Posh hotel that proves a chav is a chav, no matter how rich they are: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV 

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A Very British Hotel 

Rating:

Shop Well For Less 

Rating:

Money can’t buy you class. All the footballers’ wives and Arab royal bratlings of the world are proof of that.

And the hilariously misnamed A Very British Hotel (C4) supplied much more accidental evidence that a chav is a chav, and no amount of diamonds and Gucci can disguise it.

The former Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge, London, is now the Mandarin Oriental and a magnet for Middle Eastern guests, eager for the Royal Suite at £15,000 a night.

They abandon their supercars in the road outside, dump armfuls of unworn new clothes on the concierge’s desk — to be unwrapped and dry-cleaned by the Lithuanian laundryman — and then order dinner in their rooms: 20 courses, a plate of everything the kitchen serves, to be tasted and largely thrown out uneaten.

These oil billionaires think their unlimited wealth is buying them luxury. It isn’t: the Mandarin Oriental might be hugely expensive, but it’s as tacky as a plastic Christmas tree in a spray tan salon.

A Very British Hotel, a Channel 4 documentary on the Mandarin Oriental, revealed guests' bizarre requests

Of course, there are celebrities everywhere. The actor Geoffrey Rush smells the film crew’s cameras and comes bustling up to the reception desk with some spurious inquiry. Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood totters up the front steps, shaking hands and waving, as if this is an official state visit.

Not one of the staff we meet in this ‘very British hotel’ is from Britain: as the manager points out, the work is too hard, the hours too long and the pay too poor to attract anyone but immigrants.

The absence of old-fashioned British customs, such as not talking in public about money, is blatant among the staff. One porter nakedly sizes up the guests by nationality: Arabs will hand out £50 notes to anyone who carries their bags, he says, while Koreans tip in small change.

This documentary is in the mould of BBC2’s Inside Claridge’s, about one of London’s most old-fashioned hotels (albeit one run by a German manager). The Mandarin Oriental looks like a cheap knock-off from Taiwan, and so does this film.

Claridge’s was frustratingly discreet. Not so this emporium, where the front office manager compiles a hit parade of his favourite visitors — one Arab princess is in his ‘top ten of guests’ — and bills are calculated in the crassest terms: her suite costs ‘a receptionist’s annual salary’ for just one night.

The sheer waste of money dwarfed all the efforts of Kevin and Yolanda, a middle-aged couple burning through their bank account on Shop Well For Less? (BBC1).

Yolanda was spending £700 a month on dresses, shoes and undies. Kevin wasn’t in her league, but he did have a taste for designer brand shirts.

Alex Jones, left, and Steph McGovern returned to host the second series of Shop Well For Less

The problem was that, unlike the East European staff at the Mandarin Oriental, this couple had a certain English reticence about discussing earnings.

We never discovered what their joint income was, or even whether they had credit cards.

As a result, it was impossible to judge whether they were being really extravagant.

Yolanda yearned to spend an extra few quid on bubble bath, Kevin liked expensive aftershave — the real question wasn’t whether this stuff was a pricey luxury, but whether they could actually afford it.

Oh, and a message to the show’s presenters Alex Jones and Steph McGovern: that segment on washing-up liquids and which cleans the best was without a shadow of a doubt the most boring item shown on television so far this year. What were you thinking?