Maureen Hill

Boxing clever

I travelled to London for the Travel Weekly Globe Awards evening at the Grosvenor House Hotel.

When I arrived, I noticed a larger than usual security presence. My first thought was that the management clearly presumed that the ladies attending the glittering affair had emptied bank vaults of their finest jewels and diamond tiaras but even so, there seemed to be an excess of large, stony-faced men roaming around.

I was soon put in the picture, and put in my place. The extra security was not for us at all but for heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson who was staying at the hotel with his entourage. I reasoned that at least we could be pretty sure of a peaceful evening!

I was seated at the Travel Weekly table alongside fellow columnist Noel Josephides who provided some entertaining after-dinner conversation. We had barely put down our pudding forks when talk turned to Noel’s knickers.

It would seem I’m not the only one to have had my luggage tampered with during a long-haul flight – the same thing had happened to Noel. Having missed a connecting flight to Buenos Aires, he was horrified to discover that certain items of his underwear had mysteriously disappeared, namely his Marks and Spencer pants!

I jockeyed the conversation along in order to find out the precise nature of the smalls that had clearly been irresistible to someone somewhere but Noel would not let slip.

I suggested that this brief encounter had occurred at about the same time that Marks and Spencer shares had fallen around the ankles of the market and that the thief was probably a very astute person who was looking forward to the day when Noel’s unmentionables might be collectables! Keep your eyes peeled, folks!

Later on in the evening, following the awards ceremony, I bumped into Golden Rail/Superbreak’s Ian Mounser.

I felt duty bound to tell him that he hadn’t won any prizes in my book for the directions I’d received for finding the Blakemore Hotel where some guests were staying.

I explained that as an agent, I could find my way around the world and had even navigated my way through the jungle in Borneo. But getting to the Blakemore had proved to be my greatest challenge yet!

Fortunately Ian laughed about it and promised to review the directions given on the screen to see if they could be improved upon.

The hotel itself is a friendly little place, though somewhat less inviting than it might be after midnight as I and two other agents found when we arrived back to find the doors locked and the night bell out of service thanks to vandals.

There was nothing for it but to take off our stilettoes and hammer on the door with them until the porter let us in.

We all agreed the hotel was good value for money and had just one other suggestion for improvement, namely that dried egg is no substitute for the real thing when it comes to the full English breakfast. We don’t want any foreign visitors thinking there’s a war on, do we?

Simon, a colleague working for a long-haul specialist in London told me of a client of his visiting New York who had waited until he received his tickets before insisting that the airline provide a motorised cart as he had his leg in plaster, couldn’t walk far and had a lot of luggage. He also requested extra leg room on the aircraft.

British Airways immediately offered wheelchair assistance and allocated the client the desired seat with extra leg room.

Simon relayed the offer to the client whose ungrateful response confused him. It transpired that, rather than wheelchair assistance, the client had wanted a motorised cart with bleeping lights driven by airport personnel in order that he could be chauffeured around the duty-free shopping halls!

When Simon commented that the client’s wife, with whom he was travelling, could surely push the wheelchair, he was told that this was out of the question as she would be laden down with the duty-free gin and cigarettes he intended to buy.

Simon blames the recent spate of airline docusoaps for the upsurge in unreasonable requests from the public.

If muzak be the food of love, it’s small wonder that Michael Winner has lost his appetite. His Winner’s Dinners column in The Sunday Times outlined the irritation he felt when subjected to unwanted piped music at the Jalousie Hilton Hotel, St Lucia. At his insistence, the music was turned off.

I have every sympathy with Mr Winner’s response. After all, one does not travel half-way around the world only for the natural sounds of the birds, the wind in the palm trees and the lapping of the sea to be drowned out by the whine and drone of some small-time band playing B-list hits.

I am similarly irritated when relaxing around a hotel pool to hear the chirpy tones of the resort DJ imploring me to join in a game of pool-side bingo or, worse still, water aerobics! It is as though the holidaymaker is not trusted to be alone, quiet or still.

A friend of mine in retail made me laugh recently when she described how a client, fearful of contracting the flu during the current epidemic, arrived in her shop sporting a dust mask of the sort worn by nervous DIYers and city cyclists. Apparently, she removed it only long enough to ask if a sale item might be further discounted.

I’m sure that there is a place within our industry for such masks, too. After all, when one considers that the air circulating in an aircraft has probably passed through each passenger three times, our clients are at far greater risk of infection. On another note, think how useful they would be in giving you an excuse not to speak to your neighbour!