AMA Wishlist!

[LavenderHills]

What are the AMAs you'd be really curious to read?

In no particular order, I'd like to hear from:

Someone who has taken part in a reality tv show

Someone who lives or has lived at the Tower of London

A concierge at a really, really high end hotel

A doctor who performs pregnancy terminations

Ooh yes, I'd like the Tower of London one, I've always been fascinated by the houses there.

Any medical ones but especially an anaesthetist or oncologist (id also be curious about the pregnancy terminations mentioned upthread).

Someone who works in housing and gets to decide who should have a HA/council house and/or more generally how their priority/points system works.

I worked at a very high end hotel
In London and had a lot to do with concierges. I can probably answer some of your questions!

Does Escape to the Country count?

Ooh I was thinking about this the other day!

I'd really like to hear from people who grew up in a completely different environment/culture to Britain/western Europe. Like the Australian outback/rural Kenya/Alaskan wilderness/etc

Housekeeper/maid at hotel/B&B/guesthouse

Good idea OP.

• A pilot
• a psychiatrist/psychologist (I want to be one and my sister works in a related field but not the same)
• personal trainer especially if with famous or rich individuals
• headteacher
• someone who does stand up comedy or skit DH :)

Dh I meant etc. No idea where DH came from.

There is a consultant gynaecologist thread and the doctor mainly now performs terminations. It's an interesting thread

@LadyOfTheCanyon I've just always wondered if people made mad requests?

I once stayed at The Goring and the concierges seemed to have superhuman recall of guests faces and itineraries. I went out, mentioning to the concierge what my plans for the day were, and when I came back that night, a different concierge who I hadn't seen before said "Good evening Ms LavenderHills, how was (insert activity details here)?" How did they DO that?

But anyway, I'm an ordinary person who doesn't stay in very fancy places habitually, so I only made ordinary person requests. I wonder if people who live like that all the time demand crazy things?

@PavlovianLunge yes! What was it like?

Child psychologist / psychiatrist

Butler

Okay, @LavenderHills Ask Me Anything.

What was it like?

It was a great experience, and in our case, it was very much like you’d expect from seeing the program - no dramas or problems. It was all done to quick a tight time-frame, but we felt very relaxed while filming.

A bit niche, but I’d like to hear from someone who works in a Local Authority SEND department. Don’t think it will happen though!

@NotAnotherNoughtiesTune - here’s a pilot AMA...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/AMA/3293146-i-m-an-airline-captain-ask-me-anything

That might have been John at the Goring! Lovely man. Everyone knows everyone else in the hotel industry and staff tend to move around a lot between the high end hotels.

It's a very coveted position being a concierge, apart from the pay ( average but the tips are ridiculous and mostly not declared. ) You only get to the top spots if you are very, very good. You do have to be personable, affable and have a good memory, but between the front of house staff, doormen and concierge ( and lots of notepads) they will all know everything about the guests. And those notes will be kept in case you return. Because the more impressed people are, the more they tip. And I can assure you that I've never met a bunch of people who loved a tip more than the gentlemen of Les clefs D'Or.

They have people everywhere and are constantly glad handing people : maitre d's of the hottest restaurants are comped rooms at hotels in order to bump people from tables when the hotel has a oligarch staying who suddenly wants to go to the latest, booked-up-for-months place. The concierge gets a massive tip and the restaurant also knows they will get a huge tip. Same with theatres, galleries, shops, football grounds. If you've ever been bumped from a top tier restaurant due to an inexplicable 'mix up', it's entirely possible that this was the reason.

Concierges have eyes everywhere. If you are rich enough, and trusted enough, they can hook you up with anything. They would deny deny deny of course, and never on hotel premises, but were perfectly capable of hooking people up with drugs and prostitutes. It's dressed up with a lot of Hail fellow well met, but there's a huge shady side to it as well.

@PavlovianLunge but the real question is did you escape to the country?

@Gingerninj yes, very much so (a village of maybe 35 people), but not the bit of the country that we saw on ETTC. It suits us very well, though the village has had more dramas in three years than we had in 20+ years of living in London.

Years ago, I worked in Waterstones Piccadilly and regularly took concierge calls to find requests.

My favourite was the person who wanted the entire Tintin and Asterix collections by tomorrow. Books were flown across the channel and from Scotland to meet the deadline.

@LadyOfTheCanyon thanks for the insights, it's absolutely fascinating! I suppose it makes sense that to be able to get access to popular restaurants etc you'd have to maintain relationships, but I'd just never considered it before. A whole other world

@PavlovianLunge did you find it difficult to talk/act naturally when you knew you were being filmed?

@LavenderHills to an extent, yes. DP and I both tend to process things before responding, whereas for the program, we had to do a lot more thinking out loud, iyswim. I think they would have liked more oohing and ahhing, but they quickly twigged that neither of us were going to ooh or ahh very much.

During the local activity, we were given questions to ask the local expert, some of which didn’t feel quite natural to either of us.

I would say that I spoke a little more slowly than I usually do, and that any flashes of humour had to be very vanilla. I remember we were outside the last house, there were chickens mooching around, and when the presenter said something about visiting, I said she could come round for a chicken dinner... that little chat had to be redone.

Bookishandblondish

My favourite was the person who wanted the entire Tintin and Asterix collections by tomorrow.

There is something rather lovely about that I must say.

I think it's the juxtaposition of demanding oligarch style wealth (I want it NOW) with the request being for something as innocently delightful as the whole of both Tintin and Asterix.

A Scientologist