Introduction

When I was aged just ten, Fawlty Towers entertained my father and older brothers, but its fictional humour frustrated my mother. I was too young to understand many of the nuances and innuendos, so I just laughed at the mad-looking stick insect of a man doing silly things to even harder-to-believe guests and staff. I found some of the stories unbelievable – that is, until I took over the reins of Mortons House Hotel, a sixteenth-century manor in Corfe Castle in Dorset.

Basil Fawlty may not be a figure you would think it sensible to aspire to, nor to be compared with; however, having accommodated a few Germans, hotel inspectors, unmarried lovers, doctors and spoon salesmen myself, comparisons start there. I have a great deal of sympathy with the much-maligned Mr Fawlty, because very few people can ever understand the stresses and strains the industry puts upon the hotelier

However careful you are to plan ahead, things can and do go that badly, as guests can be that bad and staff can seriously screw up and let you down just at the wrong moment. All the time, like Basil, I am expected to smile obsequiously throughout the process.

Acting 24/7 is tough and sometimes impossible to carry off with any success, as eventually the stress gets too much and you inevitably ‘blow your stack.’

In many ways it takes a personality just like the proprietor of the fictional hotel in Torquay to run a hotel – and Sybil is, of course, an essential cog in the works.