Julian Clary once saved Joan Collins from drowning

The stand-up and Celebrity Big Brother winner has opened up about the "terrible drama", which saw the former Dynasty star thrown off her lilo, as she relaxed in the pool at her home in the South of France.

Fittingly enough, this hotel-based comedy is never short of guests - but the arrival of Joan Collins, playing Solana CEO Crystal Hennessy-Vass is still quite a surprise. Everyone is falling over themselves, some of them literally, to say, "What are you doing here?" Crystal embraces the morning cocktails and "three-star thinking" on offer from the salon boys, and has a proposition for Mateo and some alarming ideas on how to cut the wages bill to present to Joyce. Meanwhile, the Oracle (Johnny Vegas) returns in style.

Radio Times review

As Benidorm goes, this one's a classic. Hoity Joyce takes a tumble in more ways than one and is soon elbowed out by Janey - Crissy Rock returning as the Solana's original scouse manageress. Geoff parades his new Romanian girlfriend, who believes he's a millionaire, while Jacqueline hollers through singing lessons with a cocktail pianist (none other than Bobby Crush).

But the ice in the shaker is Joan Collins, back as Solana CEO Crystal Hennessy-Vass. Unlike her debut last year, she features throughout this episode, interacting with many more characters. She hits it off with Blow & Go double act Kenneth and Liam, and there's a startling pay-off with Geoff (Johnny Vegas). Only in Benidorm!

Joan Collins took Benidorm role as her sister is a fan

Joan Collins got a part in the hit comedy Benidorm because sister Jackie is a fan. Jackie, 77, took a box set to 81-year-old Joan's LA home. After watching it for four hours, a giggling Jackie rang creator Derren Litten.

Benidorm may have ceased being my cup of sangria a long time ago but fair's fair, the latest series finale was a cracker. It's unlikely you'll ever see Joan Collins, Rustie Lee and The Krankies together on the same bill again though. Well, unless they're called as character witnesses at the next Operation Yewtree trial.

There's a bit of a brutalist vibe about the Hotel Solana, the charmless edifice around which the action swings in Benidorm.

Derren Litten's sunburnt comedy closed its sixth run with a cast list that included Joan Collins, Janette Krankie, Rustie Lee and Mick from Brookside, not a line-up I thought I'd ever see in my lifetime.

Yet that bizarre bit of casting was as good as it got, because Benidorm is in need of a storyline on which to hang its rum collection of swingers, scallywags and Spaniards.

Collins made the most of her cameo as the Solana's boss, throwing a strop because manager Joyce had the temerity to get the hotel upgraded but the over-riding feeling was of characters treading water in the shallow end of the Solana's pool - someone needs to throw them a lifebelt because this show is sinking fast.

Joan Collins sweeps into the Solana to the mighty strains of Carl Orff's O Fortuna from Carmina Burana, setting the scene for some mighty tearing off of strips as she's playing the hotel's feared CEO Crystal Hennessy-Vass.

But she turns out to be something of a pussycat in a cameo turn that adds a touch of class to the finale of the cheap and cheerful Spanish holiday comedy drama that's been an orange or two short of the full sangria this time round.

Radio Times review

Joan Collins is in town for a guest-spot that's been a few years in the pipeline - she's a huge fan of the show, but you have to wonder if she's struggled with this ropy sixth series as much as its other devotees surely have.

La Collins rocks up in full Dynasty drag as Crystal Hennessy-Vass, chain-smoking CEO of the Solana Group, and she's none too pleased with manageress Joyce's track record. Her comic timing is impeccable, of course, but sadly Crystal swans off at the halfway mark. (The star, now 80, was only available on set for three days.)

The rest of this finale is a muddle, skewed by peculiar cameos: TV chef Rustie Lee, an ebullient presence whose inane guffawing quickly palls; and the Krankies (former swingers in real life) as legends in the Costa Blanca swinging scene.

A seventh series is about to shoot but Benidorm urgently needs to polish its wares.

This package comedy is close to its final departure. There aren't many more laughs to be squeezed out of the ageing swingers or the gay hairdresser, and most of us are only watching for the promised cameo by Joan Collins: she's due to turn up as the Hotel Solano's glitzy chief exec.

But some of the performances are too good to miss. Tim Healy, as the cross-dressing dogsbody Lesley, was hilarious last night when his boss put him in charge for a day and warned: 'With great office comes great responsibility. Here are the keys to the vending machines.'

Power went to Lesley's head, which was missing its bouffant wig. He became a Little Hitler, sacking the staff and dragooning the guests' children to run the hotel; meanwhile, his wig had been washed up on the beach where it was mistaken for a decapitated head.

Lesley ought to try a beehive wig. It might give him extra stature.