HOW THE OTHER HALF SPENDS!

 

THERE’S junk mail and there’s junk mail - but when you get “junk mail” from no less than The Dorchester in London, it’s worth leaving casually on one’s coffee table, don’tcha know? 

This week the swank Park Lane hotel chose to write to Smith on Saturday personally, enclosing exclusive details of its special Christmas offers (must have got my name from Debrett’s). 

Apparently, m’ducks, you can buy a Dorchester bath robe for only £75, Dorchester whisky for £22, a Dorchester studbook (whatever THAT is) for £35 and a basket of Dorchester smells (soaps, bath milk etc) for a mere £10.50. 

 

For just £95 there’s a choice of either a Dorchester silver armada dish (every home should have one) or a Dorchester Christmas Hamper (including Champagne, Christmas pud, truffles, apricots in syrup etc)! 

If you wish to dine at The Dorchester, afternoon tea for two is £25.60, a Cantonese lunch is £40, whilst the dinner and dance in The Terrace Bar is a snip at £50. 

Office parties can book Christmas lunch (with all the trimmings, half a bottle of wine and a paper hat) for £40  a head. Lunch on Christmas Day itself (with lots of fancy Froggy food) is £95 and New Year’s Eve dinner at The Dorchester only £145 per person.

 

 

A weekend at The Dorchester in a deluxe double room with full brekkie and dinner costs £293.75, including VAT (I wonder what the 75p is for?), and a single night’s stay in the “famous” Oliver Messel Suite (???) - pictured above - will leave you little change out of a grand! 

After all that rich living, you’ll naturally need to take out a year’s membership of The Dorchester Health Spa at £1,050 - and after giving The Dorchester a free plug on this popular page, maybe they’d care to put Smith on Saturday and a Plus One a free weekend to sample their wares personally? 

2023 UPDATE: For perspective, readers should note that according to the CPI Inflation Calculator, £100 in 1992 is the equivalent of £255 today. 

Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel (to give his full name) was an English artist and one of the foremost stage designers of the 20th century. Oh, and despite sending The Dorchester a copy of my column, I never did get that free weekend jolly after all. I wonder why not?

________________________________________________________________________________

WELL FIELDED, THAT MAN!

OWZAT! Weirdest sight of the week was a windswept red wreath from Kettering’s Cenotaph, which Smith on Saturday spotted spinning at speed along Sheep Street on Monday lunchtime. 

Rolling on its edge like a car tyre, it was expertly fielded by a spry passer-by outside the library entrance - before being returned to its rightful place at the base of the war memorial!

 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This column was originally published in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph on Saturday, 28 November, 1992)