Bunhill: Chicago Pizza Pie Factory

MY FIRST embarrassing mistake this week. I was ready to jeer at the news that the irrepressible Bob (Chicago Pizza Pie Factory) Payton had created an IBM-themed bedroom in his luxury Stapleford Park Hotel in deepest Leicestershire. But then Payton pointed out that among his guests were quite a number of computer-illiterate senior executives who had felt it infra dig to ask their minions to explain the elements of the computer game but were eager to learn. Less persuasively, he claimed that said guests found their computer lessons more fun than sex.

As far as bedroom furniture is concerned, I find more fun in the powerful Harley-Davidson motorcycle that graces one of the bedrooms of the luxurious Saint James's Hotel at Bouillac overlooking Bordeaux. The owner, Jean-Marie Amat, says dreamily: 'You simply can't imagine the happenings on that machine.'