Table talk
Sack your staff, employ a naked wife
When you add fame to money strange things can happen, as bachelor Tim Hadcock-Mackay, managing director of the Grand Heritage Hotels International consortium, has been finding out. Last week he was shown trying to run his 57-room estate without his seven staff for Channel 4's Can You Live Without? series. Channel 4 has since received several letters from women wanting to marry him. Hadcock-Mackay said: "The letters say I don't need staff, I need a good wife. One was even a bit dubious and included a photo of a naked woman."
The Savoy - where soap opera started
It seems hotel guests fell into the category of the great unwashed until 1829, when Boston's Tremont House in the USA became the first hotel to open eight bathrooms for its 250 guests. But British hotel staff had to hang on to their nose pegs for some years before the US trend drifted over to these shores. Sixty years later, the Savoy opened, with individual bathrooms attached to 70 of its bedrooms, prompting the builder to enquire whether the guests were amphibious.
Shepherd's Boy abandons goats
Pub landlord Damien Morris thought he had hit upon the perfect idea when he bought two goats to trim the lawn of his beer garden. But goats Sally and Lucy have munched their way through the fence, the flowers and shrubs, even customers' food, and they haven't touched the grass. Morris, of the Shepherd's Boy Inn in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, said: "I'm looking to sell them. It seemed like a good idea but it didn't work and it's time the goats went."
Tales from the Titty
Here's an odd one for all those restaurateurs who have racked their brains long into the night for a quirky name for their business. A restaurant in the Yorkshire town of Otley has been christened Titty Bottle Park Bar and Brasserie. The name refers to the nickname of a local park where, in days gone by, nannies would perambulate their charges and refresh them with a bottle of milk. Interesting to see what the guide books will make of the name.
Anyone for a stiff drink?
The landlord of the Cupid's Hill pub in Grosmont, Monmouthshire, does more than just serve spirits - he helps lay them to rest too. When he is not pulling pints, 81-year-old Joe Godding nips across the road to his workshop to knock up some coffins, a line he has pursued since 1936. But Godding has found the number of customers ordering a coffin with their pint has declined in recent years. Stiff competition from large towns has seen his sales of coffins fall from a couple a week to around 24 a year. Sounds like undertaking has become a dying market for Godding.
Explorer finds the key to life
An expedition has just taken place that would have had to have been seen to be believed. Earlier this year, veteran explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell led an expedition to the Wai Wai tribe in the heart of the Guyanese jungle. On his departure, the Wai Wai's chief priest asked him if he could return with a grand piano for their church. Millennium Hotels & Resorts donated a piano and last week Blashford-Snell and his expedition team returned to the jungle, where they carried the piano through dense forest and across piranha-infested rivers to the Wai Wai settlement.
