What happens when a group of Goths – those black-clad and heavily eye-linered survivors of a post-punk musical subculture – go on holiday? More specifically, what happens when 150 of them join a cruise ship of 2,500 ‘norms’ en route to Bermuda? Will they play shuffle­board? Do they use sun block? Just how scared will their geriatric fellow cruisers be?

It turns out, of course, that Goths – when you strip away the piercings and tattoos – are rather like the rest of us; perhaps just more honest about it. Like most of us, they’re keen on being individ­uals but also need to belong. Their sense of differ­ence – often the result of being picked on at school – is paradoxically the shared factor that draws them together: an existential sense of not being quite like everyone else, which expresses itself through a pleasingly child-like ‘dressing up’ and an impatience with the ‘givens’ (and dress codes) of mainstream society. Like any subculture, Goths create their own family structures, in which common beliefs and interests accommod­ate a wide range of beliefs and practices. So, we meet Lobster, a Devil-horned extrovert who loves shocking the norms; Storm, a quiet-spoken, six-foot, cross-dressing black man; Sean, an ex-soldier suffering from Gulf War Syndrome and fond of wearing T-Shirts saying “Fuck Consensus Reality”; and Bridie, Ian and little Kyle, a perfectly normal family from Wrexham who just happen to have very strange hair.

As well as following the cruise, the film also makes an excursion to Whitby’s Goth Weekend, where I half-expected to spot our own Gail-Nina Anderson among the assorted ladies in black. It’s a warm, amiable film, and its articulate interviewee stars are pleasant company for the duration of the holiday.