* YOU BEEN SNAP* Fawlty Towers is alive and well! How a new reality show found the real-life Basil and co"

BY FLORA LYIMO DESIGNER*

Surely no hotel owner would be happy for his establishment to be compared to Fawlty Towers? Certainly not Jonathan Denby, who is incredibly proud of his chain of hotels in the Lake District.
So proud is he, in fact, that he has allowed television cameras into one of them for a fly-on-the-wall documentary about life in a typically British hotel.
Now, I’ve only been allowed to see the first episode of The Hotel, and while the Damson Dene doesn’t have any rats, or German tourists, or funny walks, it does feature a rather eccentric owner, some very interesting guests and a waiter who is lovable and well-meaning, but doesn’t speak much English.

Fawlty-esque: Damson Dene Hotel features a waiter who can't speak English and a manager who dishes out caustic put-downs

Really, the question has to be asked: would Jonathan be offended, I venture, if viewers were to draw immediate parallels with Fawlty Towers?
Happily, Jonathan – a Victorian garden specialist who likes to fill his hotels with fresh blooms – has a sense of humour.
Fawlty Towers happens to be one of his favourite programmes. Basil? Something of a hero. ‘I wouldn’t be bothered in the slightest by the comparison,’ he says.

‘I think if any hotel owner is being honest, he will watch Fawlty Towers and be able to identify with it in some way. The reason it was so successful is that it was based on a truth, albeit one that was exaggerated. These things happen in hotels. Sometimes worse things happen.’
Mr Denby even helpfully attempts to explain who might be who in this real-life version of our favourite hotel comedy.
‘Amos would have to be the Manuel figure, I suppose. He’s not from Spain, but from Eastern Europe and, yes, his problems with the language can cause a few hiccups here and there. We also have a chef who is, how can I put this, quite a character as well.
'But I wouldn’t say I’m Basil. Not at all. I have a manager who runs the hotel on a day-to-day basis. But he’s not really Basil either. I like to think that, at the very least, we both like our guests more than Basil Fawlty does.’
One of the highlights of the first episode is Romanian Amos’s encounter with a guest who has pre-ordered some rye bread for breakfast. Amos has clearly never heard of rye bread. He wonders if she means ‘white bread’ or perhaps ‘right bread’. Eventually, the guest – who appears to have the patience of a saint – marches off to the kitchen herself to investigate.

Reality TV star: The Damson Dene Hotel in the Lake District

The chef is Polish. So is the housekeeping assistant, who doesn’t seem to understand what ‘luggage’ means.
‘Cases?’ volunteers the receptionist, to no avail. ‘Quite a lot of our staff now don’t have a level of English that people might expect,’ concedes Jonathan.
‘Having staff from other countries is nothing new, but in the old days we’d recruit heavily from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, where the people speak English.
'When Poland became part of the EU it all changed and we started seeing more Eastern Europeans coming through.’ Mostly, he’s delighted at how it’s working out.
‘They have a great work ethic but the language is a problem.’ Are the guests understanding about that? ‘Most of them are, but not all.’
However good the foreign staff, it still takes some guts to throw open the doors of a hotel to a TV documentary crew.
The Hotel is produced by the same company that brought us The Family, and follows a similar structure. Filming took place over six weeks earlier this year with 58 cameras fitted at various locations around the hotel – including, with their permission, in some guests’ rooms. The daily comings and goings of staff and guests alike were recorded.

AT YOUR SERVICE...

There’s no Sybil Fawlty, but the staff at Damson Dene Hotel will do their level best to ensure your stay’s a memorable one

THE OWNER

Jonathan Denby insists he’s nothing like Basil Fawlty – although he admits that the manic fictional hotelier is ‘something of a hero’

THE MANAGER

Wayne Bartholomew is losing sleep over the documentary after being filmed chatting to the hotel’s pigs and berating foreign staff

THE WAITER

Amos, who comes from Romania, may be a dab hand at glass-carrying – but his shaky grasp of English provokes Manuel-esque mix-ups galore

THE CHEF

Head chef Kirk is the only Brit in a kitchen of four staff.
The language barrier can send Kirk to boiling point – especially during peak times and weddings 

This meant weddings, family reunions, romantic encounters and more. Most involved alcohol – ‘sometimes too much,’ confesses Jonathan.
One of the stars of the show is manager Wayne Bartholomew, who is already having sleepless nights about how much he has revealed. (The answer is a lot, given that he is filmed at his morning ablutions.)
A camera was installed in the caravan Wayne calls home. The fact that he’s living in a caravan, when he runs a 3-star hotel, does seem baffling, but it transpires that when he accepted his job as manager of the hotel 18 months ago, there was a vague understanding that accommodation would be provided.
In the end there wasn’t a room for him at the hotel and an agreement was struck that he would live in a caravan in the grounds.
He shares the caravan with his dog, but the hotel pigs (Damson Dene is proud of its home-grown and raised produce) are just next door. ‘I suppose the cameras have caught me talking away to them in the morning,’ he quips, quite accurately.
The cameras also catch Wayne delivering some distinctly Fawlty-esque lines. In one memorable exchange, he asks one of the foreign staff, ‘Do you know what a serviette is? I’m thinking you don’t.’ In another he says, ‘Would you like me to kill you?’– presumably safe in the knowledge that he won’t be understood.
He hasn’t seen the finished programme yet, but is aware of the potential for embarrassment. ‘I knew from the off that it would be warts and all. Hopefully, there won’t be too many warts. We were told the documentary makers wanted to make an affectionate portrayal of life at a British hotel.
'Obviously, they could stitch us up something rotten, but there has to be some trust there.’
But why even take the risk? The owner’s view is simple: ‘We’ve got nothing to hide.’ By his own admission, Damson Dene is not a luxury hotel. In fact, Jonathan is quite open about the fact that the rooms – which average £55 a night – are pitched at the ‘affordable’ end of the market. ‘I say we market ourselves at Mondeo Man – the ordinary holidaymaker, maybe a teacher, or a policeman or a civil servant.
'He may not be able to afford 5-star luxury, but he still wants a nice friendly hotel to stay in, one that offers value for money. That’s us. Most reality TV shows seem to concentrate on either the upper level of the industry – the really highfalutin places – or the complete pits at the bottom. The middle ground, which are the hotels that most people in this country actually experience, are pretty much ignored.’
Yet it is a programme as much about the guests as the hotel. They include Daniel, a nervous young man who has booked a break at the Damson Dene because he wants to propose to his girlfriend Elizabeth there. The cameras in their room capture him looking nervous and hiding the ring behind the curtains, and her looking bored.
They are filmed at dinner, after which he tries to orchestrate a romantic stroll down to the hotel duck pond, where a hotel employee is already waiting with a bottle of bubbly.
She doesn’t want to go because it is cold. It makes for excruciating viewing.
Excruciating too, for entirely different reasons, is watching another couple, this one married for a lifetime, who are about to find out whether his cancer treatment has worked.
Julie and Brian are filmed at dinner, reminiscing about past holidays. She is clearly thinking of future ones, and tearfully. He says he won’t allow the break to be ruined by ‘What ifs’.
It must have been quite a thing to ask guests if they were happy for their every move to be followed. ‘Some guests had already booked in and we had to ring them and tell them about the cameras.
'We gave them the option to cancel, but surprisingly few people did,’ admits Wayne. ‘Not everyone wanted to have cameras in their room, but quite a few didn’t mind.’
Will guests come flocking to the hotel once the series airs, though?
Jonathan is clearly hoping Mondeo Man will be watching, and will want to pay him a visit. But what about Amos?
Word is his English has come on in leaps and bounds – and his ambition hasn’t been found wanting either. He quit Damson Dene not long after filming finished, and has now secured a better paid job at a rival establishment.
For future Damson Dene guests wanting anything as complicated as rye bread, that might just be a blessing.

The Hotel starts on Sunday 17 April at 8pm on Channel 4.