Independent.ie website – Saturday 8th December, 2012

If you’re a celeb who likes to keep a low profile, you might want to think twice about staying at Ashford Castle in Co Mayo. That, at any rate, was the message I took from this week’s episode of Hotel Secrets (Sky Atlantic), in which actor Richard E Grant visited six hotels throughout Ireland, starting with Ashford.

Woody Allen stayed there with Mia Farrow just before revelations involving his stepdaughter – or, as restaurant manager Robert charmingly phrased it, “before everything hit the fan”.

Brad Pitt and his mother stayed there, too, and senior porter Paddy recalled a peckish Brad asking for a ham sandwich, which Paddy duly made for him, with lettuce on the side. “I will never forget it,” Paddy said dreamily.

Grant, agog at the excitement of it all, lapped up these morsels of gossip as if they were manna from celebrity heaven. Indeed, his enthusiasm knew no bounds as he swept up guffawing marketing director Paula in his arms and yelled “Come on, let’s go, baby.”

She directed him towards the hotel’s hall of fame, which comprised a wall of photos in which famous guests posed for the camera alongside the staff – thus leading Richard to reflect that “most hotels don’t brag about their A-list clientele, but Ashford Castle has no such concerns.”

However, Richard, who’s so OTT he makes Dame Edna seem like a shrinking violet, thought it was all great as he romped through “gorgeous Ireland” which “sells itself on its people” and where he sought to discover if “the craic is all it’s cracked up to be”.

Plainly it was because even in Belfast’s Europa (“the most bombed hotel in the world”) he had a ball, not least when he flung himself onto the bed formerly occupied by Bill Clinton and let his imagination run riot.

In Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel, Lorraine Keane (a “society pussycat”, according to Richard) recalled the decade in which “Dublin was the hottest little place on earth” and Richard also popped into the establishment’s Horseshoe Bar. This, he observed, had no windows to the outside world, which apparently meant that you could “guzzle yourself into a stupor” without anybody noticing.

In the rooftop suite of the Clarence, he rummaged through Bono’s bathroom cabinet but found nothing interesting (“not even a ribbed, scented condom”), but he did get socialite Amanda Brunker to reminisce about wild parties in the boom years. Ah, the times they had.

Richard ended his grand tour in a hot air balloon above Ballyfin Castle, where he unburdened himself of a few more superlative-laden clichés about the Irish and about Irish hotels, which seemingly have “hospitality by the bucketload”. Well, for the likes of Richard, anyway.

Welcomings are much more discreet in posh London hotels, as we learnt from Inside Claridge’s (BBC2), which also disclosed that the whims of potential guests, no matter how outlandish, are obeyed to the last detail.

Thus, when Japan’s answer to Britney Spears demanded that a jacuzzi be installed for herself and her 35-strong entourage, in came the plumbers, electricians and carpenters to honour her wishes.

And when an army of Middle Eastern female royalty demanded an entire fourth floor for a visit that wasn’t even confirmed (they were half-thinking of going to Paris or New York instead), the whole area was sealed off for them.

A stay in Claridge’s will set you back at least £5,000 a night, but the obeisant staff profess not to resent the ostentatious wealth that’s being flaunted. “I’ve never been jealous of our guests,” said butler Michael Lynch from Limerick. “More power to them.”

Yes, but what to call them? The funniest moment in the film came when general manager Thomas Kochs wondered about how to address an email to U2’s The Edge, who was due to stay there. “We always have the same predicament. Do you write ‘Dear Edge’ or ‘Dear The Edge’? You can’t write ‘Dear Mr The Edge…’ ”

Oh, the agonies of hotel protocol.

The film was very engaging, though not as substantial or engrossing as Sergio (RTE2), a HBO documentary which began with the Baghdad bombing that killed the head of the UN mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and then kept returning to the scene while also filling in details about this charismatic man’s life and career.

There was poignant testimony from his girlfriend, Carolina, about the future they had planned together and moving accounts by two US soldiers of their doomed attempt to rescue him from the building’s rubble. It made for a powerful 90 minutes.

Claire Byrne, who’s an arresting current affairs broadcaster, got sidetracked into fronting RTÉ1’s Ireland’s Search and Rescue, while this week on the same channel forthright economic analyst Eddie Hobbs seemed an equally strange choice to present My Civil War.

He brought real engagement, though, to his interviews with three young people whose ancestors had been caught up in the internecine carnage that tainted Irish life from 1922 onwards.

Falcon (Sky Atlantic) is based on stories by Robert Wilson concerning a police detective in Seville, but if you’re hoping for the Spanish answer to Inspector Montalbano, I’m afraid all you get are lacklustre actors trying to persuade you they’re from Andalucia while speaking estuary English.