used to have to draw the water from the well, bring it home and heat it and do the washing. Quite a handful when I think on it now.

"The castaways aren't isolated the way they were in the old days. If the weather was bad you couldn't get a doctor over. Mind you, we never seemed to be sick in those days."

She's not being judgmental - she has quite enjoyed the spectacle these past weeks and is not surprised so many of the visitors seem to be spending their time in the shelter of Tarbert.

"Ach, they wouldn't be used to it. They had to bring them over here. They had small children and you couldn't put children through that. They seem very nice. One or two looked a bit like hippies but mostly they are very respectable. It really quite brightens up the place."