`Now girls, don't be shy. Will anyone who wants to enter the lovely legs competition come up to the side of the stage." Mosney's entertainments manager, Shane Ashe, is doing his best to rustle up a line-up of contestants to compete for the £300 prize for the holiday camp's best pair of pins.
One after another, the bashful competitors take to the small catwalk and, when the crowd boos, raise their hemlines higher.
If it's lovely legs night, it must be a Thursday at Mosney, Ireland's first holiday centre, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. The entertainment listings at the 500-acre Co Meath camp, 26 miles north of Dublin, turn over on a weekly basis, weather permitting.
On Mondays it's bonny babies, ladies' darts and a teenage disco. On Tuesdays, it's the mother and child competition, karaoke and ladies' soccer. Wednesdays see the father and son competition, glamorous grandmother and Head-To-Toe . . .
Every Saturday, from late May to late August, the redcoats wave goodbye to the outgoing campers and say "hi de hi" to the newcomers who will enter the same competitions and be entertained by the same entertainers.
Regimented? Yes. Bags of fun? Definitely. Mosney is a children's paradise, a huge adventure park with candy floss, popcorn and sticky buns on tap. For parents, it's a relaxed, safe and self-contained centre reassuringly detached from the outside world.
Mosney's affable marketing manager, Charles O'Brien, says he can't quite put his finger on why it endures.
"If I could, I would bottle it and just add water every year," says O'Brien. He wears a Mickey Mouse tie and admits to holidaying every year in Disneyworld in Florida.
In these days of bargain flights to Mediterranean sun spots, O'Brien admits, Mosney is not a cheap holiday option - rather, he says, it's a "value for money" choice. A week for a family of six costs between £272 and £680 a week, depending on the time of the year and the type of accommodation. All the evening entertainment and almost all the amusements are free to residents, which allows families to budget in advance.
With four bars, a night club, a betting shop, five restaurants including a Chinese take-away, a hairdresser, a launderette, a supermarket and a souvenir shop, there's no reason to venture beyond the perimeter fence from one week to another. For childminding, there are chalet patrols and a baby-sitting service.
"If you take the average family of dad working, mother working and three children, for 51 weeks of the year the children are under their parents' feet. When they come here, the parents know they can let the children out of the front door at 9.30 a.m. and it's a guilt-free abdication of responsibility."
Nostalgia is certainly one of the centre's unique selling points, ensuring that about one third of its customers return annually and 85 per cent come back within three years.
Built by Billy Butlin in 1948, the centre retains an atmosphere reminiscent of the long-running Hi De Hi television series. It has a well-worn and somewhat timeless quality - holiday-makers are still housed in the original, terraced, single-storey chalets with corrugated metal roofs, brightly painted doors and small windows.
"It's still very Hi De Hi," O'Brien agrees. "When people ask for an average day here I just say, take an average episode of Hi De Hi when everything that can go wrong does go wrong and is reversed by the end of the day."
The centre dropped its trademark public broadcast system in 1984 because, says O'Brien, "people objected to being woken up by a xylophone and they used to cut the wires". Its name was changed from Butlin's to Mosney by Drogheda businessman Phelim McCloskey, who bought the centre in 1982.
Mixing the right amount of nostalgia with a level of service the customers demand is, O'Brien says, a constant balancing act.
"Every year we try to introduce something new or increase the price of something by one penny, but you're constantly worried about upsetting the balance," he says.
In 1992, new jackets were designed for the redcoats and were met with a collective groan by the customers, so management went back to the costume room and resurrected the old-style blazers.
The redcoats are Mosney's ambassadors, a band of 18 singing'n'dancing hosts and hostesses who live in the camp and even perform at the weekly Mass on the on site's church. O'Brien can be forgiven for saying that "happy staff makes for cheery customers," because in Mosney, it's true.
It's 2.30 p.m., so it must be time for the daily sing-along by the centre's four resident Wizkidz. A small crowd has gathered around a low platform outside the Laserdome building for the 30minute performance. The Wizkidz leader, 19-year-old Shelly Naughton, steps forward and announces through a microphone that there will be "fun going on in just a few minutes". Shelly (who stresses that her high, blonde ponytails pre-date those of Baby Spice) is the choreographer of Wizkidz and the Friday night redcoat show.
The music starts and the Wizkidz go into a miming and dancing routine which starts with the holiday resort classic Agadoo Do Do, (Push Pineapple Shake The Tree) and ends with Blame It On The Boogie.
Over in the Ballroom Showbar the resident magician, Gemini, is hosting the children's fancy-dress competition in front of a red velvet curtain with gold stars.
He introduces the line-up of young contestants wearing elaborate home-made costumes. "Who do we have here, Wee Willie Winnie, oh Winkle, yeah, it's spelt wrong; a lady bird; a ballet dancer, I see, lovely; there's Action Man; Baby Spice, the spice babes; this must be a Power Ranger . . ."
In the evening the cabaret performer, Red Hurley - a Mosney regular - takes to the Ballroom stage in his black tuxedo and whips up the crowd with his medley of hits.
"It feels like Saturday night here in Mosney, but it's only Thursday. Let's pretend it's Saturday," he says, before pulling off his bow tie and launching into Saturday Night At The Movies.
By the end of his set, the capacity audience is twisting in the aisles. He reads out a note cast onto the stage. " `Please say hello to Maria from Wexford. My Mam loves you.' And I love your mammy."
Mosney closes on August 22nd
