The Hi-De-Hi life

They may once have had an unhealthy reputation for knobbly knees competitions and insanely early "wakey-wakey" calls but the great British holiday camp is making a comeback.

Thanks to the credit crunch, it is predicted that thousands of Brits will swap their summer holidays abroad to stay at home and head for the sort of holiday camps immortalised in the sitcom Hi-De-Hi!

This week Pontin's announced that it is planning to more than triple its workforce by next year, creating 2,000 new jobs.

For many holidaymakers, it will be their first taste of a British phenomenon which over the years has produced such stars as Charlie Drake, Tommy Steele, Anne Diamond, Des O'Connor, Jimmy Tarbuck, Michael Barrymore and Shane Richie, all of whom began their showbiz careers as holiday camp performers.

But these days, chains such as Butlins and Pontin's have radically updated the holidays they offer and the industry has also been transformed by the arrival of the likes of Center Parcs.

It was Billy Butlin who first spotted an opening in the British holiday market.

The onetime hoopla-stall owner had been in Skegness when he'd observed how bed and breakfast landladies turfed families out on to the streets in the morning and wouldn't allow them back till dinner.

Butlin created a radically new holiday experience, building 600 wooden chalets in a field in Skegness.

He's said to have designed the spartan 10ft by 10ft chalets on the back of a cigarette packet; each came complete with squeaky bunk beds, a 40-watt light bulb and running cold water.

Butlin's first camp was officially opened in 1936 by Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia, and his master-stroke was to advertise in the Daily Express, offering a week's holiday with three meals a day and free entertainment from as little as 35 shillings a week.

Almost immediately, 10,000 bookings were made.

Butlin's slogan was "a week's holiday for a week's wages" and soon he was offering swimming pools and 4,000-seater stadiums for greyhound and cheetah races.

Many of his happy campers had never been on holiday before and didn't know how to entertain themselves.

So, from dawn till dusk, the Redcoats laid on everything from Dare Devil Peggy, a one-legged high-diver, to beauty contests and massed dancing competitions.

Butlin's brilliant concept was copied in 1946 by Fred Pontin, who'd snapped up a derelict military camp site in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset.

PONTIN, who'd worked in the stock exchange, matched Butlin's Redcoats and so began a fierce but genial rivalry.

Butlin was once photographed having a drink at Pontin's Brean Sands camp as he checked out the competition.

The picture was used in a Pontin's brochure alongside the slogan: "All the best people come to Pontin's." Butlin was said to have hit the roof.

Pontin also sparked the package holiday craze in the Sixties, offering two weeks in Sardinia including flights, food, drink and accommodation for less than £50.

Pontin and Butlin, who were both knighted, sold up in the Seventies, as holiday-makers were tempted by the lure of Continental sunshine.

The golden era of holiday camps seemed to be history - that is until today. Will we really all be singing Hi-De-Hi! again?