Maplins, the Yellowcoats entertainment team and the camp's fictional unseen all-powerful founder Joe Maplin were all invented out of thin air, as was Crimpton-on-Sea (perhaps a similar resort to the equally fictitious Walmington-on-Sea, the setting of Dad's Army?) The action was updated from the late 1940s austerity period of Perry's Butlin's experience to the "Never had it so good" era at the turn of the Sixties, providing a welcome contrast to early Eighties news headlines about rising unemployment, inner-city rioting and economic recession.Ī sense of dissatisfaction with the modern world was not, of course, unique to the Eighties. Hi-De-Hi! would instead be filmed at a Warner holiday camp at Dovercourt, near Harwich, Essex, which according to Perry, writing in his autobiography, had "just the right frayed at the edges look". Now he hoped to do the same thing again, with Croft drawing upon his own experiences of producing revues in holiday camps during the same period.īutlin's themselves refused to participate in the project as they were actively seeking to abandon their old-style holiday camp image by this point. His youthful experiences in the Home Guard had already helped inspire top sitcom Dad's Army ( 1968-77) while his time running the Royal Artillery Concert Party in India formed the basis for It Ain't Half Hot Mum ( 1974-81). "Ho-de-ho!" the crowd would always roar back.īy the end of the 1970s, Perry and his writing partner, David Croft had already mined many aspects of Perry's past life with great success. "Hi-de-hi!" Perry would shout meaninglessly. Sometimes he would shout "Oompa lumpah!" prompting an enthusiastic "Stick it up your jumper!" response from the crowd. Thirty years later, he still retained fond memories of post-war holiday camp life: he had relished compering talent shows alongside such staples as the Ugliest Face and Knobbly Knees competitions. The real story of Hi-De-Hi! began not in 1980 or 1959, however, but just after the war when writer Jimmy Perry had himself worked as a Redcoat at Butlin's camps located in Filey and Pwllheli. In point of fact, a version of the theme tune with Paul Shane leading the vocals was released in 1981, achieving top forty success after a performance by the cast on popular children's game show, Cheggers Plays Pop.
In fact, the vocals were supplied by Ken Barrie, the man soon to be cast as the voice of Postman Pat. Holiday Rock, the show's infectiously catchy rock-and-roll theme tune written by Jimmy Perry, may as well have been sung by Maplins' own Entertainment Manager, Ted Bovis (Paul Shane).
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The nostalgic mood was established early with a title sequence incorporating archive newsreel footage of Harold Macmillan, communist leaders Khruschev and Castro, and celebrities of the time such as Laika, the Soviet space dog, and a young Elvis Presley. Although only set in a time only just over twenty years before it was first broadcast (had they been real people, it is all too easy to imagine older versions of most of the show's characters tuning in to watch it for themselves), Hi-De-Hi! whisked audiences back to a time before Beatlemania and the sexual revolution and, more pertinently, before the economic and industrial upheavals of the Seventies and Eighties. If, as is often said, that the past is a different country, then Hi-De-Hi! might as well have been on a completely different planet.
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Across eight series and 58 episodes, Jimmy Perry and David Croft's sitcom enlivened our evenings as we watched the likes of Ted Bovis, Gladys Pugh, Peggy Ollerenshaw and an assorted small army of Yellowcoats keep the camp afloat on our screens from 1980 to 1988. The time? The entire eight-year run takes place across just two summer holiday seasons, of 19.įor this was the world of Hi-De-Hi!.
The location? A branch of Maplins holiday camps, located in Crimpton-on-Sea in Essex. As the Eighties dawned, British television viewers embarked on a unique holiday experience that was destined to last for the best part of a decade.
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