Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond The Lobby
Alone
Of all the gin joints in all the world, Monica Galetti and Rob Rinder just happened to walk into Richard Branson’s Moroccan retreat on a day when the boss was visiting.
What are the chances, eh?
The Virgin kingpin bought the Kasbah Tamadot near Marrakesh at the urging of his late mother, Eve. She fell in love with the place, a former fortress in the Atlas Mountains, when it was owned by a Californian art collector.
Now, as Sir Richard explained on Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond The Lobby (BBC2), it is run by staff from the local Berber villages, and tourism has transformed the region’s economy.
Attractions include movie nights beside the pool, where Monica and Rob cuddled up under blankets to watch Casablanca. ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,’ Monica murmured.
Of all the gin joints in all the world, Monica Galetti and Rob Rinder just happened to walk into Richard Branson’s Moroccan retreat on a day when the boss was visiting
The Virgin kingpin bought the Kasbah Tamadot near Marrakesh at the urging of his late mother, Eve
Rob’s certainly more tactile than her previous co-presenter, Giles Coren. He slung a companionly arm around everyone he met. Stable manager Mohammed grinned shyly, but in the kitchen, baker Meena hugged him, snuggled him and then led him around by the hand.
He needs to be careful, or some of the ladies might take his friendliness as a proposal of marriage.
Even Rob baulked, though, at kissing a camel. Mohammed showed him how to hold a carrot in his teeth so the beast could pluck it out with a slobbery snog. Rob looked horrified, and the camel didn’t seem too pleased either.
Monica went bicycling with Branson, who took her to visit the ladies of the local craft workshop, set up by his mother to alleviate local unemployment.
This is his second appearance on BBC2 this year, following a one-to-one interview with Amol Rajan. His idea of PR used to involve spectacular record attempts, such as round-the-world ballooning exploits. Now he appears to be making more conventional efforts to showcase his achievements, as though he’s started to worry about how the world will remember him.
He became quite maudlin as he paid tribute to his mother, who died from Covid in 2021: ‘If you can touch one or two other people’s lives, then you’ve had a worthwhile life.’
Commandeering the BBC to redefine his public image might prove too ambitious even for Branson. But if all he wanted was some free publicity for his North African hotel, this show was a success — the food, the scenery and the welcome all looked terrific.
None of that can be said for the Canadian wilderness where 11 Brits were stranded with selfie sticks and left to film themselves as they struggled to stay alive, in Alone (Ch4)
This is an unsuccessful twist on an old concept, Bear Grylls’s survival show The Island
None of that can be said for the Canadian wilderness where 11 Brits were stranded with selfie sticks and left to film themselves as they struggled to stay alive, in Alone (Ch4). This is an unsuccessful twist on an old concept, Bear Grylls’s survival show The Island. Instead of one Bear, there are lots of bears, snuffling round the campers’ tents at night, along the banks of the Mackenzie river in the sub-Arctic Northwest Territories.
The contestants are trying to outlast each other to win £100,000. But there doesn’t seem to be much purpose to the competition, apart from not dying.
Because they’re filming themselves, the footage is amateur and often blurry. And since the whole point is that they’re ‘alone’, there are no friendships or feuds, and they have little to say apart from the running commentaries: ‘I can’t get this fire going,’ and ‘What was that noise, was it a bear?’
One of them, 49-year-old former heroin addict Mike, has already dropped out after hitting his leg with an axe.
Two of the others can’t seem to keep their clothes on. They should have signed up for Naked Attraction instead. That way, at least they’d have a camera crew to do the filming.
