WOULD Benidorm be any good without Johnny Vegas? That was the question on nobody’s lips as this new series based on the frolics of a couple of families on holiday in said resort got under way.

To be honest, the lack of JV didn’t really make much difference. The setting was the same — swimming pool and tacky club — and so were the gags — drink and sex-related.This time round it’s ’80s night and Bananarama make a guest appearance, which suggests they must be hitting the well-worn comeback trail in some form.

Disturbingly, the saucy postcard humour here, generally the sort in which you laugh at the people concerned rather than with them, almost makes me fancy a holiday in Benidorm.

Imagine it, all inclusive, so you can drink yourself silly, and nothing to do but sit around the pool laughing at everyone else before hitting “the club”.

Should be enough to keep you in laughs for a few days anyway — could almost write a sitcom about it. Call it Skegness.

Anyway, was it any good? Same as it ever was really, which is just slightly above all right and better than anything else on at that time of night.