Now British culture is exported at the point of a beer bottle. Our advance guard sets off for foreign climes in the hope of blazing sun and cheap booze.

Once there, the second wave of bar owners hit the beaches armed with karaoke machines and Watney's Red Barrel.

Goa was once a small fishing province in India. Then it was a Portuguese colony before becoming a hippie paradise. Now it is part of the package holiday trail. Ken and Jackie Johnson, from Manchester, went out for a holiday, got drunk and bought a bar. In Living The Dream, they returned to turn a ramshackle frog-haven into a thriving establishment serving up crisps, singalongs and a taste of home.

"It takes us eight hours to get to Cornwall," mused Ken. "Then it's another two hours from there. That's how I see it." Cornwall has obviously been missing a marketing trick if it can claim to be sited next to India.

Despite his lack of geographical knowledge, Ken managed to find his way back to the bar he had bought.

For a get-away-from-it-all location, Goa seemed to be a lot like home. Crooner Andre sang Sweet Caroline and the punters moaned about everything. And I could swear that there was a packet of Nik Naks behind the bar.

"At the end of the day they are fisher folk and that's who they are," patronised one ex-pat.

This could have degenerated into a clash of cultures. But there was precious little interaction between them.

Surprisingly, Ken and Jackie survived and thrived with good humour and temperance.

Long live the second British Empire.

GOODNESS knows how long it is since TV first got the idea of following (usually gormless) Brits who take it into their heads to live and work abroad - usually with little or no research into what to expect or knowledge of foreign ways.

I admit that some of these programmes, particularly the Living The Dream series, have been entertaining, albeit in a cruel and heartless way.

Off they go, these latter- day colonials, with little money and exaggerated expectations, to somewhere they visited once on holiday, hoping to find a way of earning a living while enjoying the high life.

But a sign that the formula is beginning to run out of steam came with last night's Goan Bonkers - the title a pun that director David Goodale couldn't resist, but one that was not really justified by the frankly unexciting content.

In fact, the odyssey by Mancunians Ken and Jackie Johnson, to own and run an English-style pub in Goa, proved hardly more exciting than any British businessman deciding to go to India to open a small factory for the manufacture of gizmos.

The Johnsons had originally spotted the Peacock pub while on a package holiday in Goa; five months later, they took their life savings of Pounds 14,000, bought the pub's lease for an undisclosed sum, and went to live and work in the former Portuguese colony - leaving their three grownup daughters and five grandchildren behind.

Rather charmingly, it seems that Jackie's chief motive, after 30 years of marriage, was to spend the rest of her life somewhere in the sun where she could have her husband all to herself.

Ken, a lorry driver, consoled himself with the thought that Goa was not so far from Manchester, really - just the few hours it would take him to drive to, say, Cornwall, plus eight hours or so on an aeroplane; Mr Johnson is clearly a stoic. The couple arrived a month before the tourist influx in October, and found the Peacock had sadly deteriorated during the monsoon season.

They made contact with Veejay, the lady cleaner - but the bar staff, all of whom had been promised jobs, failed to appear. 'I'll sack them,' said Ken, who had never employed anyone in his life.

The Peacock, attached to a tourist hotel, lay in a cul-de-sac near the beach, but once visitors started to arrive, Jackie was displeased to discover that they preferred to buy their drinks from a cheap local off-licence, then lounge by the pool, drinking in full view of the often empty Peacock's owners.

SUMMONING a rep from the holiday company, Jackie laid down the law: she wanted a sign posted at the hotel forbidding tourists to consume food or drink that had been bought off the premises.

Not only did she win her point, she also secured a deal for the Peacock to be in charge of keeping the mini-bar in each room topped up, thus leaving no refrigerated space for contraband booze.

It was obvious that Jackie's getup-and-go spirit might just turn the pub into a going concern, if not a howling success - certainly, none of the other expat British pub owners who crowded into the Peacock for the opening night seemed to be making a fortune.

And it was she who shortcircuited the leaden-footed local bureaucracy by flying to London to obtain work visas from the Indian High Commission: without them, she and Ken couldn't even open a business bank account.

It is typical of the people we see in Living The Dream that Ken and Jackie hadn't even realised they would need work permits before setting out for India.

The producers might argue that their programme at least shows others the pitfalls they can fall into.

But if that were true, how is it that there's never any shortage of hopefuls setting off for foreign climes without the foggiest idea of how things work?