Lucy Mangan: If Posh Spice can design a hotel, why can't I?

In the late 1980s, during my school's annual prize-giving (sponsored by Strongbow , Microgynon and the local drug dealers), our head­mistress gave a speech based on whichever biblical text it is that assures us that To Those That Have Shall Be Given More. Afterwards, a group of ­parents, including my own, ­gathered around her to remonstrate. I don't remember what the outcome was, but now we all recognise that the headmistress was merely being prescient. It is the essence of the ­celebrity lifestyle – the ­aspirant ­alpha and omega of our own age – captured in fewer than a dozen words. Victoria Beckham , for example, has just been offered £25m to ­design a luxury hotel in Dubai . A ­hotel (an hotel? As I was saying to the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire only the other day, ­negotiating such nuances of the sociocultural class system is always a right bugger) by Posh Spice offers a number of pleasing possi­bilities. Foremost among them, of course, that she will put the whole thing on ­asymmetric stilts to mirror her own orthopaedically challenging love affair with the mega-stiletto heel, requiring guests to cling on to walls as they make their way along corridors and downstairs to the mani-pedi-and-purge station ­before their air-and-seaweed ­breakfasts. No pets or children ­allowed, but there will be a husband/handbag-minding service on offer around the clock. For mere mortals, naturally, ­designing the perfect rooming house is easy-peasy and, dare I say it, lemon-squeezy. As you know, I am something of a jet-setting, ­cosmopolitan type myself, having stayed in over three hotels in the last 10 years alone. Thus I have drawn up a comprehensive list of all that is truly required for a restful and restorative stay: 1 No pubes in the bath 2 Or anywhere else. 3 When Chic Murray was ­presented with one of those tiny pots of honey in a genteel Edinburgh tea room, he leaned over it with ­interest and said to the waitress, "Ah! I see you keep a bee." When faced with a similar ­situation over my preferred croissant-and-jam-based breakfast, I feel much the same, except I say, "Ah! I see you keep me feeling both greedy and f­urious with your ­parsimonious ­apportioning of essentially blameless delights, thereby – especially when coupled with the prices you charge for a night's stay – setting me up for an entire day ­poisoned by bitterness and regret." Not as ­succinct as Chic, I admit, but it does make the point: an ­extra ounce of jam equals pounds of repeat business. 4 With cooked breakfasts, offer ­everything except grilled tomato. In the history of man, nobody has ever voluntarily eaten a grilled ­tomato. As Bill Bryson pointed out to his landlady on his first visit to Britain , it looks like a blood clot. 5 Showers must be: a) capable of ­delivering hot water; and b) ­operable by those of us without a degree in aeronautical engineering. It takes me an average of 20 minutes to work out how to use a new shower. This is longer than I usually allow for washing, dressing, breakfasting and catching the bus. And while I used to find the willingness of ­hotel owners to stand as the last ­redoubt of the traditional British suspicion of non-freezing water as an enervating, quaint and endearing continental frippery, age has ­hardened me. I want to be clean and I want to be warm. Let us unite at last with our American brethren under the sybaritic flag. 6 Check on the pube situation again. Thank you. I shall offer this advice to the very next Dubai billionaire I meet, and soon I shall be sitting on a fortune. I reckon both the Bible and ­headmistresses have got to be right sometime.