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Demands for a change of towels twice a day and exclusive use of the health club – the mysterious guest at Ambridge's Grey Gables hotel bears no resemblance to any hotel reviewer I know
Fans of The Archers will know that staff at the radio soap's fictional hotel, Grey Gables, are in a complete flap. It's all down to the arrival of a mysterious travel writer who is behaving like a spoiled brat. For the uninitiated, let me explain. The long-running radio series, set in fictitious Ambridge, has a smart hotel called Grey Gables whose owners, Caroline and Oliver Sterling, are away on holiday (look, I never said this was going to set your day alight). Fatally, they have left Grey Gables in the hands of out-of-touch retired hotel manager Ray Franklin.
When a travel writer called Suzy Shen (yes, really) arrives, Franklin ensures she is accommodated in the best room, the Royal Garden Suite, despite regular guests already having a confirmed booking. I don't know who is researching this storyline, but I suggest they stick to tales of combine harvesting.
As a Guardian travel writer, I can't imagine any hotelier, anywhere, booting out regulars to impress the likes of me. Some won't even do it for real VIPs. A friend was working at a Cornish hotel during the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001, when the Blairs travelled down. Suites at the poshest pitstop had been requested by No 10 but the hotel in question was full and they wouldn't budge. Their rooms were booked by regulars who would be back next year. The VIPs, who wouldn't, could take a hike.
While Mrs Shen is lapping it up, I can't abide an obsequious hotelier, the manager who sticks to you like glue so you can't think straight about what's really going on. Like the one who, at a beautiful, country five-star, followed me around like a puppy, lying in wait behind doors, pouncing at every available opportunity. In the morning, as a waitress arrived with tea, up popped the owner's head, like a Spitting Image puppet, demanding to know if I'd slept well and trying to engage my barely conscious travelling companion in conversation from the hallway.
There is a (thankfully rare) element of reality to Franklin's oily demeanour, but the Archers scriptwriters have sent the story into farce when it comes to Mrs Shen. She not only stays for several days (unlikely, from a journalistic point of view, unless a crazed gunman had rampaged through the village) but orders glossy magazines by the armload and a change of towels twice daily. As for requiring exclusive use of the health club while she goes for a swim, that's plain weird, since anyone will tell you the best bit of reviewing is watching other hotel guests. I'm enjoying the Archers comedy interlude. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I can't live up to Mrs Shen. If I had to be that imperious, I'd have packed it in years ago. From exhaustion.
