Hotel Babylon

Review by Philip Blazdell

According to the authors, the hotel business is a licence to print money. Everyone, it seems (except the many poor illegals who barely speak English and earn minimum wage) is wheeling and dealing hand over fist. From chambermaids' tips, to doormen making £2,000 a week, to the concierge taking back handers, to the vegetable supplier's book keeping double entry - everyone in the hotel trade is on the make. The hotel business, for guests, is a licence to steal - anything from bathrobes, toilet seats (wooden and Victorian from the Savoy), pictures, fridges, ashtrays, teaspoons - even re-filling the vodka bottle in the mini bar with water. Hardly anyone, the authors tell us, behave well in hotels (or at least if they do they do not make it into this book.) There are rent boys, prostitutes, £800 phone bills to porn lines, £24,000 room service bills, Michael Jackson's Evian bath to Madonna's odd curtain fetish, Kate Moss and Johnny Depp's parties, Princess Diana's taste for champagne, Pamela Anderson's sexual gymnastics, The Queen Mother's chips and Prince Phillip's Silver Bullet cocktail. It all happens in hotels.

Or does it?

One of the weaknesses of this amusing, but slightly contrived book is that the author has tried to frame a narrative (twenty-for hours in the life of a fictional hotel) around the many, many hilarious stories that she has harvested from numerous hotel employees so that many years of tales and experiences are packed into a single day. This not only lends an air of unreality to the proceedings but leaves the reader wondering how, if only half the stories are true, could any normal person work in such an environment. For example, could anyone really expect to receive £500 in tips, deal with a lonesome insomniac business man, placate a mad, naked drunken woman and still find time to deal with any number of dead guests in a single day?

However, if you rise above the slightly contrived nature of this book and skim the obviously padded sections then you will be truly horrified by some of the stories and will find yourself reading this with car-crash fascination.

Tighter editing, and a wider vocabulary might have made the book slightly more enjoyable but its hard not to laugh hysterically as the author details experiences with dead sheep, guests hanging out of windows and the strange places in which guest choose to copulate whilst visiting the hotel.

Overall, if you are shocked by sex toys falling out of luggage, surprised that Texans and people from the Middle East tip a lot and love hearing about supermodels using drugs and having crazy parties, this was written for you. Otherwise, it will just make you really glad you don't work at a hotel and wonder why anyone thinks it could be glamorous.

• Hotel Babylon by Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous