Gordon's home from home

I know Southwold very well, and, apart from the full Monty at CenterParcs, you couldn't pick a more expensive mainstream family holiday in Britain. The legendary beach huts there fetch more than a two-up, two-down in parts of the West Midlands, and the locals who still work there (none of them can afford to live in the town any more) call it Hampstead-on-Sea.

Don't get me wrong, we love it. The Sole Bay Inn, owned like so much of the town and surrounding farms by Adnams, serves the best beer in the world. Yes, the world. Whenever possible I take my half-German beer connoiseur son-in-law there. He grew up frequenting bars in Berlin and now spends all his time visiting micro-breweries across America. He agrees with me. And opposite, just round the corner from the lighthouse (killing steps up to the top) there's a shop selling old fashioned boiled sweets.

There's a great Punch and Judy show on the beach staged by Professor John Poulson and the amusements on the pier could not be more different from those at Lowestoft and Yarmouth, just up the coast. At Southwold you could be forgiven for thinking you'd wandered into an art show at the Ikon Gallery, the attractions are so post-modern. But kids adore them - I wonder if Gordon will try the walk the dog machine? It's our Becky's favourite.

The blue flag beaches are magnificent, the ferry to Walberswick is a must, the rep theatre, run by Clement Freud's wife Jill, is excellent all summer, but do avoid the circus which usually sets up at the Common: the worst and most pretentious I've ever seen.

The Freud name comes up a lot at Southwold. Emma has a clothes shop there, darlings, and her hubby Richard Curtis owns a wooden ex-fisherman's hut there. It cost £400,000. Esther Freud has a house there with husband David Morrissey, the actor.

Other famous holiday home owners include Caroline Quentin, Simon Mayo, Rowan Atkinson, Julie Myerson, the writer, and Paul Greengrass, the Bourne Supremacy man.

Michael Palin's mum used to run the WI and he gave his only public talk about his global travels at one of their meetings - although it had to be staged in the theatre to get everyone in: hottest ticket in Britain that weekend. His TV play, East of Ipswich, was set in Southwold.

Great church, excellent little library, and Maureen Lipman is a regular at the plush Swan Hotel. Lots of names stay there when they're doing the Aldeburgh Festival just down the road and do their best to ignore Leiston, home of the Sizewell Power Station.

Southwold is a white, upper middle class enclave where the newsagents sell more Guardians and Telegraphs than Suns. It's a town of champagne liberals and Tory toffs.

So all in all, Mr Brown will feel quite at home there.