‘Alright darlin’, what you doing hanging around with this poof? You should get yourself a real man.’
He grabbed his crotch and his mates laughed and taunted. Then suddenly Ted made a lunge at Kim.
‘What the hell are you doing? Pack it in!’ I screeched, trying to push him off her. That was obviously what he had been waiting for and Ted immediately launched himself at me, punching and kicking me to the ground. Kim was hysterical, sobbing and screaming, while Toby (whose lead I had dropped in the scuffle) was jumping around, yapping frantically.
On a relaxed Sunday afternoon you’d think that all the shouting and barking – not to mention a girl screaming for help at the top of her voice – would have attracted a bit of attention, but it was as if we were completely invisible. Perhaps people were scared for their own safety, but it was only when all the boys grabbed me off the floor and threw me into the lake that a couple of men finally stepped in and Ted and his gang sauntered off, laughing and jeering as they went. It was probably just a bit of fun to him, but I have no doubt that if it had been dark Kim could have been raped and … well, God knows what would have happened to me.
* * *
By the time I had finished my first year at college – one down, one to go – Kim’s modelling career was taking off. She was heading down to London every few weeks for castings and had started to make a few model friends, including a pretty Geordie brunette called Jayne Middlemass who was already becoming known as a Page 3 girl and later, as Jayne Middlemiss, made a name for herself on TV.
Although I had a student grant to help support me through college it barely kept me in pencils, so I got a Saturday job at a hairdresser in a nearby village. The clientele was wall-to-wall Coronation Street grannies and I spent my whole time doing shampoos and sets, but the pay wasn’t bad and I enjoyed hanging out with the salon’s owner, a gay guy called Jason who was best friends with a hugely fat older woman he called Boobs. She was your classic fag hag, always dressed in some outrageous too-tight outfit with everything spilling out. ‘Alright, love?’ Boobs would greet me in her raspy 60-a-day drawl.
The salon work helped out with living expenses, but when the summer holidays came round I was desperately in need of funds. Scouring the local papers for work, I spotted an advert that immediately caught my attention: ‘Have you got star quality? Do you love working with people? If that sounds like you, you could be a Red Coat! Butlins Skegness is looking for bright young people to join our award-winning team.’
Well, it seemed like the perfect job for me. Not only did I have all those years of showbiz experience under my belt, I was a huge fan of Hi-de-Hi, the long-running BBC sitcom about a fictional holiday camp. What with the kitsch seaside setting, Ruth Madoc running around in her little white shorts, the beauty pageants and the ballroom dancing, it actually all looked quite glamorous to me.
I was interviewed by one of the camp managers who made working there sound like a trip to Disneyland. Perhaps I should have realised something was up – it was almost as if he was trying to convince me to take the job, rather than the other way round. But I was seduced by the prospect of returning to my showbiz roots, the camaraderie of camp life and the possibility of getting a tan while I worked, and I leapt at the job when he offered it to me, also persuading Kim – who was temping in an office to supplement her modelling income – to quit her office job and come along to live the Red Coat dream with me.
We arrived at the camp on a typical English seaside summer day – grey clouds and drizzle, which would in fact linger for most of our stay. We were shown to our digs. You know that advert where a flat looks like it has been burgled, but in actual fact it’s just a complete tip? Well, that should give you some idea as to the state of our chalet.
I stared in horror as I noticed a cockroach scuttle beneath the wardrobe, praying that Kim wouldn’t notice (she didn’t, although she certainly didn’t miss the rest of his mates who turned up later that night to join the party). The room stank of stale cigarette smoke and rotting food; after a few days we actually found a long-forgotten burger mouldering under the bed. The carpets, presumably once light brown, were now patterned with an incredible variety of stains and dried-up spillages which felt crusty underfoot – if you were stupid enough to take off your shoes, that is. And as for the bed – well, the wafer-thin mattress was bad enough, but the bedding clearly hadn’t been washed since last season’s inmates had escaped. Once I discovered the communal laundry I realised why: the washing machines were so filthy that anything that went inside would come out with a whole new set of stains. Bearing all this in mind, I don’t think I really need to spell out to you what the communal toilets were like.
Desperate not to linger in our chalet on that first day, we went off in search of the staff canteen. I still remember the smell of those huge industrial kitchens and the vats of grey slop bubbling away like some primeval swamp. That night dinner was sausage and chips, but the chips were still frozen in the middle and the sausages were made out of all the unmentionable bits that were left over after all the edible parts of the animal had been removed. You couldn’t even get a drink to ease the ordeal of mealtimes, as the camp’s staff members weren’t allowed to drink alcohol onsite.
We later discovered that everyone got round this rule by having secret parties in each other’s chalets with smuggled-in booze and, as most of the employees were single and bored out of their minds, these illicit gatherings usually turned into orgies. During our short stint at the camp there was an outbreak of crabs because of the feverish partner swapping that went on.
‘Gary, we’re leaving,’ sobbed Kim at the end of that first night. ‘I don’t want to stay here another day. This is awful.’
‘Come on, babe, let’s give it a bit more time,’ I begged. I was as horrified as she was, but I was desperate for the money. ‘I promise I’ll talk to them about the chalet. We’ve committed ourselves now, and I’m sure things will get better once we start our Red Coat training. Okay?’
But at the next morning’s ‘welcome’ meeting for us new recruits there was another shock in store. Any hopes I’d had of revisiting my past glories on stage vanished as quickly as a glimpse of Skegness sunshine when we were told that we would have to earn the right to become Red Coats by working in other positions in the camp first. Forget judging the knobbly-knees contest or teaching tap-dancing, we were going to be waiters. And far from a jaunty scarlet jacket and crisp white trousers with matching shoes, my new uniform consisted of a short-sleeve shirt, too-short black trousers and a name-badge that (thanks to some administrative cock-up) read ‘Hello, I’m Barry!’
And so Kim and I spent the three weeks we lasted at the camp shuttling between the kitchens and cavernous dining room to serve up deep-fried nuggets and over-boiled vegetables to the largely disgruntled clientele. After a few weeks of drudgery, and desperate to salvage something from the whole disastrous episode, I took the manager to one side after our breakfast shift.
‘Hi, Clive!’ I said, dazzling him with my best toothy showbiz smile. ‘I didn’t want to make a big deal about this, but I should probably tell you that I used to be a professional performer.’
The manager seemed engrossed in the paperwork on the clipboard he was carrying, so I pressed on.
‘I appeared in a nationwide theatre tour with Lionel Blair and was in musicals like Carousel and Jesus Christ Superstar, I continued brightly, exuding what I hoped was Red-Coat-like bubbliness and positivity. ‘I’m a really strong singer and I can tap-dance and do a bit of ballroom as well! So basically, given the chance, I think I’d make a great Red Coat and be a real asset to your team.’
Clive finally looked up from his clipboard, scratched his crotch and squinted at my name-badge.
‘Barry,’ he said slowly, with the look of a man who’d endured a lifetime of economy sausages, stained carpets and broken dreams. ‘I really don’t give a shit.’
‘So,