For £20k a night I want Dick Van Dyke dancing in my hotel room!
MISERYGUTS OF THE NIGHT: Comic actor Jim Carrey was a monument of drab self-pity in Kidding (Sky Atlantic), as a puppeteer on the brink of a breakdown. He might think this self-indulgent twaddle makes him a great actor. It doesn’t.
All the money in the world might buy you gold teacups. You can have endless pink balloons and mirror walls. But it won’t guarantee you a decent slice of lemon drizzle cake.
The trials of london’s wealthiest oligarchs and sheikhs were exposed in A Hotel For The Super-Rich And Famous (BBC1), a documentary so camp it should have been saved for Christmas and mounted on top of the tree in Trafalgar Square.
Uber-efficient hotel manager Thomas Kochs, last seen in charge of london’s most traditional five-star haven on BBC2’s Inside Claridges in 2012, was showing us round his new posting — the much more ostentatious Corinthia, overlooking the Thames.
He led us through the Royal Suite penthouse, where a single night costs £20,000, and showed off the ‘Mary Poppins views of the rooftops’ from the balcony.
At 20 grand a pop, I’d expect Dick Van Dyke and a chorus of chimney sweeps to do a dance for me.
The suite’s dining room was lined with mirrored planks that folded back to reveal a giant television. Its bathroom had a free-standing tub the size of a garden shed: ‘Plenty of space for two,’ blushed Thomas.
The Royal Suite was so over-thetop that regular guest Will.i.am, the speccy one from The Voice, declared he couldn’t stay there. It was too much grandeur, he said — adding cattily that it might suit Beyonce.
Will.i.am was staying for ten weeks. Rather than bringing suitcases, he kept an entire collection of clothes in storage at the Corinthia. Well, he probably wants to save money on his airline baggage allowance.
Thomas’s obsession with detail was so intense that, when the Corinthia decided to start serving afternoon teas, complete with gold teacups, he devoted a crisis meeting to choosing the fillings for the finger sandwiches.
A second conference was called to settle the tricky problem of how to present the patterned crockery . . . with the stripes vertical, pointing towards the diner, or horizontal. Certainly not at a diagonal: it would look untidy, Thomas fussed.
The poor man almost fainted when someone suggested waiters in shirtsleeves on dress-down Saturdays. ‘That would be borderline revolutionary,’ he gasped.
But all this attention to minutiae was undone when the first teas were served, and the lemon drizzle cake disintegrated. Perhaps it should have been dipped in liquid gold first.
The naive young man on the reception desk summed it up best: ‘Wow,’ he whispered. ‘How can people have so much money and live like this?’
For those who aren’t dripping with pearls and platinum credit cards, Kirstie Allsopp had some tips for decorations and presents on a budget, in her Handmade Christmas (C4).
Some of her ideas were marvellous. With a can of spray snow and a windscreen scraper, she showed us how to paint twinkling snowscapes on the windows. It was a cheap and original effect, ideal for children to experiment with.
Other tricks seemed a bit ropey. Her linen napkins dyed with colourings from breakfast leftovers looked like they’d been badly boil-washed. Tie-dye is a trend best left in the Seventies, and I can’t say I’m anxious to slurp one of her snowball cocktails with homemade advocaat either.
As for her ‘quick-and-easy’ trifle, with a tub of marscapone and a stale panettone cake — if you’re that intent on blocking up your arteries, you might as well use butter and a plasterer’s trowel.
But Kirstie was deliriously happy, lost in her own world of snipping, mixing and sprinkling. Why not? Tis the season to be jolly.