OAPs Behaving Badly: Pensioner Swaps Retirement Home For Boozy Spain

But 64-year-old Carol Watson prefers to spend her twilight years drinking until dawn on the Costa Blanca in a series of outrageous outfits. 

The retired pensioner, from Stockton, decamps to a caravan site in Benidorm, Spain, for the winter months to soothe her arthitis in the hot sun and party all night.

She said: “Since I’ve retired I seem to find that I have a lot more fun because nothing bothers me as much and I get on with life and just enjoy it.

“They say life begins at 40, but I was still waiting. At 50 nothing had happened but at 60 I saw a drastic change. I started to go out more, party more and go in fancy dress.”

Carol, known as Cazza to her friends, likes to booze it up with her pal Val Bloom in the evenings and go to aqua aerobics and rumba during the day. 

And her strict exercise regime means she can spend all day sweating in the pool and all night sweating in a bar.

She said: “I’m quite a fit lady for an OAP, I like to keep fit especially because I suffer with arthritis.

“If you look after yourself it means you can party longer because you’ve got more energy and more life in you.

“I can party nearly all night and you find some of the younger ones go home earlier than me and I’m there till four o’clock in the morning. I remember a few years back I came home at 7.30 in the morning.”

Carol not only runs rings around revellers decades younger than herself, but also leaves her husband Bryan in the dust.

He will often head home in the evening leaving Carol to party with her friend Val in the early hours of the moring.

And the raucous pair are content to behave disgracefully in fancy dress and colourful wigs.

Carol said: “I dressed up as a naughty police women and when I had the handcuffs in my hand there was no stopping me and I couldn’t resist.

“I was slapping a few bottoms and I arrested a few guys with my pink handcuffs. That was a good day.”

And just like party animals in their twenties, Carol can suffer for her behaviour.

She said: “One time I’d just been down the bars and I came in the back end of the camp site.

“I had a few wines and it was very dark around the police bumps in the road. I never saw it and I just went. All of a sudden I smacked my face on the floor and I must have been unconscious.

“The next thing I knew there was this couple helping me up and they went to get their friend's wheelchair and they took me home and put frozen peas on my face to help the swelling go down.

“The next morning Bryan gets up and goes ‘what the hell have you done?’ My face was in a right mess. I didn’t go out for two days!”

And Carol isn’t the only Brit tearing up the Spanish streets and guzzling all of the booze.

John Bosomworth, a 69-year-old former senior magistrate has had a brush with the law – but is still living the high life in his Benidorm mansion.

The ‘Lord of the Manor’ was jailed for lying to the court over a drink-driving accident in the mid-nineties.

The privileged retiree emigrated to Spain’s sunny shores to enjoy his extensive and expensive collection of rare wines with his 35-year-old former police officer girlfriend.

But he has brought a taste of Blighty with him by holding regular shoots – with his £65,000 gun.

At the opposite end of the social spectrum is Harry Bird and his wife Maureen, who scour local markets for cheap bargains.

Harry – known as Flash Harry – has a collapsed lung from his 60 cigarettes-a-day habit, but has yet to give up despite Maureen’s nagging.

While his filthy addiction may drive a wedge between him and his wife, Flash Harry is a familiar face in the local area –and in local bars.

OAPs Behaving Badly starts on Tuesday June 16, 9pm, Channel 5