SITTING in Alicante Airport for 12 hours waiting for a long-delayed flight, surrounded by bored and frustrated fellow Newcastle passengers making huge dents in their duty free stash of cigarettes, brought home the harsh truth so often presented as amusing anecdote on reality holiday TV.

However hard a shaved-headed, tattooed, half-plastered new acquaintance tries to lift the gloom by taunting officialdom, you still don't fancy sharing your time off with someone still wearing beach shorts as Hola Airlines finally touches down in the freezing North-East.

Realty TV begs to differ. Holiday Showdown (ITV1, Thursday) was the first of an eight-part series where exact opposites are brought together to share precious family moments.

The booze, fags and chips two-star Menorca-loving East End Dochertys were paired with the fruit and salad seven-star Jamaica luxury Londoners, the Plummers. Poor working class Kim Docherty suffered the most as snobby Simone Plummer ran rings around her package holiday rules for the first week.

"She's a sunburnt beachball trying to force the other family to have a good time and look at that big, fat beer-drinking husband of hers," observed my wife. Well-heeled James Plummer eventually agreed to take part in a holiday camp-style game of getting his wife to whip her bra off so he could parade in a beauty contest.

Mind you, he deserved it having complained about all the Northerners enjoying cheap holidays.

But a water park and go-kart final day followed by karaoke at least brought the couples' children close together, even if Simone continued to wear a face like an Iain Duncan Smith supporter.

On Jamaica for the second week, she hit the Dochertys with her paradise location principles: no smoking indoors, booze under protest, no lolling by the pool and plenty of healthy local produce. Kim threatened physical violence before subsiding to a week's worth of whingeing.

It didn't help the Dochertys to discover that James's "luxury" home nearby was nothing more than a large wooden shed with lethal-looking electric points. An hour's walk in the rainy jungle to a natural swimming pool with waterfall was described as "horrible, bloody horrible" by Kim.

My wife, who would never take part in anything like this series I have been asked to point out, reflected: "I think it would be horrible to have someone else sit in judgement on your holiday.

The Dochertys were out of their depth and the Plummers rubbed their noses in their wealth."

Puzzling questions still remained.

Obnoxious dad Danny Docherty is a fruit and veg market stallholderp yet doesn't seem to enjoy any of the produce he sells.

Haughty Simone Plummer classified herself as a singer-songwriter, but her efforts at karaoke wouldn't have impressed some of Simon Cowell's rejects.

The less we know about some holidaymakers the better.

Just to keep things up in the air, the truly dreadful Martin Kemp gangster series Family was replaced in its primetime slot by Holiday Airport Cyprus (ITV1, Monday).

Tales of lost tickets, missed flights and no luggage returned to haunt those already dreaming of next year's fun in the sun.

One airline even hired a plane to bring desperate holidaymakers home to England. Hola please take note.

Published: 01/11/2003