Squeaky trouser time for butlers at one of Britain’s grandest hotels
What-ho, Jeeves! Prepare for a spiffing reinvention. the finely tooled engine of the Wooster cranium is firing on all six cylinders, very much to your advantage. ‘Indeed, sir?’ absolutely indeed, Jeeves. You shall buttle no more. Your buttling days are over.
‘Very good, sir. although, if I might remind you, I am not a butler. I am a gentleman’s personal gentleman.’
Piff! tush and wiffle, Jeeves. I have been watching avidly, or in fact ‘ bingeing’ as I believe the younger generation say, the new series of The Savoy (ItV). and let me tell you, butlers are a thing of the past.
‘that is concerning news, sir.’ Not in the tiddliest tiniest bit. From now on, your official designation is to be a Guest Experience Executive. Marvellous, what? I say, Jeeves . . . where are you going . . . come back!
Dear old Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, played to hilarious perfection by Stephen Fry and hugh Laurie in the early 1990s, would not recognise the modern Savoy.
Its prestigious butler service for the hotel’s grander suites has been rebranded. head butler Sean Davoren is now the Guest Experience Manager, which sounds like a title given to a spotty part-timer punching tickets at alton towers.
Sean’s catchphrase is: ‘as long as it’s legal, we’re going to be doing it for you.’ the Savoy’s website promises this entails everything from offering fashion advice to ensuring the guests’ pets have a choice of luxury baskets.
Devotees of P. G. Wodehouse will know Jeeves had firm views on both attire and lapdogs.
he would not have approved of Raouf, who hired a suite for his boyfriend’s birthday party. Raouf carried a chihuahua called Milan with him everywhere, and squeezed himself into leather trousers so tight they were practically tourniquets. Every step he took made a noise like a rusty hinge. ‘he did squeak,’ admitted Sean, who manned the party’s mobile bar.
Jeeves, who believed in the miraculous power of a fishy diet to lubricate the brain, would have appreciated the hotel’s new seafood restaurant. But even a month of halibut could do nothing for actor Christopher Biggins, who brought his chum Shirley Ballas for dinner at the Savoy Grill. ‘the Ritz has always been so special,’ Biggins gushed to the camera. he tried to correct himself, but it was too late.
It’s faux pas like that and the leather trousers that make this such a guilty indulgence. Unlike the Beeb’s hotel documentaries, this doesn’t pretend to make serious observations. We’re here for the camp excesses.
the frenetic hospital documentary 999: Critical Condition (C5) delivers nothing but serious observations.
No chats with patients or amusing moments overheard in waiting areas, like we get on 24 hours In a&E on C4. It’s nonstop trauma, from the moment each patient is wheeled in. heart-warming outcomes are not guaranteed. one man died after slipping in his bath. another lost an eye when a 15stone lump of metal hit his face.
‘I don’t know where they are going to start,’ worried a doctor, as 37-year- old Simon went for surgery on his shattered eye socket. ‘It’s going to be a proper life-changing injury.’
the camera was merciless, showing us Simon’s terror and cutting away repeatedly to splashes of blood on the floor and the gurneys.
this is demanding, often gruelling television, leaving us in no doubt how hard emergency medics work.