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The very headline “Four in a Bed” has a libertine ring to it. Needless to say, from that angle the programme disappoints. In reality it is a showcasing opportunity putting your hospitality enterprise in front of millions.

Competition based the programme ostensibly sets out to establish which of the four participating businesses of that particular week is giving the best value for money. In truth any outfit could win the acclaim and coveted plaque by simply blowing up any oversight or accidental happening and use it as an excuse to pay less than the asked room rate. As it turned out in our quartet a bit of needless tactical voting secured a result for Darwin.

It was an out-of-the-blue phone call from the film company that first suggested we take part, but we were reluctant, and it was after an overnight stay by two young lady scouts sent by the company that persuaded us to engage.

Bearing in mind that the main product of competition is a load of losers, Blossom and I approached the whole thing as an exciting adventure holiday, a six-hotel tour of the UK.

The first episode took us to Norfolk.

We spent the first night of the adventure in a smart country hotel where we enjoyed an excellent vegan dinner before an early bed having been warned an early start was required in the morning.

After breakfast we received telephone instructions to drive to a carpark on the outskirts of a nearby town, ring a number when there, and then wait for an escort to guide us to the victim hotel. All very cloak and dagger!

The rendezvous achieved we drove around for a while in our Royce before getting the all-clear to proceed to the target.

The people were nice, but I wasn’t that impressed by the building. It was just somehow heavy, cramped and awkward with a dungeon-like warehouse makeshift firetrap feel about it. As a footnote we learned later the building was listed for having the importance of a military past.

A secondary and somewhat diversionary contest is a set piece feature of this reality show and this time the challenge was a trek to a distant chip shop to fillet a fish. Though very uncomfortable with it, I won.

We’d been made to stay in our room all day, even our lunch had been brought to us, so this fishy bit

was our first sight of the other hoteliers and consequently, not having been allowed to socialise, we were surprised to be invited by the hostess to her birthday party. I can’t dance, don’t drink and was getting tired and grumpy so we apologised and went to bed. With hindsight this decision may have brought on the character judgement, reserved and unfriendly.

We had plenty of complaints when it came to summing up our stay but nevertheless, we paid the full price knowing all about the overheads; business rates, VAT, wages etc, etc.

The Conti was the next sleepover.

As this whole blog is about our hotel, incident and reaction seem the only way of dealing with our hotel in the context of ‘Four in a Bed’ aiming thus to maintain interest and prevent too much duplication in the overall story content and following my chosen modus operandi I’ll jot things down as they occur to me.

From the off I wanted to give them the experience any other guest would have instead of a pretentious theatrical welcoming performance at reception. This initial interface, interpreted as anti-social, flopped, and added a negative, as no one felt the ease, warmth and comfort in plain honest to goodness integrity.

The poached egg, gloriously shiny and white, slipping off the plate and running round the table like a premature chicken was the unforgettable highlight of the breakfast. Incidentally this was a happening I didn’t know about until seeing it on the telly.

“I couldn’t bring my fourteen-year-old daughter here,” Mrs. Prim ‘n’ Proper said citing the wallpaper in the balcony flat bedroom.

Clearly, she was one of those who would have our whole environment bowdlerized and apparently don’t realise that by so blind eyeing them we lead our children astray, load them with sexual hang-ups that warp and destroy by setting them against their own body parts till spooked in a hell this conflict creates, they are ashamed and spiritless and without the Prince Charming glass slippered Cinderella relief.

“I don’t like it,” Mr. Prim ’n’ Proper whimpered looking up at the flowerpots of the upside-down garden on the ceiling. This put him in a minority of one.

It was a freezing February night but, “The room was so hot I couldn’t sleep” she protested in the morning not mentioning her rejection of my offer to cool it and turn down the Garden Rooms under floor heating before bedtime. And what the same pair, desperate to find fault, read as dirt on the humorous sculpture ‘Soften the Blow’ was in fact the material the work is made of.

'Soften the blow' by Garry Martin

Room five finding a well dead ancient stain on the mattress was the only serious criticism we suffered during the whole process and a really disgusting embarrassment it was and is too.

Our challenge, extracurricular activity if you like, was a poetry writing contest. I started by shattering the peace in the local library with a rendering of Market Cries

MARKET CRIES

Bananas 15 pence a pound to clear

15 pence

15 pence bananas

Have some sense

Have some sense around

pyjamas

pyjamas to clear

Seen sense scene sense

pyjamas

Let’s commence a pound

around

pyjamas

pyjamas pound

Lettuce let tis let his let tus let us

Some sense some sense sum sense seech

Some sense sum sense each

Let tis let us beets beets beats

beats a pound

pyjamas

pyjamas pound

Come on now! Last few! Lass

Lass few Lass for you

Lass let us beats some sense

Sum sense each pyjamas pyjamas pound pears

Gordon Hoyles©

Naturally, Eisteddfods and all that considered, the first prize of a bottle of wine went to the Welsh team. The booby prize of a banana, went north.

After our scrutiny we Rollered to Wales.

Here the proprietor was a young chap who for a travelling companion had brought along his Granny, a sprightly Jack-in-a Box determined to prove herself a youthful seventy three year old star and up for it.

It was an eventful visit.

I remember the dinner though not for the food, but because the young chap started the meal with a pompous filibuster of a speech about the wonders of his multi-faceted enterprise none of which featured in the broadcast.

For us the whole meal was a social ordeal as earlier Blossom had discovered a vacated mouse nest in a bed settee in our en suite quarters. At the same time delighted, I found on the spotless white of my pillow and outstanding as a gold thread, a pubic hair! Now pubic hairs in my face I can be happy about, but I do prefer them to come with a bit of body.

After the meal we were sent straight to bed.

The activity was a clay pigeon shoot. It was a thoroughly miserable, sunless, cold and damp, soggy under foot day and I don’t do guns. I suppose the whole activity was designed to demonstrate our host’s country squire credentials, an obvious option as one can’t rely on the fox to show up to the call of the horn and the yap of the pack. Tally ho!

I believe we were first to leave the wounded dragon after breakfast.

And so, it was on to Lancashire.

Both Blossom and I are Lancastrians, so the final hotel was advantaged by a geographical anticipation making us feel at home even before we got there.

I remember we had difficulty understanding the front door which somehow didn’t belong in the architecture surrounding it. Inside I felt we’d entered a fusty rather frightening, cold and cavernous Transylvanian Dracula castle. We were ceremonially received by the host and hostess.

The room was large with a four-poster bed and a bit of rather tired uninspiring furniture. The bathroom also spacious but ordinary.

The dinner was laid out on a large table in wedding reception style. Again, I didn’t notice the food

because the Welsh contingent’s big mouth started to rant at me, throwing up a smoke screen to divert attention from his management failings, pubic hairs, mouse nests, body juice on seats, all of which hadn’t impressed us at all and which I think no one else apart from the crew knew about. The brute made Blossom cry.

We did notice the food at breakfast next morning. It was a no expense spared banquet.

Our extracurricular activity was a tour of a paint factory. I found it enjoyable, and informative and consequently a worthwhile exercise. The ladies in the party didn’t seem too enthusiastic.

After that there was one more job, the face-to-face defence of under payments and countering explanations. For Blossom and I this was an anti-climax. The pre-emptive strike of the previous evening had said it all.

However, this final argy-bargy took hours and hours and by the time Lancashire was declared the winner it was dark and snowing outside. Not fancying the 200-mile drive home we were relieved and grateful when the hostess suggested we stay the night.

And thus, we learned the banquet breakfast was not the norm, nor were the luxury toiletries in the bathroom. It’s a bit heavy to suggest the win was achieved by fraud, so suffice it to say at this second breakfast the chef failed twice to cook two hard boiled eggs.

We enjoyed the holiday and the company of the film crew.