Imagine running a busy seaside hotel on changeover day.
Now imagine three coachloads of guests arriving at exactly the same time.
More than 160 people. Mountains of luggage. Rooms still being cleaned. Telephones ringing. Guests demanding keys. Staff trying to work out who belongs where.
And, naturally, somebody manages to break the lift.
Welcome to the Savoy Court Hotel.
One of the most memorable episodes in Michael Pellegrini’s Certainly Sir. Up Yours! captures everything that makes the book such an entertaining journey into old-school British hospitality: confusion, terrible decisions, difficult guests and staff who are often enjoying the disaster far more than they should.
Saturday is turnover day at the Savoy Court. One group leaves, another arrives and somehow the hotel is supposed to transform itself before anyone notices the chaos behind the scenes.
On this particular Saturday, that plan lasts approximately no time at all.
Three coaches arrive together, bringing more than 160 guests into reception. Bernadette, working behind the desk, starts handing out room keys even though some of the rooms are not ready. Worse still, some guests receive the wrong keys. Unmarked suitcases pile up while George Antonopoulos, the formidable proprietor of the hotel, rapidly loses patience.
The solution?
Send everyone into the dining room for a complimentary drink while the staff attempt to restore order.
Unfortunately, this is the Savoy Court, so even the complimentary drinks create problems.
Elizabeth is struggling behind the bar, guests receive the wrong drinks, the queue keeps growing and narrator Frank Tolley steps in to help. By his own admission, putting him behind the bar is hardly the safest solution.
Eventually, the suitcases and guests begin finding their correct rooms.
Then someone loads the lift.
Peter and Stephen pile luggage into the hotel’s old lift until Stephen can barely squeeze inside. The lift starts moving, gets only part of the way and stops between floors. Now the hotel has a trapped member of staff, a lift full of luggage and a queue of increasingly irritated guests waiting downstairs.
Problem solved?
Not remotely.
Once guests finally reach their rooms, the complaints begin: televisions that do not work, dripping taps, missing towels, missing toilet rolls and assorted other disappointments.
And dinner has not even started.
In the kitchen, the situation becomes even more spectacular. The dishwasher is overloaded with soap and begins flooding the floor. A tray of roast potatoes goes flying when a kitchen worker slips in the suds and George, whose attempts to “help” rarely improve matters, demands that Thomas sort everything out.
This glorious chain reaction sums up the humour of Certainly Sir. Up Yours!.
Michael Pellegrini does not present hospitality as an elegant world of immaculate uniforms and perfectly folded towels. His Savoy Court is noisy, dysfunctional, frequently inappropriate and populated by characters who can turn the simplest task into a full-scale crisis.
Pellegrini spent 30 years in the hotel industry and grew up around the business after his father bought a hotel in Margate. He states that although the book’s characters are fictional, many of its scenarios are drawn from experience.
That experience gives the madness an irresistible feeling of authenticity.
Because anyone can invent a disastrous hotel.
It takes someone who knows hospitality to understand just how quickly three coaches, 160 guests and one overloaded lift can make an entire hotel completely lose the plot.
Certainly Sir. Up Yours! by Michael Pellegrini is a rude, nostalgic and unapologetically chaotic invitation to check into the Savoy Court.
Just don’t expect everything to be ready when you arrive.
Available On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HCLXVCL1/
