Hi-de-Hi! Hi-de-Hi! Hi-de-Hi! is a BBC television sitcom shown on BBC1 from 1 January 1980 to 30 January 1988. Set between 1959 and 1960 in Maplins, a fictional holiday camp, the show was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who also wrote "Dad's Army" and "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" amongst other programmes. The title was the greeting the campers heard and in early episodes was written Hi de Hi. The series revolved around the lives of the camp's entertainers, most of them struggling actors or has-beens. The inspiration was the experience of Jimmy Perry, one of the writers. After
Hi-5 (series 1) programs such as "Here's Humphrey", and discovered that most children learned from shows which incorporated movement and song. They saw the need for television which was "life affirming", and believed that a child's imagination could be activated by television of good quality. The name of the series was derived from the high five gesture. Harris and Graeme-Evans pitched "Hi-5" to the Nine Network through Kids Like Us, their joint independent production company. After auditions for the cast were held in June 1998, a pilot was produced, and shown to a test audience. No changes to the format were made after