It was launched on 29 September 1979, when it ran from 9.05 to 9.50 on BBC Radio 4 and continued to be broadcast live every Saturday morning in roughly the same time slot for almost two decades.
The mix of 'warts and all' location features and comedic interviews with travel executives trying to defend the indefensible, found almost universal favour with the audience.
Editor of the Skier & Snowboarder magazine, Frank 'Scoop' Baldwin, and his deputy Rob Freeman, also agreed to be interviewed while naked in a sauna in Zell am See to give an insight about the etiquette Brits would have to adhere to when visiting Austrian spa facilities.
The programme was occasionally broadcast from overseas, including New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, and famously on one occasion live from Bruges on the weekend when the Townsend Thoresen ferry "Herald of Free Enterprise" ran aground.
[1] The distinctive theme music was "Breakaway" written by Con Conrad, Archie Gottler and Sidney D. Mitchell for the film Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 and performed by Jack Hylton and his Orchestra.