wolfie
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Post by wolfie on Jan 1, 2012 23:49:24 GMT
Ok I am watching the hotel which is on channel 4 and is an apparent documentary in the Grosvenor hotel Torquay.
2 questions
1 does anybody on here work there and thus appear in the show or are relatives/close friends of the people in it?
2 Is this real?
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Post by aussie on Jan 2, 2012 9:03:43 GMT
There is an hotel called that here, don`t know of anyone who works there and haven`t seen the programme, it could well be real due to the fact that the hotel is real!
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Post by the92ndfish on Jan 4, 2012 1:36:21 GMT
I don't know anyone who works there but I watched it because of some morbid curiosity and it did absolutely nothing to help dispel the old 'Fawlty Towers' stereotype of Torbay. That being said it is totally real, it was in the Herald, speaking as someone who spent four years working at the Palace Hotel in part time and full time roles nothing I saw was particularly surprising. Indeed I could tell tales that were even more ridiculous than on that show, such as the time when we played host to a wedding where the bride found out that her groom had cheated on her with her sister a few months before and all hell kicked off resulting in us having to escort the bride out of the hotel covered in a blanket to avoid her in laws. Ahhh good times. All the characters involved in that episode are pretty common hotel stereotypes as well, the industry seems to attract that type of person.
Almost made me nostalgia for my time working in hotels....almost.
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Post by Budleigh on Jan 4, 2012 8:56:34 GMT
Brought back memories of working at the Beach Hotel in Teignmouth in the late seventies.
My sister and I worked an evening shift in the restaurant and then I took over on the late bar. She stayed behind to keep me company and started chatting to the only guest in there, a Mr Custard. He was a gentleman of certain years and was obviously very pleased to have got the company of a young girl.
I shut the bar at around 10 o'clock and off home we went.
Next morning my sister and I turned up at the hotel at seven o'clock as usual, me as washer upper and she as a waitress. By close of breakfast Mr Custard had not appeared so myself and the owner, Tom, went to his room with the inevitable sight as we opened the door of a body sprawled on the floor, stone dead.
The undertaker duly arrived with is metal coffin set up in the foyer, which in itself caused quite a stirring amongst the arriving Saturday guests, as the undertaker couldn't get it up the stairs to the poor man's room. This was before Health and Safety regulations took over and the main staircase was extremely narrow and twisty.
So in true Fawlty Towers tradition Tom and I, overseen by the undertaker, placed the body in a laundry bag and started toward the stairs. Of course, at this point two old dears walked out of their room, one screaming whilst the other asked if it was anything to do with the previous nights meal.
Then the fun started. Mr Custard was starting to stiffen up and wouldn't go round the bend in the stairwell and we got stuck. A lot of heaving and pushing and he suddenly dislodged with me flying backwards down the stairs followed by a bouncing laundry bag, straight onto the floor of the lobby in which a fair crowd had by now gathered!
The body was smartly placed in the waiting hearse and we carried on the day as normal welcoming the new influx of guests.
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wolfie
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Post by wolfie on Jan 4, 2012 16:06:07 GMT
Well I thought it was a p*** take to be honest
Budleigh that's the funniest thing I have read in ages but the big question has to be....
Had Mr Custard eaten kippers?
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rjdgull
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Post by rjdgull on Jan 4, 2012 18:39:07 GMT
No, it was the salmon moose! ;D
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Jon
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Post by Jon on Jan 4, 2012 22:30:33 GMT
Brought back memories of working at the Beach Hotel in Teignmouth in the late seventies.... Knowing Budleigh's "form", I would guess that "Mr Custard" was actually an old Torquay United legend. How many more has he bumped off? "Mr Custard" in the Beach Hotel - talked to death by Budleigh's sister. |
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Post by Budleigh on Jan 5, 2012 9:33:39 GMT
As I have mentioned previously, the Welsh legend Trevor Ford stayed at the Beach Hotel and we spent a couple of evenings when I was working the bar talking football. I can report that he did manage to escape unscathed and lived a few more years in blissful ignorance of how close he came to, at best, a serious knobbling!
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Jon
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Post by Jon on Jan 10, 2012 23:58:33 GMT
Not the kind of thing I would usually watch, but have tuned in because of the Torquay angle. Strangely compelling viewing in a car-crash TV kind of way.
We have talked about football managers gearing comments to the press to motivate players. The hotel boss played a blinder:
"Are other people's staff as stupid as mine or am I just unlucky?"
He followed that up with:
"Well this is Torquay. The only people left here are the ones that are too stupid to find their way to the train station".
If anyone was wondering what Merse is up to these days, they will be happy to see that he has started a new career as a Channel 4 script writer.
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Post by rawpowergulls on Mar 11, 2012 15:45:08 GMT
I find the programme an insult to Torquay and the owner another prick in the same class as Roberts. Makes us look idiots
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