You'll be wanting clean towels next!

Another day, another hotel. This time the Novotel at Birmingham Airport.

And if you're ever in the area you could do worse than stay at the Novotel. Or so I'm told anyway. Personally I find it hard to believe you could find worse at £135 a night.

For that I would normally expect at least Sky Sports and hot and cold running housemaids.

Instead what we got was the point where Ryanair meets hotels. If you're not savvy, you'll be charged £2 merely for the privilege of finding out exactly where you need to park.

Having followed the signs to the Novotel we found ourselves on a narrow road confronted by a car-park barrier. We took a ticket - we're not completely devoid of experience in these matters. But then a sign informed us this was the stop-and-drop area only - no overnight parking. Instead it told us to exit the car park and go to car parks 1, 2, or 3.

At the exit barrier inserting the ticket in the relevant slot resulted in us being told we owed £2. That's 200 pennies merely for following instructions and being led on a wild bloody goose chase.

We retraced our tyre tracks to a pay machine in the hope it would validate our ticket. It did and we got out for nothing. But some of our colleagues were not so lucky. There were no instructions anywhere.

The overnight charge in the NCP car park was £19.50. No, you're not seeing things. £19.50. It would have been cheaper to fly to Berne. When we checked in we tried to validate the ticket to get the parking free, but were told it would be just at the reduced rate of £13.50. The guy looked at us as if we should fall at his feet in gratitude.

He then informed us that to actually redeem the ticket to obtain parking at this ludicrously cheap rate we would need to schlep over to the arrivals' hall in the airport itself to get the ticket validated by the NCP office.

I was not amused. I don't like schlepping at the best of times. And, to top it off, all the rooms our group had booked were singles except for ours which was a twin - obviously young Lee and I lost out in the pillow lottery.

But, yes, you guessed it. All the rooms were made up as twins ... except ours. I phoned down and told an incredulous receptionist who sent somebody up straight away to make up the bed.

This, it transpired, involved no more than pulling out a lever, which saw the bed, already dressed, spring out onto the floor. All the young lady needed to do was take two pillows from the cupboard and place them on the bed.

"If they'd told us how simple it was, we would have done it," said Lee to the young lady apologetically.

Her look, as she departed, suggested we were the biggest divas she'd seen since Mariah Carey's entourage made the mistake of thinking the Novotel sounded like a good place to stop over.

The bathroom was brilliantly designed. Full of wonderful flowing curves and big, bold statements. It was obviously a candidate for a National Design Award, for it wasn't made with functionality in mind.

A shallow sink which made it impossible to do anything unless you filled it to the top and wasted water. And the carefully crafted glass shower guard looked very attractive while offering the rest of the bathroom as much protection from splashing water as would a couple of Rizlas.

Removing the plug from the sink gave a waft of disgusting drains and the separate toilet smelt of damp - what sort of damp we never quite established.

I don't have a grudge against the Novotel chain - I've stayed in the ExCeL Novotel on many occasions without a problem - but this was beyond belief for the price.

On the plus side, they did have black pudding for breakfast - a breakfast which cost an additional £14 or so. But by that time I couldn't wait to check out.