Beautiful People: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints (10 page)

When I heard of Phyllis’s death and imminent interment, all I could think about was the time she and Lassie (who should probably have had her eyes tested) fell into an open grave at a friend’s funeral. She came home with bloodied knees and grass in her hair. She could hardly get the story out she was laughing so hard.

“T
here’s a lovely bar called the Beachcomber,” said Cyril Biddlecombe with excessive gravity, “and they have a tropical rainstorm every twenty minutes.”

“It’s a tape recording,” said Biddie, nudging me in the ribs and rolling his eyes.

It is the summer of 1962. I am going on vacation with the Biddlecombe family. We are traveling to the county of Somerset to spend not one but two weeks at the Butlins Holiday
Camp located in the ominously named town of Minehead, a former swamp.

Sir William Edmund Butlin (1899–1980) started out as a carny. His mission in life was the creation of a leisure culture for working-class folk. Prior to his innovation, the sulky proletariat spent their preglobal-warming vacations cowering from the driving rain in wind-lashed bus shelters at smelly coastal resorts. Then along came Butlins, a bright, shrill, plastic, thigh-slapping, Technicolor antidote to the grim reality of factory life. By the time Biddie and I are disembarking at Mine-head train station, Butlins, with its überjolly uniformed “Redcoat” camp counselors, is an established institution.

Biddie is a Butlins veteran, albeit of the less enthusiastic variety. He has visited most of the camps in the United Kingdom but is ready to ditch the Butlins experience for a bit of Euro-sophistication.

“Monte Carlo is supposed to be lovely at this time of year,” he muses as we pull into the train station.

From the moment we arrive at the Minehead Camp, I am totally overwhelmed. The unflinching commitment to fun hits me like a tidal wave. Everybody at Butlins seems to be screeching his head off with manic glee. Here are all the grim-faced Eleanor Rigbys of England, and they are actually having fun. It is quite terrifying.

I demand to see the Beachcomber Bar. We dump our suitcases in our “chalets”—underfurnished, mustard yellow, cell-like rooms containing bunk beds and no discernible connection to Switzerland—and head over to catch the first tropical rainstorm.

The Beachcomber Bar is located inside what appears to be a brightly painted, recycled Second World War airplane hangar. All the Butlins attractions are similarly housed.

We enter. I gasp. The dreary exterior is a fantastically successful foil for the insanely overdecorated interior. Every surface is covered with Astroturf and bamboo-printed vinyl. Plastic palm fronds and succulents billow from every direction, creating a womblike jungle ambience.

A sturdy waitress wearing a garland of fake orchids waddles over to our table.

“A Babycham, please,” says Doreen Biddlecombe, ordering the latest ladylike beer alternative.

“Nothing for the kids,” says Cyril, “a pint for me. By the way, when is the tropical rainstorm due?”

“Oops!” says the waitress and scurries off behind a palm tree. She flicks a switch and—bingo! Thunder. Lightning. Instant tropical rainstorm.

Biddie and I exchange glances. We look around the jungle at the people enjoying their drinks. Here they are, in the middle of a former swamp in a large metal shed which has been stapled with tons and tons of plastic greenery, and they are acting
as if
they are in Hawaii.

This is a transformative moment for both of us.

In one blinding flash we understand the meaning of
camp.

The extreme atmosphere and decor of the Beachcomber Bar unleashed in us a correspondingly extreme theatricality. From that moment forward, every second of every day at Butlins presented us with some fresh and irresistible opportunity for
exaggeration.
The excess of Butlins demanded full-blown
demonstrations of uninhibited enjoyment from us, and we were only too happy to oblige. As we sat in the Beachcomber Bar, we automatically found ourselves emulating the poses and animated expressions of people who might be enjoying a tropical hideaway. The minute we adopted the corny body language of happy holidaymakers, we
became
those happy holidaymakers.

Finding out that we could do things
as if
we were doing them was, for Biddie and me, a transcendental and highly addictive discovery. Entering a room
as if
one was entering a room was so much more amusing and exhilarating than just entering a room. This revelation opened the door to a squishy, dark, velvet-lined place in our respective psyches.

From that moment on we luxuriated in the cut-price, cheesy pathos of the relentlessly upbeat Butlins experience. We had so much more fun because we were behaving
as if
we were having fun.

It was pure
camp,
literally and figuratively. Effortlessly we nudged and winked our way through the entire rainy holiday. In this desperate hothouse of frenzied kitsch, our camp sensibilities blossomed and flourished and fed off each other. We may not have been sun-drenched, but we were definitely irony-drenched.

We sang along enthusiastically with the wakey-wakey breakfast song (piped directly into our “chalets”). We cheered the infantile games and endless talent contests. We smiled appreciatively at the gaudiness and schlockiness of the amusements and the decor.

The epicenter of Butlins was the monumental indoor
swimming pool. The entire ceiling was draped with all manner of plastic festoonery: fake birds, leafy plastic vines, and tropical flowers. Every expense was spared. Though the tepid water was treacherously chlorinated and hair, mucus, and Band-Aids clogged the gutters, we neither noticed nor cared. We were too busy acting
as if
we were in a Busby Berkeley movie.

I can remember, as if it were yesterday, Biddie’s sister Sheila frolicking in this exotic environment in a bikini with red and black horizontal stripes. She looked like a bumblebee with Fascist leanings. While running round the pool, she slipped and fell, bouncing into the water like a beach ball. I have never seen such slapstick before or since.

More kitsch lurked underwater. Belowground, the pool was cunningly recessed into an endless, linoleum-floored tearoom. Large windows looked directly into the underwater murk. The glass-topped occasional tables at which we campers sat contained mounds of fluorescent-lit plastic flowers. Here we consumed cups of tea and shrimp-paste sandwiches while watching—through vignettes of plastic corals and Vac-U-Form plastic fish—the semiclad bodies of our fellow holidaymakers.

There was clearly something disgustingly voyeuristic about the whole arrangement. There were always a few suspect-looking older geezers lingering over their potato chips waiting for some pale-skinned nymph to plop into view.

Biddie told me that many of the Butlins camps had this fabulous and outrageously kinky architectural feature. The Biddlecombes loved to recall the occasion when Cyril’s
square-cut wool swimsuit descended to his ankles, in full view of a cackling crowd.

After a lazy day poolside, Doreen and Cyril would, as often as not, retreat to the smoke-filled Pig and Whistle, where plastic salamis and jokes on plaques festooned the ceiling.

My wife’s gone to the West Indies.

Jamaica?

No, she went of her own accord!

*  *  *

Much as we adored reading the plaques and watching the adults getting smashed in these themed watering holes, we did not linger.

“We have a show to catch,” we would announce in a rather grand theatrical manner. Biddie and I then headed over to the Butlins Playhouse. It wasn’t love of the dramatic arts which took us there. It was sadism. We adored nothing more than watching the exhausted Butlins thespians slogging their way through dramatized versions of Agatha Christie and the like, as if they were in some Broadway smash. These turgid productions were poorly attended. As a result we always seemed to have front-row seats.

One evening in particular stands out. On this occasion Biddie and I were thoroughly transfixed by a stout, mature lady who delivered her lines like a parody of a stout mature lady. Her bust jiggled, and saliva shot from her mouth, onto us, as she denounced her errant son. Bringing her monologue to a thundering crescendo, she flung herself into the nearest armchair.

Unfortunately for her, she missed her target and ended up pinioned on the pointy arm of her chair. The surprised expression on her face and the squeal she emitted indicated that this maneuver was not in the script.

Already in an excitable state, Biddie and I went into paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter. Like the object of our mockery, Biddie and I were also a little stout. As a result our wobbling and poorly muffled giggling proved quite distracting. Eventually the old trouper tired of our derision. She took a huge breath. Leaning forward, and breaking the magical membrane between audience and performer, she screamed “Do shut up!” directly into our chubby, petrified faces.

Butlins was theatrical, camp, and kitsch, but it was also, on occasion, a tad louche.

Though prepubescent, we became feverish aficionados of the seedy underbelly of camp life. Tacky Butlins seemed like the opposite of the wholesome American summer camps I had read about, with their frantic canoeing, flag-raisings, and tepees.

“I think she’s one of the rides,” quipped Biddie’s sister as we spied through the bushes on a female camper with a rock-hard beehive hairdo, yellow boots, and fishnets. This lady clearly spent her holidays, beer and fag in hand, flirting shamelessly with passersby from her chalet threshold. It was nice to know that free-wheeling single gals could afford Butlins too.

Slags and cocktails were about the only things not included in the cost. All the theatrical entertainments, meals, fairground rides, and cheesy variety shows were “free.”

Toilet paper was, for some reason, not included in the cost.
I had been warned about this and brought my own roll with me. At any given time you could spot a holidaymaker or two sprinting through the rain, clutching a loo roll, on his or her way to communal toilets (known as “the bogs”). This gave Butlins the feeling of a minimum security correctional facility, as did the razor wire which topped off the incredibly high chain-link perimeter fencing.

Potential freeloaders were said to be a constant threat at Butlins. Biddie and I were greatly amused by the idea of desperate fun seekers breaking into Butlins and availing themselves of the facilities like crazed drug addicts. By the beginning of the second week of our stay, we were bored with mocking the kitsch of Butlins and moved on to more sinister territory. We began to speculate about the strict security measures: were they designed to keep
them
out, or
us
in?

We developed all kinds of extreme persecution scenarios and renamed our camp Butlitz. The communal bathrooms became “delousing stations,” and the chalets were our “bunkers.” We started to speak with German accents and pretend to quote from
Mein Kampf.
The famous Butlins Redcoat counselors were no longer genial hosts but psychopathic camp commandants.

Biddie and I took great pleasure in spreading vile rumors to other kids about what the Butlitz Redcoats did to people who were reluctant to participate in the nonstop
fun
!

“Ve heff vays of mekking you loff!” Biddie would say as he jackbooted round our chalet/bunker. When we saw a Redcoat heading in our direction, we would throw him or her off our scent by hooting with laughter and skipping about.

I was familiar with the horror of the Holocaust. Blind Aunt Phyllis had a good friend called Inge who had survived Auschwitz. The experience had left her orphaned, partially sighted, and profoundly traumatized. Inge also had a bad case of arrested development. Dressed like a little girl, with white ankle socks and a bow in her hair, she would sit for hours in our living room with a cold cup of tea on her knee. Betty did not mince words about what had happened to poor Inge during the war.

“Be nice to her!” she would command, adding, in case we thought of doing otherwise, “Her whole family went up the chimney in Auschwitz. Bloody Krauts! Thank God we won the war!”