Remembering Paddy Burt

Nigel Richardson

She was for years the slyly witty voice of Room Service. recalls a revered colleague

One of the most distinctive voices of in the past 25 years has died following a long illness. Patricia (“Paddy”) Burt was the author of the weekly Room Service column that appeared in these pages between 1990 and 2008.

In it she reviewed the hotels and bed and breakfasts in which the great British public spent its weekends away. She always paid her way, booking in under an assumed name, and this trustworthiness, together with her sly wit, deceptively chatty style and almost uncanny ability to channel the foibles and frustrations of

readers, earned her a large following.

Lighting arrangements were a regular irritant (“There is only one bedside lamp, and a standard lamp which isn’t plugged in. When we do find somewhere to plug it in, we discover the switch doesn’t work…”) as was the provision of duvets over sheets and blankets: “What really enrages my husband (£95 remember) is the heavy, lumpy duvet. It’s the usual story isn’t it? He won’t sleep a wink will he?” As for breakfast, she was regularly obliged to confront hoteliers with one of life’s ineffable questions: “How could you, having made little balls of butter and all the other things that make breakfast enjoyable, put individual catering packs of jam and marmalade on the table?”

As Paddy recalled in a valedictory article, the ground rules for Room Service were set byy her first travel editor, Bernice Davison, whoho told her: “‘Pay the bill ill and don’t tell the owner ner your real name or why hy you are staying. If theyhey think you’re e writing aboutout it, they will treat eat you like a VIP. Oh, and you’ll u’ll need a husband. They hey always presume that a single woman staying in a hotel must be an AA inspector.’ Fortunately, I already had a husband.”

Paddy and her husband Robin signed in as either Mr and Mrs Sharp or Mr and Mrs Fraser. They even had credit cards in these names, which they arranged after being forced to pay cash at one of London’s most exclusive addresses to avoid revealing her identity. The paper commissioned a cartoon to run alongside her review, entitled “The Couple who Tried to Pay Cash at the Savoy”.

From Ambleside to Walberswick, and trouser presses to chintz, through the era of the enthusiastic amateur to the advent of the dreaded “gastropub”, Paddy spoke truth to proprietors while gossiping behind her hand to readers – and delivering the occasional jaw-dropper: “Over puddings my daughter’s boyfriend almost chokes and removes something from his mouth. It looks remarkably like a paperclip. It is a paperclip…”

For years her column had pride of place on the back page of the travel section, with a byline picture of her wearing a big hat and shot from behind, that emphasised her anonymity and independence. Paddy Burt’s Room Service was the first thing that many readers turned to on a Saturday morning. As one wrote to her: “Forgive the informality, but I feel we know you and your husband so well even thoughg we’ve

never met.”