It’s the one London hotel where, over the last four decades, nearly every Indian of consequence from Prime Ministers to superstars like Amitabh Bachchan has stayed. It is also the most successful hotel enterprise ever run by an Indian company in a western country. And yet most of us are unaware of the story of London’s St James Court hotel and its many trials and triumphs.

My earliest memories of the hotel are not happy. In 1982 I was flying back to India from New York on Air India. In those days Air India operated one flight a day to Mumbai from New York which stopped in London. You had the option, with certain categories of fare, of breaking your journey in London and getting one or two free hotel nights in London.

That was the option I chose, and Air India said I could stay at a new Taj hotel called St James. I had stayed, the year before, at the Taj-run Bailey’s Hotel in London and found it quite acceptable. I imagined that St James, which had a better location than Bailey’s, would be the same sort of establishment.

I was very wrong. The hotel was a complete dump; the sort of place that made Fawlty Towers seem like the epitome of luxury. It looked like a two-star property. The rooms were cheaply furnished and hardly ever serviced. The people at reception made it their mission to treat guests badly. Each floor had dirty, dark, interminably long corridors and the staff were crooks.

I had booked a taxi to take me to Heathrow for my morning flight to Mumbai. But when I came down to check out, I was told that the car had not turned up. I called the cab service. They said the driver had come to the hotel but had been sent back by the bell desk on the grounds that there was no one of my name staying there.

I asked the guys at the bell desk what had happened and they shrugged and denied all knowledge of any taxi. As the minutes ticked away and I risked missing my flight, a bell boy stepped in to tell me that there were no taxis to be had in that area. Fortunately, he said, he had a friend with a cab who could take me to the airport. But, of course, it would cost much more given the scarcity.

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I made my flight but complained to people I knew at the Taj when I got to Mumbai. They were astonished when I said I had stayed at St James. They had just acquired the hotel, they said, and intended to close it down completely for two years during which they would restore and refurbish it. The existing staff (who had been hired when the property was run by Crest Hotels) would be sacked and a new team would be put in place when the hotel reopened.

That explained why the staff did not give a damn about service when I stayed there. But it was such a depressing hotel that I doubted that the Taj could do much........

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