It's a rainy Saturday night and I'm in a crowded disco pub called Jumpin' Jaks. Vivian from The Young Ones is dancing with a girl in a home-made 'Frankie Says...' T-shirt, the familiar three studs running across his forehead, and his hippie mate Neil looking on.
Adam Ant (from his dandy highwayman period) is chatting with someone who looks like they've escaped from Seventies band The Rubettes. George Michael is pushing his way through to the bar dressed in a 'Choose Life' T-shirt. The Blues Brothers (five of them) are supping pints round a table in shades and plastic hats.
The large vodkas I've been drinking for the past few hours must be having an effect, because dotted around the dancefloor I can see not one but three Boy Georges, all resplendent in big black hats and be-ribboned dreadlocks. And all with breasts.
On stage Chris Lowe from the Pet Shop Boys is playing keyboards for a man in a gold tinfoil suit claiming to be Martin Fry. Outside, in the rain, there's a man with his clothes torn to shreds and his body covered in green paint saying 'Don't make me angry!' to anyone who'll listen - but I don't remember the Incredible Hulk with a beer belly.
I'm not having a flashback. The year is 2001, and I'm at Butlins in Skegness for an 'Eighties weekender', one of the many special events the company now promotes to bring in campers out of season.
There's something to suit most tastes: Sounds of the Sixties and Seventies, the Magic of Motown, a Disco Inferno, a Soul Explosion and a Stars of Vegas tribute which brings Elvis, Sinatra, Cher and Tom Jones (or at least people who sing their songs) to Bognor.
The Butlins short breaks brochure now reads like the ghost of Top Of The Pops past, a feast for avid readers of those 'where are they now' slots. Ever wondered what happened to Limahl, the singer with the extraordinary two-tone mullet hairdo who fronted Kajagoogoo? Here he is, along with one-hit wonders Doctor & the Medics, Freddie and the Dreamers, Katrina (formerly of Katrina and the Waves), Kid Creole and the Coconuts, the Real Thing, the Rubettes, China Crisis, Aswad, Edwin Starr, Heatwave and many more. Old pop stars no longer burn out and fade away, they hang out in holiday camps, using makeup and wigs to look as close as possible to the image on your reissued CD sleeves.
And then there are the tribute bands: Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince all put in appearances at Skegness (or at least lookalikes by the names of Vogue, Mikki Jay and Purple Rain). Complete Madness revisited the 2-tone ska hits of the late Seventies and early Eighties, to a packed house, and WhamDuran played pub-rock versions of Duran Duran and Wham hits, with the singer signifying the change between the two halfway by putting on shades and a leather jacket to 'become' George Michael. The women dancing at the front were probably too young to have seen the originals live, but knew all the words, singing along with gusto.
The real acts were disappointing in comparison: Shakatak, Jaki Graham, the Nolan Sisters, Bucks Fizz, Limahl and Go West alongside also-rans from the prolific Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable such as Sonia and Sinitta. All of them managed to have hits in the Eighties without anyone getting very passionate about them, and were still slick, professional and ultimately boring. In the end, the audience themselves were the best entertainment: men in mullet wigs, girls in big shoulderpads or New Romantic rigs. Hen parties in matching daft costumes roamed the camp by night, clearly having a whale of a time and followed by a string of salivating, spotty 16-year-old males. There were a few groups of friends enjoying reunions, but mainly it was families taking an off-season break, who perhaps thought the entertainment added extra value, but actually sat drinking and looking vaguely bored while their kids slept in buggies or played listlessly with colouring books.
Having had many a happy childhood break in British holiday camps, I was curious to see how they'd changed. When we arrived on the Friday night, we were given a welcome so warm that we worried they might strip-search us and march us to the showers before handing over our key. Our self-catering apartment was modern, bright and clean, but had plastic mattresses with loose top sheets and a fixed gap between bed and wall which seemed specially designed to ensure your pillow fell down it. Not that we'd have slept anyway - the apartment above us was occupied by a group of friends who came back every night in the early hours to drink, dance and play their Eighties greatest hits tape. It sounded fun, and had we not had our five year old with us, we might have tried to join them. As it was, wouldn't it have been possible to put families with children in a separate block, and why, when our block was almost empty, put people on top of each other anyway?
The centrepiece of all three new-look Butlins resorts is the Skyline Pavilion, a vast covered area which from the outside looks impressively like the Dome with interesting funnels attached. Just like the Dome, it is gaudy, relentless and disappointing inside. There is a Burger King, a Harry Ramsden's, a café selling weak coffee and dull pastries, a few shops, endless video games and vending machines selling sweets and useless toys. When the rain came down and everyone crowded listlessly inside, it felt like being trapped in a giant motorway service station.
The Center Parcs-style indoor Splash Waterworld was excellent, but the rest of the park seemed to have been thrown together with little thought. The funfair was hidden around the back in a car park, the crazy golf and children's play fort were fenced off rather than used as features, and although we drove through fields of yellow daffodils in the nearby countryside - an unexpected treat - there was not a flower in bloom anywhere in Butlins.
At night, too, the main walkway was dark and dreary: a few coloured lights strung across it would have made all the difference, and might also have stopped drunken males relieving themselves in every shady corner.
It was also expensive. The bowling alley cost more than our local one in London. After bowling, we had a turn on the go-karts, played crazy golf and each ate a small cod and chips from a disgracefully dirty table in Harry Ramsden's. That was when we realised that we had effortlessly and fairly joylessly spent more than £60 in two hours.
All in all, it was a grey, wet, slightly depressing weekend where everything seemed run-down and overpriced, customers were treated with indifference and there was lots of hype and corporate branding but little real content. Perhaps Butlins has more of an eye for detail than we thought: it was just like the real Eighties.
Fact file
Bookings: 0870 242 0870; www.butlins.co.uk. The themed weekends resume again after the summer season.
• Festival of the Sixties , 9-12 November, from £50 per adult; Disco Inferno 23-26 November, from £50 per adult in Bognor Regis.
• Festival of the Seventies 9-12 November, from £43 per adult in Skegness.
• The next Eighties weekend will be in March; prices to be confirmed.
All prices are for three-night stays, and all based on four adults sharing a self-catering studio apartment and booking before 30 June.
