It's about time we got our holiday camp weekenders back

A few years later we threw a party at our Bugged Out! chalet and Jackmaster came to DJ, banging out Prince and Arctic Monkeys while the likes of Dusky and Skream clamoured outside to get in. Speaking of Jackmaster, it was his Numbers label that threw the brilliant Pleasure Principle weekender in a caravan park in Cornwall back in 2013. How many times in your life do you get the chance to watch Robert Hood, Floating Points and Omar S by night and hotbox a static caravan by day? I’ll never forget the moment I came up while walking through the arcade at 2am and spotted Aphex Twin languorously leaning against the teddy picker. It felt like I was in some kind of low-budget, West Country-set version of the ‘Windowlicker’ video.

There’s some kind of weird alchemy going on at UK holiday camp raves. I went to Oasis Festival in Morocco last year, and it was bloody lovely. Set in a lavish boutique hotel on the outskirts of Marrakech, the line-up was quality, the sound was great, the sun shone, the people were beautiful and the whole place smelt divine. Honestly, go – you’ll love it. But anyone can have fun in a beautiful location like that, whereas raving in Butlins in January for three days, fuelled mainly by vodka and supermarket sausage rolls, requires far steelier stuff.

You could argue that in 2018 the natural home of the weekender is abroad, with Croatia alone playing host to a number of events that cater to a niche audience with capacities around the same as a holiday camp rave. But while sun, sand, sea, seafood and quality European lager is appealing, there’s just something brilliantly perverse about getting trollied in a coastal holiday camp at winter’s lowest ebb, and with a soundtrack of cutting-edge electronic music to get you through. And the fact is that as a generation spared the rigours of National Service, we’ve relied on these strenuously debauched yet rewarding experiences to build character.

Have a quick glance at the Butlins website and you’ll notice they’re hosting 70s, 80s and 90s weekenders – but Bloc or Bugged Out! these events ain’t; in fact, they’re little more than weekend-long versions of Saturday nights at Reflex. Have the Powers That Be decided that dealing with coach-loads of middle-aged nostalgia nuts is somehow preferable to having ‘our sort’ wandering around the arcades after having not slept for three days? Well, we’re honestly sorry for the state we left the place in every year, but please, we want our chalet crack-ons back!