Banter, silly slogans ...they were like David Brent on full volume!

A Very British Hotel Chain: Inside Best Western HHIII The Architecture The Railways Built HHHII

Smash it! Own it! You are a superservice hero! Yes, there is only one thing more inspiring than a meaningless inspirational slogan, and that’s lots of inspirational slogans.

and if you’re still feeling insufficiently inspired, imagine these words emblazoned across a poster of an eagle: ‘Be courageous! Beat yesterday!’

at the headquarters of Best Western, we discovered in the documentary A Very British Hotel Chain (C4), chief exec Rob likes these mantras so much that they are embossed on aluminium door plates, as names for the different meeting rooms.

Well, it’s better than the BBC’s version in sitcom W1a, where all the glass-walled offices are named after dead comedians. Who’d want to hold a debrief inside ‘Benny hill’, when they could book ‘smash it’ or ‘Own it’?

To Rob and his ‘brand development director’ mark, any casual exchange was an opportunity for office banter. staff greeted their bosses with rictus grins and hilarity was mandatory on every desk. To hear Rob and mark enthuse the underlings was like listening to David Brent on full volume.

What the documentary didn’t manage was to explain what Best Western actually does, and what the benefits are in joining their ‘crazy family’. according to comic Diane morgan’s voiceover, sounding as well-informed as her gormless character, Philomena Cunk, in Charlie Booker’s Weekly Wipe, the role of Best Western is to ‘push bookings to the hotels and enforce brand standards’.

I’m assuming someone came up with that gobbledegook at the same departmental meeting that coined the phrase ‘beat yesterday’. still, membership must offer something, because celebrity chef marco Pierre White seemed keen to sign up his inn, the Rudloe arms near Bath, to their club.

It’s a three-star hotel, though from the look of the soft-porn photos and sculptures in the bedrooms, perhaps that should be a triple-X rated hotel.

marco didn’t seem to notice the steamy pictures, because he was too busy admiring the gigantic portraits of himself in his youth that smouldered from every wall.

‘There’s nothing wrong with a bit of narcissism,’ he declared, but his self-adoration was so excessive that he might as well have booked the honeymoon suite and made an honest man of himself.

mocking marco is all very well, but there’s a tinge of snobbery to this series, a barely concealed sneer at the retired couples and sales reps for whom bed-andbreakfast in a Best Western hotel is a bit of a treat. The result is a documentary that has an immature snigger at everything, which becomes tiresome quite quickly.

historian Tim Dunn takes the opposite tack, exuding earnestness over every brick of the buildings on the settle-toCarlisle line, in The Architecture The Railways Built (Yesterday).

It’s one thing to be impressed by the soaring arches of the

Ribblehead viaduct, but Tim is equally in awe of the looping wooden lintels beneath the eaves of the smallest station.

The art deco ticket office at surbiton, which resembles a Twenties cinema, was attractive, as was the water tower now converted into a palatial home.

But the programme came alive with a portrait of Victorian financier George hudson, whose vision for the railways got the better of him. Despite making millions, the Railway King could not resist fleecing his investors. When his frauds were exposed he was declared bankrupt.

more about hudson and less about renovations would have made for a better episode.