Craig Withycombe is the sound man for Hotel 24/7
It was manic. Hundreds of plates, cups and hot saucepans were being stacked up in front of a team of blue-suited pot-washers. Waiters and waitresses were everywhere, bringing tray upon tray of sausages, scrambled eggs and baked beans into the restaurant. Behind me, chefs were sweating over the hot plates. It was 7.30am and the kitchen had 500 people to feed.
Cameraman Rob McDougal and soundman Craig Withycombe
When I joined the Hotel 24/7 team I was told that I would be filming in the biggest kitchen at the Celtic Manor Resort. I was looking forward to it. Back in my younger days I’d had a brief stint as a pot-washer and I’d had a good time. The restaurant was small and quiet and I spent most of my time eating chip butties and sneaking off early to go surfing. With that experience at the back of my mind, I thought I knew what I was going into. I was wrong.
I would be working with experienced 24/7 cameraman Rob McDougal. He had filmed several series following police, vets and a week in the life of a seaside town. I was going to be his soundman. We would be tethered together by cables from the sound equipment which meant it was essential that we worked together as a team. Where he went, I went.
Whoosh. Perry Williams aka Pez the store man was on the move. We’d been up at 6.30am filming Pez as he ran to work. Now he was running from kitchen to kitchen, and he didn’t stop. Trying to keep up with him was proving a real challenge as he sped around the kitchens, dragging huge crates of food from one room to the next.
Perry would run upstairs, downstairs, across to one side of the hotel and back. And then do it all again. We would follow in slow pursuit, looking like a bit like an out-of-breath pantomime horse.
After breakfast had been served, washing up on a biblical scale kicked in. With hot water everywhere, the floor became like an ice skating rink. Stacks of dirty dishes just got higher and higher. Amid all of this, chief steward Silvia Capello, led from the front. Fiery, funny and formidable, Silvia is the kind of manager who would roll her sleeves up and get stuck in.
Her kitchen porters or “Smurfs” as she referred to them (because of their blue outfits) were really hard working. The plates, pots and pans just never seemed to stop coming. Filming them really put doing the dishes at home into perspective.
I also couldn’t understand how the waiters and kitchen porters moved around this slippery area so easily. They walked around carrying food and trays effortlessly. I scuttled around awkwardly trying my best not to fall on my backside.
Preparing afternoon tea in the biggest kitchen in the hotel
After the breakfast shift had finished, preparation for the next day’s breakfast and afternoon tea began. This was a totally different experience to the breakfast shift. Sometimes it felt a bit like being in the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with rows and rows of amazing looking cakes and desserts being prepared by the chefs. There were no Oompa-Loompas but there were some good characters like Beefcake and Duck Fat.
This place was about volume of food. From serving 500 at breakfast, to 100 afternoon teas, then a buffet for 300 in the evening - it never stopped.
After spending the day following the kitchen staff, Rob and I were all set to finish our filming. It’s fair to say we were both knackered. We bumped into Pez again, as he was about to run home. I don’t think I saw him stop all day. And just as Silvia thought her shift was ending, she had to help out one of her porters who was snowed under a traffic jam of pots and pans.
You just felt it would be the same again the following day.
Hotel 24/7 is on Monday 22 September at 7.30pm, BBC One Wales.
