Forget Hi-de-Hi: Butlin's is modernising its image by harking back to a bygone age

The firm's brave investment could help to brighten the future of the British seaside

The Butlin's makeover takes us back to a time before cheap flights enticed us south to Spain and Greece (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Re-runs of Hi-de-Hi! are the bane of Butlin's executives’ lives. The 1980s sit-com depicts holiday-camp life at a thinly fictionalised Maplins. The repeats perpetuate the notion that a stay at a holiday park resembles a bleak version of Colditz with added dodgems and third-rate entertainment.

Rather like a centre-left political party needing to move beyond its shrinking working-class core, Butlin's is modernising its image. The launch of the West Lakes Chalet Village aims to persuade middle England (and South Wales, an important part of the catchment) that the brand has moved on.

The owners have bet £16m on exorcising glamorous grannies and knobbly knees from the preconceptions of prospective customers.

Gone are the old barracks-like chalets (Simon Calder)

Yet the new chalets also hark back to a time before cheap flights enticed us south to Spain and Greece. The images of post-war campers that are deployed around the new-look Butlin's give a comforting sense of continuity, but no sense of the long-term decline endured by many British seaside resorts - and reflected in the results of last week’s general election. In each of the three seaside constituencies still blessed by Butlin’s, the UKIP candidate shoved Labour and the Liberal Democrats off the end of the pier by polling more than 10,000 votes.

Some coastal towns - St Ives and Padstow in Cornwall, and Southwold in Suffolk - have bucked the long-term decline among British seaside resorts. If the brave investment at Butlin's adds Minehead to that list, the future of the British seaside will look brighter.