City reality TV stars given rough ride by picky pair

A HOTELIER has accused fellow contestants in a television reality show of damaging his property and refusing to pay for their stay in a desperate bid to win the top prize.

Roy Williamson and partner Del Cain own a hotel which is set to feature in the Channel 4 programme Four in a Bed next week.

The show sees the owners of four bed and breakfasts spend a night at each other’s premises, with the hosts putting on entertainment and taking the others for a meal.

The guests then pay what they think their visit has been worth.

However, Roy said Yorkshire couple Amanda and Mike had refused to stay at the Richmond House Hotel in the city’s Leopold Place, which he and Del have been running for a year.
And despite enjoying a chocolate-making class and dining at the highly-rated Thai Pad restaurant, the couple from Thirsk refused to put their hands in their pockets and stump up for the experience.

Roy said he suspected that a complaint he made about dirty glasses in his room while staying at Mike and Amanda’s Yorkshire B&B had provoked a backlash.

“We didn’t go in expecting to win,” he said. “But we certainly didn’t expect to turn out the way it did.

“We went to Yorkshire and the hotel was a really small converted mill. It was quite nice, apart from the motorway going past the window.”

Contestants were asked to inspect their rooms, highlighting anything they considered below the standard of their own hotels.

“When we got into a room a camera crew told us to be really anal,” said Roy.

“There was a couple of things but nothing that would put you off staying.”

After participating in activities including drill marching directed by an RAF captain, Roy and Del gave their Yorkshire rivals a fair rate for the room and returned to Scotland to await their turn to host the other contestants.

However, they were stunned when Amanda tore apart the room looking for faults and then stormed out.

Roy said: “We have shutters on our windows that are painted shut. They’ve been that way since before we had the place.

“Their inspection was taking longer than it should have, so Del went up and she’d ripped the shutter off the wall.

“Because it hadn’t been open in about six years it was really dusty behind it and she put her finger in it and rubbed it into the carpet at Del’s feet.”

Roy also accused Amanda of dismantling the plumbing in the bathroom in order to pick faults.

“She walked out and refused to stay in the hotel, which was the first time it had happened [on the show],” said Roy.

“We think it was because of the bad reviews we gave her,” he added.

“We noted dirty wine glasses, cobwebs and a cupboard in the bathroom that should have been locked – you could see the copper pipes and cleaning things. We heard from someone that she thought we’d planted the wine glasses in the room, but who carries dirty wine glasses about with them?”

A spokeswoman for Channel 4 confirmed that Amanda and Mike had refused to stay at the Richmond House Hotel but said she could not confirm allegations that they had caused damage.