An explosive start to a hotel career

In 1989, when I was three months into my first appointment as general manager of an 18-bedroom country house hotel in Cheshire, I received a booking for 100 guests from a large whisky producer wanting to entertain its Spanish distributors in the area.

The budget for the event was about £6,000 - a huge amount of revenue for a weekday evening. A few days later they asked if it would be possible for them to stage a "little" fireworks display in the grounds. Considering our rural location, I thought this would not be a problem.

But when the display was set up I began to have serious misgivings. The rigging looked fit for a Rolling Stones concert, with scaffolding and ominous looking mortar shells. The quotation from the fireworks company was about £8,000.

The dinner went smoothly and at 10.30pm the guests gathered in the garden for the fireworks display. The first bang shook the building; this was followed by a series of explosions that would do justice to a Hollywood movie, never mind a Cheshire hotel.

Everyone except me was thrilled by the spectacle. One of the chefs ran out of the kitchen saying: "I haven't heard noise like that since I was in the Falklands."

Within minutes the hotel switchboard lit up. I was taking abusive calls from 10.35pm until well after 1am; and at 7am the next morning it started again.

The local police had received more than 200 phone calls and the Environmental Health Department had received 40. All the traffic on the main road had stopped; and the locals thought that a nearby ICI chemical plant had blown up. I even had a visit from the local National Farmers Union representative to discuss compensation for aborted animals.

Needless to say, my operations director was not amused. To this day I cannot watch a fireworks display without a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.