A first for CBW - A Television Review
Experienced hotel contractor Jon Hartley finds much wisdom in Alan Bennett's celebrated play Dinner at Noon.
Dinner at Noon, BBC2 Saturday 5th December 2009.
The programme was a personal view by Alan Bennett about The Crown Hotel in Harrogate in 1988. This may appear to have nothing to do with a people industry, but bear with me and you may change your mind.
I could have appeared in this, sat with Ron Gouge from THF in the lounge discussing future contracts, but luckily for me – and Ron – we were not there. The programme showed a selection of meetings and parties with the great and good of Harrogate and the North Riding of Yorkshire, with the brilliant comments of Mr Bennett to add flavour and atmosphere. It was superb in its own right, but also showed how much and how little has changed over the years.
Being a Trusthouse Forte Hotel it was at a time when THF ruled the roost, and long before Granada bought them in a hostile takeover for £4b in 1996. The in house training was extensive and successful, and many of the best people in the hotel industry can trace their success to the start they got with THF.
This British hotel and catering group, was formed in 1970 in a merger between Trust Houses (founded in 1903 to restore hotels) and Forte Holdings (founded in 1935 as a catering interest). By the end of the 1980s, THF were operating 800 hotels worldwide, including 250 in the UK, as well as more than 300 Little Chef and 85 Happy Eater motorway restaurants.
Easy to spot was a Hotel Porter, the Jack of all Trades, who was such a centre piece of any decent hotel, and whose demise is lamented by those with common sense.
Breakfast was served by the famous Forte Ducks, the affectionate name for the ladies who had been with the hotel since Noah cut his first log, had seen it all, and nothing fazed them. No sign of a breakfast servery, all hot food came served from the kitchen on hot plates, and the tea was in pottery that fitted the decor, and with a teapot that poured from the spout into the cup, and not all over the table. Oh happy days!
The bathroom looked the same as many so now, with an oval sink set into melamine, and even the loo paper was left folded. The wall lights were as now, and even the decor has hardly changed in the intervening thirty years.
Coach groups did stay in these hotels – not all of the time of course, but the top end tours from Southdown, Wallace Arnold, and Glenton were regulars, amongst others, but compare that to now, when any coach company can book a similar hotel operated by a selection of hotel operators, and enjoy some of the benefits of a three or four star hotel.
I say some of the benefits as very few hotels of this standard know how to look after a group without treating them differently from any other guest. They just don’t get it do they? Just because they come as a group doesn’t mean they are any lesser than a private guest, and as they come to the hotel during ‘needy dates’ they are just as important as other guests.
Don’t blame them for not spending at your hotel bar – at those prices would you? Why heard them in to dine at the same time, can’t they come in when they wish to eat, not when you wish to serve them?
The programme listed in to conversations as the good folk of Harrogate took tea in the lounge, and this could have taken place in many towns in Britain with a quality hotel at its centre. It goes on today, but the quality of hotels of this nature – grand old ladies that knew how to look after a guest properly – are fewer in number, and are replaced by modern blocks that lack the atmosphere of days gone by.
I am a people watcher. There, I’ve said it, I admit to enjoying being a voyeur and watching others. As I sit outside a cafe in some foreign resort I enjoy watching the locals go about their business. The Cafe Cardinale by the cathedral in Reims, the Hotel Switzerhoff in Luzern, or the very grand hotels in Paris all gave me the opportunity to people watch, and wonder where they came from, how they were dressed , how they carried themselves, and why they married their partner!
The French ladies do have a style of their own, Italian youth does dress to impress, the Swiss are a strange bunch, and yes, you can spot a Brit at a thousand yards – or should that be meters?
Am I alone in this? I think not, as it is natural to admire or sit in judgement of others whether we want to or not.
We listen in to snippets of conversations as people pass or we hear part of something as we pass them. People arguing through clenched teeth as to not show themselves up, lovers with only eyes for each other, married couples who are happy just to sit there, sip their coffee, and do as I am doing – watching.
Everybody different, yet all the same.
Your coach groups will be like this, especially on the first day as they meet each other for the first time. They are judging how others dress and behave, who they might have something in common with, who they already wish to avoid, yet one person stands out from all of this wondering – your driver, as he is the catalyst to ensuring everyone gets on with each other. So far as he can! He has been people watching too, and has already made conscious and subconscious decisions who will be taking most of his time up over the length of the tour. He has a big advantage though, as he has done this many times before, and is usually right.
When I was younger I couldn’t see myself sat by a bar with friends starting a conversation with “ I remember when...”, but as the years creep by you do exactly that, as with age comes experience and knowledge, and memories of what is perceived as better times gone by. An age when the elderly were looked after by their families and not farmed out to a home, an age where the elderly were listed to and respected, and an age when you could walk the streets in safety. The local bobby knew everyone, and was a man to respect. A clip ‘round the ear taught you right from wrong, and kids didn’t leave school expecting to go straight to the top of the earning ladder.
Don’t get me wrong, there were the bad things too. Rickets, polio, slum housing, no central heating, unemployment, strikes, the three day week, blackouts, no car, etc, but we look back through rose tinted glasses and only see what we are missing, and not the full picture of what it was really like.
Alan Bennett’s programme is only twenty years old, younger than many other shows on the telly, yet it showed hotels as they were, and not as they are now. Oh, there are still hotels in Cheltenham, Leamington Spa, Harrogate and maybe your own town that still serve tea in nice surroundings, where the locals can sit in safety and comfort, but they are fewer in number and I am sad for our loss of these escapes from the cut and thrust of everyday life. Today we are always in such a hurry to do something or get somewhere, so we have coffee ‘on the go’ – chosen from a selection we don’t understand – and flit from one meeting to another as if life itself depended on it. It doesn’t. Life is what we make of it, good or bad.
The next time you are flitting about like a wasp on heat, give yourself half an hour to find a corner of Britain untouched by the modern world, and sit down to a decent cup of tea and a homemade biscuit served in this sanctuary of calm, and people watch. Switch off your mobile and Blackberry, sit back in your armchair and relax. Stretch your legs out and clench and unclench your toes, working your way up your body until you are totally relaxed...
Great isn’t it?
