Dear Reader

THE second series of Sky Atlantic’s White Lotus is inferior to the first.

Mind you, there’s only been one episode and it’s still well worth hob-nobbing with the ghastly guests who turn up for a week’s holiday at a five-star hotel in Taormina, Sicily, pictured. It was shot at the 14thcentury San Domenico Palace, now a Four Seasons, which was once a convent — but there are no reminders of chastity in the programme, that’s for sure.

I stayed there long before it was made super-swish and super expensive (you’re looking at a minimum of £1,600 per night for a seaview room next August) and our stay was greatly enhanced by the head concierge, Steven.

One morning, we asked about heading out to Mount Etna and he told us exactly what time to get there, warning that clouds would roll in by 1pm. He was proved 100 per cent right.

I like to think we were relatively undemanding — in contrast to the White Lotus lot, who wear entitlement like a badge of honour. Steve had his own challenges while working at a hotel in Paris when a MiddleEastern guest asked for the entire contents of a gaming shop, stocked with pinball machines and one- armed bandits, to be brought to his suite for the duration of his stay. Coming right up.

And I remember a London concierge telling me how a music promoter wanted to give Eric Clapton a golden pheasant as a birthday present.

He called London Zoo, which passed on the number of a breeder in Scotland and within hours the pheasant was strutting around the legendary guitarist’s country estate.

General managers have to be masters of diplomacy. The GM of a swanky hotel in London once had to ask a guest at check-out if he had mistakedly packed a flat-screen TV in his suitcase.

‘Why might you think that?’ snarled the guest.

‘Because it’s no longer hanging on the wall of the room you have just vacated, sir.’