Mingling with the mighty

There I was standing in a room with the word ‘Service’ painted on the door, in the Gellert hotel in Budapest. I was attempting to iron a pair of trousers for the first night of Phantom of the Opera, which was to be the biggest stage production Hungary had ever attempted. Only the Gellert had no valet service so I was pressing my clothes myself in the maids’ room.

A crease had just been enlarged when a woman knocked and opened the door. She was evidently a hotel guest and addressed me in English. She demanded peremptorily, ‘I want my clothes ironed.’ As a friend said later, I should have replied, ‘Yes, for 100 English sterling. Just because we’re not in the EU yet, don’t think labour is cheap.’ Instead I glared at her. ‘I don’t work here.’ I should have thought this was evident, given the fact I had rollers in my hair and was wearing a silk dressing-gown embroidered with lace. Did the woman think this the usual attire of a Hungarian maid on duty?

I was on the point of telling her that the one excuse for her rudery was too much Mozart or Lehar, only she looked too stupid, when the woman protested, ‘But you’re in the service room.’ ‘Being in a kitchen doesn’t make you the cook,’ I retorted. ‘I happen to be a hotel guest. You have to iron your own clothes here.’ She gave me a look of blank horror, slammed the door, causing the hot iron to fall on my foot, and fled.

I was not in Hungary to practise my domestic skills, however. Andrew and Madeleine Lloyd Webber had very kindly invited me to attend the great Phantom opening. This was causing more excitement in Budapest than the fall of the Berlin Wall.