Quote

The very best hotel I've stayed in is the Intercontinental on Park Lane. We went there for the Chelsea Flower Show a few years ago, and it was sheer luxury. Everybody had a smile on their face. I came home and changed all my pillows because the hotel ones were so beautiful.

Many of my favourite hotels are in London. I like the Covent Garden Hotel and I stayed at Blakes last time I was in London. I like the feeling of warmth and homeliness that you get from both of those places.

In Britain I love spending time at the St. James's, the Jumeirah Carlton Tower on Cadogan Place, and the Mayfair Hotel. We've got some spectacular hotels tucked away in London, but because I live there, I don't get to spend as much time in them as I probably would like to.

I don't like the idea that one hotel could be better than another. In any city, I try to find a hotel that has the identity of that place - Claridge's in London, the Danieli or Cipriani in Venice. In New York, I stay at the Mercer Hotel; it is so much in the character of SoHo.

I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.

Some of the hotels I've been put up in for work in Scotland have been shockingly bad. They're the type of hotel where the bedroom is like a cell and the Internet doesn't work. I feel quite aggrieved at that because you should at least be treated reasonably well and have basic comfort.

I don't like posh hotels. I like small, eclectic hotels, and luxury for me would mean really good company with good food in a really funky, beautiful house in the middle of a field where someone came and serviced the place for us.

Due to my work, I tend to stay in hotels a lot of the time, and I generally prefer smaller hotels, as you tend to get better service than in the larger hotels.

I'm a hotel baby, absolutely: it's hard to think of a hotel I haven't stayed in.