Blurred memories of Club 18-30

Some men act upon adverts, which show once bald ex-cricketers boasting about how they got their hair back, while others take the more clichéd path of buying a sports car they can’t really afford and some attempt to rediscover their youth in the arms of a younger woman.

I adopt a far less expensive tactic when confronting the march of Old Father Time, which involves me becoming increasingly grumpier the older I get. And one thing guaranteed to get me into a full-blown Victor Meldrew rant is bright young things presuming I am yet another rotund, receding, over-tired, out-of-touch 40-something who has never experienced a day’s fun in his life.

I hit my teenage years at the right time and am grateful for the fun I had in cheap nightclubs across the land.

But I am also very proud of the fact I am one of the hundreds of thousands of mums and dads of today who experienced the organised chaos of a Club 18-30 holiday.

Last week it was announced that, after this summer, the most infamous holiday brand of them all will be no more.

Company bosses said they were left with little choice as their would-be customers in 2018 have different tastes from their counterparts of 25 years ago. It was perhaps the saddest thing I heard all week.

My 18-30 experience was no different from most: a blurred memory of a week which involved far too much cheap booze, little sleep and lots of laughs. The main motivation for booking the holiday to Faliraki, which after Kabul is the place I would least like to visit nowadays, was that back in 1995, it was dirt cheap.

Even though our hotel room resembled a communist-era prison cell and the fact that all of our ‘dinner money’ went on Greek lager and industrial strength spirits, those seven days will always be looked back on with the fondest of memories.

Drunken pranks, mass bar crawls and also quite a lot of flesh, although when I was there it wasn’t as debauched as some might have you believe. I am only sorry the teenagers of today have decided it is not for them.