ON LAST NIGHT’S TELLY
A Very British Hotel Chain: Inside Best Western, Channel 4
Funny man Ricky Gervais has an awful lot to answer for. Seventeen years after The Office ended, documentary makers are still trying to make the next David Brent happen. Channel 4 was at it with this whimsical look at the Best Western hotel group.
We knew it was whimsical because it had jaunty classical music and a knowing voiceover from comedy actress Diane Morgan, whose first task was to inform us that it was filmed last autumn, “before a certain C-word changed everything”.
At first, I thought that might have been a reference to the effects of Boris Johnson’s economic policy on the hotel industry. Then I realised she meant Covid-19. The main problem
with this film was that the prospective Brents were fully camera-aware – from a pair of likely lads at head office to hotel inspector Alasdair, who announced himself as if he were a new righteous superhero: “I am the hotel inspector. I cannot be bought.”
Away from the Brents, the chain’s acquisitions team was trying to persuade Marco Pierre White to nail his hotel’s colours to the Best Western mast. Everyone seemed very excited about the prospect of landing Marco. However, given his most recent commercial adventure involved him being named a “P&O Cruises Food Hero” I did wonder whether he was quite the catch they thought he was. Land him they did, though.
Marco confirmed the deal in typically dramatic fashion: “I never break my word for anybody.”
No doubt his three ex-wives would have enjoyed that little speech.
‘‘ The show was filmed in autumn last year, before the C-word changed everything. No, not Boris. Coronavirus