Hi-De-Hi? Ho-De-Ho-No! (or why Butlins hated the fictional Maplins)

As a new show traces the history of Brits on their hols, Hi-De-Hi! star Ruth Madoc reveals why the real-life holiday camps didn't go weak at the knobbly knees for the sitcom

By VINCENT GRAFF

Published: 18:30 EST, 16 March 2012 | Updated: 18:31 EST, 16 March 2012

Ruth Madoc, who played chief yellowcoat Gladys Pugh in the Eighties sitcom, has a good idea what the real holiday camp people thought of her ‘Morning, campers!’ portrayal of life at the fictional Maplins camp in Crimpton-on-Sea.

‘I don’t suppose the Butlins organisation was very keen on it,’ she says, with delicate understatement.

Morning campers: Ruth (far right) played chief yellowcoat Gladys Pugh in the Eighties sitcom Hi-De-Hi!

This became clear when, eight years after Hi-De-Hi! had finished in 1988, Ruth was presenting an episode of Songs Of Praise from the Butlins centre – they no longer used the term ‘camp’ – in Pwllheli, north Wales.

‘Before we started filming, the manager of the centre said, “You won’t mention Hi-De-Hi!, will you?”’ she recalls. She agreed not to. ‘And of course the punters started coming up saying, “Hi-de-hi, Ruth!”’ This was a dilemma. If a member of the public shouts ‘Hi-de-hi’ at you, it’d be rude not to respond with ‘Ho-di-ho’, no? So she did.

Even today Ruth, 68, is still regularly presented with the catchphrase when she’s out and about. Does it annoy her? ‘No, not at all. Because Hi-De-Hi! opened doors for me.’ She adds, ‘Most of us were picked out of oblivion.’

If the sitcom is fresh in her mind it’s because she’s been making an intriguing documentary, From Blackpool To Benidorm, for the Yesterday channel. It’s a gentle piece of social history charting the changing taste of British holidaymakers in the second half of the 20th century. And, of course, the holiday camp gets a large role.

Laurel and Hardy at Butlins: They were once judges in the knobbly knees competition

Sir Billy Butlin first had the idea for his camps in the 1930s, when he realised there wasn’t much to do at the seaside on a rainy day once your landlady had turfed you onto the street after breakfast. His plan: to provide everything you need, from food to entertainment – such as glamorous granny contests (that brainwave came after he met Marlene Dietrich and realised the sultry actress was a grandmother). According to Rocky Mason, head of entertainment at Butlins for 27 years, Sir Billy’s masterstroke was the pricing. ‘His policy was that a holiday would be less than the average man was paid each week.’

There’s an interesting glimpse behind the scenes during the camps’ heyday. Long-serving redcoat Mavis Idle was there at the opening of the camp at Bognor in 1960. It had cost £2 million to build – the equivalent of £36 million today – but wasn’t ready on time. So on opening day, Mavis recalls, some people picked up their keys from reception only to return a few minutes later saying, ‘I don’t need them. I haven’t got a door.’

Despite teething problems, Butlins had become a success – in 1963, the peak year, the camps welcomed more than one million visitors. Believe it or not, Laurel and Hardy once agreed to be judges in a knobbly knees competition.

Family fun: Children enjoying a theatre show at a camp in Clacton during its heyday

But tastes were changing, and in time, the holiday of choice was not at a rainy British resort with a redcoat forcing you to enjoy yourself but a week on the beach in Spain, where you could sip sangria in the sun. One of the main reasons for the change was the British weather – underlined by the opening scene in the documentary: presenter Ruth is in a deckchair on Porthcawl beach in south Wales at the height of ‘summer’. The sky is gloomy and the sunbathers are in cardigans and long trousers. ‘The weather was absolutely appalling,’ she says.

But rain needn’t spoil a holiday: Ruth recalls wet days at Bridlington as a girl when her mother would encourage her to recite her times-tables or some Wordsworth – ‘anything really to take your mind off the dreadful weather’. Sounds like hell? Nope. She loved it.

Meanwhile, back to Maplins. Hi-De-Hi! ran for eight successful years, bringing in up to 17 million viewers at a time. Yet you almost never see it on TV nowadays. ‘I wish the BBC would repeat them. I don’t know why they won’t.’ Hi-De-Hi? It seems the response from the Beeb is a blunt no-de-no.

Blackpool To Benidorm is on Thursday, Yesterday channel, 9pm.