cc100
17-01-2003, 10:00 AM
Would sir like help with that?
Nick Curtis
18 January 2002
When you thought that exercise programmes couldn't get any weirder than a disco-workout tape by the daft Welsh bint off Big Brother 2, along comes something even more rich and strange - the Butler Beauty Regime. This weekend fitness package, offered by the discreetly sumptuous SW1 complex of "luxury suites and apartments" that is 51 Buckingham Gate, includes all the usual elements. There are workouts, yoga sessions, detoxifying spa treatments, steamed fish, salads and so on. But there's also a butler in full penguin rig at your disposal for 16 of the 24 hours of your Friday or Saturday night stay. Admittedly, with prices starting at £675 a night, it's somewhat pricier than Helen Adams's dance video, but also rather more intriguing.
In common, I imagine, with most people, my image of butlers was drawn entirely from Jeeves and Wooster and Upstairs, Downstairs. This picture of an indentured 1920s servant standing stiffly on his dignity was swiftly dispelled by the tail-coated, white-gloved Ashley Powell, who greeted me with a deferential bow in 51 Buckingham Gate's elegant courtyard. The old-style gentleman's gentleman, he tells me later, was pretty much killed off by the Second World War, their numbers falling from 30,000 in 1939 to only 70 in 1981.
Today, the professional butlers graduating from Ivor Spencer's school, which supplies 51 Buckingham Gate, and where Ashley is senior instructor, are personal assistants who retain the old virtues (and costume) of their trade but not the snobbery and stuffiness. They can organise a conference call and a workout programme as well as a cocktail party, and won't sneer if you order red wine with salmon en croute. The only things a butler won't do for you these days is procure prostitutes or drugs. (I can't help feeling that this must be a problem, since most of those who both want and can afford a butler these days must, surely, be rock stars. Maybe they are forced to employ special *****s-and-drugs footmen as well. But I digress.)
Spencer originally conceived the Butler Beauty Regime to keep his graduates in shape, and it's particularly dear to Ashley's heart - he used to be 171/2st. Certainly, he's an attentive presence as I submit my unwilling body to the regime. In 51's gym, he stands by, dapperly immaculate, while a trainer tortures me on various exercise machines.
"Towel, sir?" he asks, proffering a silver salver before my sweat-drenched face. "Mineral water, sir? Heart defibrillator, sir?" (Actually, I made that last one up, but he does offer respectful words of praise and encouragement.) After the workout, and the subsequent yoga session, Ashley helps me into my robe and back to my suite, where the shower is already running.
At lunch in 51's library bar, he's like a gentle ghost, spiriting low-cal club sandwiches and glasses of tomato juice onto my table and taking empty plates away with a murmured "my pleasure, sir", or "thank you, sir". After my massage in the Shiseido Qi Spa - not so much a revivification as a resurrection - he hands me an Evening Standard which may, possibly, have been ironed. Throughout the day he never turns his back on me, is constantly solicitous of my wants, and never lets his respectful demeanour slip, no matter how oikish I am over the master-servant protocol. He doesn't even turn a hair when my wife and I return late to my suite for our healthy steamed-fish dinner after straying out for a few (unhealthy) cocktails in the nearby Zander bar.
In the morning, it wasn't Ashley, my personal butler, but one of the hotel's five general purpose butlers, who came in to draw me a bath and serve my (healthy, but again delicious) breakfast of egg-white omelette and freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice. I missed him, certainly more than I missed the weight machines in the gym: a butler really makes the tedious and painful bits of exercise and detox much more bearable. As uneasy as I'd always been with the concept of servants, and as uncertain as I'd been about the etiquette of the relationship, I had quickly become used to the presence of my very own gentleman's gentleman.
Mind you, I reckon that if you gave Arthur Scargill a suite at 51 Buckingham Gate and the ministrations of a manservant, within five minutes he'd be saying "thank you, Ashley" in a lordly manner, and waiting to have doors opened for him. And I bet he'd be rubbish at the workout, too. Me, I'm just proud that I lived through the gym session and that, when Ashley retired for the night, I managed to restrain myself from saying: "That will be all."
For information on 51 Buckingham Gate and the Butler Beauty Regime, call 0800 634 5151 or visit www. 51-buckinghamgate.com
Nick Curtis
18 January 2002
When you thought that exercise programmes couldn't get any weirder than a disco-workout tape by the daft Welsh bint off Big Brother 2, along comes something even more rich and strange - the Butler Beauty Regime. This weekend fitness package, offered by the discreetly sumptuous SW1 complex of "luxury suites and apartments" that is 51 Buckingham Gate, includes all the usual elements. There are workouts, yoga sessions, detoxifying spa treatments, steamed fish, salads and so on. But there's also a butler in full penguin rig at your disposal for 16 of the 24 hours of your Friday or Saturday night stay. Admittedly, with prices starting at £675 a night, it's somewhat pricier than Helen Adams's dance video, but also rather more intriguing.
In common, I imagine, with most people, my image of butlers was drawn entirely from Jeeves and Wooster and Upstairs, Downstairs. This picture of an indentured 1920s servant standing stiffly on his dignity was swiftly dispelled by the tail-coated, white-gloved Ashley Powell, who greeted me with a deferential bow in 51 Buckingham Gate's elegant courtyard. The old-style gentleman's gentleman, he tells me later, was pretty much killed off by the Second World War, their numbers falling from 30,000 in 1939 to only 70 in 1981.
Today, the professional butlers graduating from Ivor Spencer's school, which supplies 51 Buckingham Gate, and where Ashley is senior instructor, are personal assistants who retain the old virtues (and costume) of their trade but not the snobbery and stuffiness. They can organise a conference call and a workout programme as well as a cocktail party, and won't sneer if you order red wine with salmon en croute. The only things a butler won't do for you these days is procure prostitutes or drugs. (I can't help feeling that this must be a problem, since most of those who both want and can afford a butler these days must, surely, be rock stars. Maybe they are forced to employ special *****s-and-drugs footmen as well. But I digress.)
Spencer originally conceived the Butler Beauty Regime to keep his graduates in shape, and it's particularly dear to Ashley's heart - he used to be 171/2st. Certainly, he's an attentive presence as I submit my unwilling body to the regime. In 51's gym, he stands by, dapperly immaculate, while a trainer tortures me on various exercise machines.
"Towel, sir?" he asks, proffering a silver salver before my sweat-drenched face. "Mineral water, sir? Heart defibrillator, sir?" (Actually, I made that last one up, but he does offer respectful words of praise and encouragement.) After the workout, and the subsequent yoga session, Ashley helps me into my robe and back to my suite, where the shower is already running.
At lunch in 51's library bar, he's like a gentle ghost, spiriting low-cal club sandwiches and glasses of tomato juice onto my table and taking empty plates away with a murmured "my pleasure, sir", or "thank you, sir". After my massage in the Shiseido Qi Spa - not so much a revivification as a resurrection - he hands me an Evening Standard which may, possibly, have been ironed. Throughout the day he never turns his back on me, is constantly solicitous of my wants, and never lets his respectful demeanour slip, no matter how oikish I am over the master-servant protocol. He doesn't even turn a hair when my wife and I return late to my suite for our healthy steamed-fish dinner after straying out for a few (unhealthy) cocktails in the nearby Zander bar.
In the morning, it wasn't Ashley, my personal butler, but one of the hotel's five general purpose butlers, who came in to draw me a bath and serve my (healthy, but again delicious) breakfast of egg-white omelette and freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice. I missed him, certainly more than I missed the weight machines in the gym: a butler really makes the tedious and painful bits of exercise and detox much more bearable. As uneasy as I'd always been with the concept of servants, and as uncertain as I'd been about the etiquette of the relationship, I had quickly become used to the presence of my very own gentleman's gentleman.
Mind you, I reckon that if you gave Arthur Scargill a suite at 51 Buckingham Gate and the ministrations of a manservant, within five minutes he'd be saying "thank you, Ashley" in a lordly manner, and waiting to have doors opened for him. And I bet he'd be rubbish at the workout, too. Me, I'm just proud that I lived through the gym session and that, when Ashley retired for the night, I managed to restrain myself from saying: "That will be all."
For information on 51 Buckingham Gate and the Butler Beauty Regime, call 0800 634 5151 or visit www. 51-buckinghamgate.com