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Press Packs Hotel Babylon

Hotel Babylon
Starts Thursday 19 January at 9.00pm on 91Èȱ¬ ONE

Category: TV Drama
Date: 11.01.2006
Printable version

When I first sat down with Anonymous, a manager of one of the capital's five star hotels and the source for Hotel Babylon, my exposé on the luxury hotel business, I had my preconceptions.

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Luxury hotels were obviously going to be expensive; they were going to be decadent; they were going to be glamorous places where the staff were put-upon and the guests had their every whim and fancy catered for.

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But what I wasn't expecting was how secretive this world would be or quite how materialistic. For this is a business where cash is king, anything goes, and no one really wants to talk about it.

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Initially, my meetings with Anonymous were very cloak and dagger, like something out of a rather poor Cold War movie. We'd always liaise by mobile, I'd never call him at work and we would meet for furtive flutes in various salubrious and secluded bars around town.

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Our consorting, he explained, could get him fired. For he had, along with the majority of the hotel, signed some sort of confidentiality contract, which was designed to prevent idle chatter and ensure the privacy of important guests.

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But it didn't seem to deter him too much. And after a while he began to relax. I'd come to the hotel, we'd meet in reception, I'd have a drink in the bar. Eventually we ended up booking into suites in his hotel for the afternoon, ordering up refreshments on room service. Although quite what the staff thought their boss was doing, in a suite, with a woman, in the middle of the day, is anyone's guess.

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But then again they are used to that sort of thing. Bad behaviour, you would think, is par for the course in the luxury hotel business: a demanding guest here, a drunken guest there, an illicit couple, some broken glasses.

Hotel Babylon

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But what the hotel staff really have to put up with from guests who are shelling out between £350 and £3,500 a night would shock even the most jaded of souls, myself included.

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And it is usually the chambermaids who are at the sharp end. Dirty needles, used condoms, porn mags all pale into insignificance when it comes to the middle-aged woman who left a rather large accident in the bed before she went off to view the Summer Exhibition.

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Or even the thrifty businessmen who urinate in to whisky miniatures so they don't have to pay for their late night snifter from the minibar.

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None of it is the sort of thing you'd expect from an establishment where it is £25 for afternoon tea and Champagne is over £15 a glass.

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But then again the more I heard about the hotel industry, the more I became astounded by human nature. Something strange really does happen to a guest as soon as they come through the revolving glass doors of a hotel.

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Perfectly respectable businessmen go wild. They don't just let their hair down - their trousers and underwear go too. Away from home, on expenses, they dial up porn and seek out 'company' like they have never come across the opposite sex before.

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Crossing that reception threshold, they seem to divest themselves of all responsibility and revert to an almost teenage state.

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With the most rudimentary tasks, including bed-making, taken care of, the guests have nothing but their pleasure and entertainment to worry about.

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The results are extraordinary: guests having sex in corridors, in the lifts, passing out in corridors, falling through windows and knocking themselves unconscious in the urinals.

Hotel Babylon

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Below stairs, it couldn't be more different. The world of Dirty Pretty Things does exist. First generation immigrants, asylum seekers and foreigners who have only a minimal grasp of English all work long hours for low wages.

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They have no prospect of promotion or even a whiff of a tip. They are the lost souls of the hotel industry who slop out the kitchens, bleach the corridors and hose down the staff toilets in the early hours of the morning.

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Their existence is in stark contrast to the above stairs experience. I always knew that hotels spoilt their guests, I also always knew that in most five star establishments the food and the wine were outstanding.

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But what I wasn't prepared for was the delicious Epicureanism of it all. Fresh lobsters, sides of hand-sliced smoked salmon, baskets of truffles, pots of caviar and two hundred-year-old Cognacs that go for £750 a shot.

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The luxury hotel is run like the ultimate country house, where the finest produce is delivered in its freshest state and prepared by the most professional of hands.

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The smells, the presentation and the flavour of it all is enough to over-stimulate even the most indulged of palates.

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My year on the frontline of the ultimate service industry was a real education. I never expected such decadence and debauchery; I never expected such seediness or such depravity. The highs and the lows, the human sadness contrast amazingly with the great beauty and the fantastic Epicurean excellence they achieve.

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The capital's luxury hotels are extraordinary places, full of extraordinary stories, and are a microcosm of the world outside. A sort of London in extremis, if you like.

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So to see it all come to life in a television drama for 91Èȱ¬ ONE is an amazing experience and a true feat by Carnival Films. The set is so overwhelmingly sumptuous, I'm afraid I shed a tear when I saw it. It has an upbeat contemporary feel to it all that I was not expecting.

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And with the likes of Tamzin Outhwaite, Max Beesley and Dexter Fletcher leading the cast, they have engaged some of the best acting talent around.

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Usually an author is slightly apprehensive when they hand over their literary baby to another. But with Gareth Neame at the helm and Tony Basgallop's creativity, the result is enough to make any mother proud.

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I can't wait to see the finished result. I know Anonymous is keen as well. In fact, we are talking of taking a suite together in his hotel to watch the first episode go out. That should get some tongues wagging. Then again it might not.

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