Graham Anderson was barely out of his teens when he bought the building that would later become the Mornington Hotel. Now retired, Graham tells Tom Ogg about his experiences of running the St Helier hotel, from accidentally locking himself out of the hotel while naked to the time a pair of elderly ladies got stick in the lift after having both swallowed constipation tablets…
“Thankfully, we averted disaster,” he says.
IT’S safe to say that recent years haven’t been the most positive for independent Jersey hotels, with a handful having either shut down or announced that closure is imminent.
Thankfully, there is one local family-run establishment which remains resolutely open for business.
Situated on Don Road, the Mornington Hotel is among the longest-running hotels in the Island, having been founded in the early 1960s by Graham Anderson, and it remains a firm favourite with visitors and holidaymakers.
“We’re always busy,” says 86-year-old Graham, chatting in the hotel’s colourful reception area.
“We’re in a lovely central position, right beside Howard Davis Park, and we make sure that we’re the cheapest hotel in Jersey. We keep our tariffs very low.”
Today, the St Helier hotel is managed by Graham’s son, Philip, and Philip’s wife, Christina, although Graham remains actively involved behind the scenes.
“I’m in touch on a daily basis,” he says. “I like to know how many are staying in the hotel, whether the bar is busy, and so on. I retired at 60, which means Phil and Christina have been running the Mornington for over 20 years now, and the hotel has been going strong for over 60 years. There aren’t many other families who have been in business for such a long time.”
And by way of commemorating this long-lasting success, Graham detailed his experiences in an autobiographical book: A Seasonal Life: Tales of a Jersey Hotelier.
Released in 2021, the 200-page paperback is filled with unforgettable anecdotes, many of which are laugh-out-loud funny, and was officially launched with a book-signing evening at the Mornington.
“A Seasonal Life tells the story of my many, many years running the hotel,” says Graham. “It took me exactly one year to write. It’s a funny method of finding out something about yourself as a person. Writing the book, I found there have been times when I was a little too adamant or where I could have perhaps been a bit more discreet. You discover so many things about yourself.”
Remarkably, Graham was barely out of his teens when he bought a “scruffy terraced property” on Don Road and transformed it into the Mornington Hotel, named after both the street on which he grew up, in Woodford Green (Mornington Road), and the house to which he was evacuated as a child during the Second World War.
“I was only just passed 20 when I opened the Mornington,” he says. “I was told I was the youngest person to have ever held a residential drinks license in the Island.”
As Graham states in A Seasonal Life, the ensuing decades provided “celebrations and tragedies, moments of extreme kindness, sympathy and humour, and moments of potential violence, both verbal and physical”.
Regarding the latter, Graham enthusiastically recounts several true-life incidents documented in the book, each of which he tells with the storytelling flair and pitch-perfect regional accents that come from decades at the forefront of the hospitality industry.
“Well, I remember one occasion when we had the Band of the Royal Marines here,” he recalls. “They had been playing in Howard Davis Park and we had about 70 of them in the hotel bar. It was a beautiful evening and the bar was packed, and I suddenly noticed this tall blonde guy standing among them. I said to the barman: ‘That guy doesn’t look as if he’s with these people.’ The barman agreed, so I went over and I said: ‘Excuse me, what room are you staying in?’ The blonde guy replied: ’83.’ Well, the rooms in the hotel only go as far as 31, so I said to him: ‘You’re not staying here, are you?’ He said: ‘So what?’ I said: ‘This is a residents-only bar and you’re not allowed to be here.’ I’d just poured him a pint, so I told him I’d refund his money and I took his pint back. I remember the jukebox was playing Noel Harrison’s Windmills of Your Mind and, suddenly, it went silent. This guy then said: [Cockney accent] ‘Right, John’ – he called me John, I don’t know why – ‘John, come outside with me and I’ll knock your ****in’ ’ead off.’ The whole bar was absolutely silent. And, very calmly, I said: ‘No, don’t do that. Hitting a licensee is like hitting a policeman. You’ll go inside for six months. It isn’t worth it.’ I then walked out from behind the bar and I put my hands down by my side, and I said: ‘If you wish to hit me, go ahead, but we’ve got 70 witnesses here. Be sensible and do think about it.’ And I stood there in front of him – he was a lot taller than me – and I thought: ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t hit me.’ But instead he just turned around and walked out. And everyone in the bar started to do this [claps].
“Later, one of the guests was on his way to bed and he stopped and said: ‘You did well, Dr Kissinger.’ This was in reference to the famous American diplomat at the time.”
Unfortunately, this was but one of several such occurrences in which a non-resident invited themselves into the hotel and then became aggressive when asked to leave.
“There is a code on the main entrance, which guests have to use to get into the hotel after a certain time, and, occasionally, if a family or a group is staying with us, we might get someone slipping through the door [alongside them],” says Graham.
“Anyway, we have a lovely chaise lounge in reception, it’s a beautiful piece of furniture, and I remember one evening I closed the bar and there was this guy with his dirty feet on my chaise lounge. Back then, I didn’t have white hair, I had very dark hair and a moustache, and I said to him: ‘Who are you? You’re not staying in the hotel.’ And he said: ‘No, I’m not, but don’t you tell me what to do.’ I said: ‘Well, I’m the owner of this hotel. You’ve got your feet on my couch, you’re not staying here and I want you to go.’ I told him if he didn’t leave I’d call the police and have him removed. Well, he must have been in the British Army during the [Second World] war because he pointed at me and said: ‘Don’t you ****ing talk to me! I fought against you Italian w**s in the last war.’ I said: ‘As a matter of interest, I’m not Italian, I’m English, and I want you to leave,’ which, thankfully, he did.”
Not surprisingly, the effects of alcohol were often a contributing factor in such unpleasant encounters, although Graham points out that the majority of visitors to the hotel over the years have been perfectly civil, whether inebriated or otherwise.
“I’ll never forget this couple who stayed with us; they were absolutely lovely, and it was their first morning with us. I asked if they would like a tea or coffee, and they asked for wine. I pointed out that it was breakfast time and they replied: ‘Yes, we’re big wine drinkers.’ I said: ‘OK, I’ll bring you over two glasses.’ And they replied: ‘Oh, we’d like a bottle, please.’ They drank this bottle of wine, and then they had another bottle at lunch, and another bottle at dinner. By the end of the week, they’d drunk 35 bottles of house wine. The funny thing is that they never seemed to get drunk. They were always perfectly pleasant.
“There was another incident when I was woken by the front doorbell at 2.30 in the morning,” he continues. “I wrapped a towel around my waist, it was all I had on, and I made my way down to reception. It was a very nice Scottish couple, absolutely lovely couple, and they had obviously forgotten their code for the front door. I opened the door and I said: [mock sternly] ‘You’re very, very naughty.’ And the wife said: [Scottish accent] ‘Och, I’m no naughty; we put the code in, it didnae work.’ I said: ‘You’ve had too much to drink, haven’t you? Here, I’ll come outside and show you what to do.’ So I’ve got this towel around me and I step outside. I shut the door, I type in the code, I push the door – and the damn thing wouldn’t open. It was then that I saw a police car coming up the road and the traffic lights outside the hotel turned red. I said to the couple: ‘Please, please shield me, quick.’ I was imagining the headline in the JEP: Hotelier caught with trousers down outside own hotel. Luckily, a man who was staying on the ground floor heard us and came out in his pyjamas and opened the door. He saved my bacon.”
Born and raised in London (“I was born within the sound of Bow Bells, which officially makes me a cockney”), Graham was the youngest of four siblings, with an older sister and two older brothers. A third brother, Tommy, sadly died from septicaemia prior to Graham’s birth.
“My parents had a baker’s shop in Watney Street in East London,” he recalls. “My dad was a master baker and he introduced me to Jersey at the age of eight. He’d heard about the Island and about the benefits of coming here, and so he decided to take over the lease of Rendezvous, which was a restaurant in Broad Street. We started coming to the Island every year for our summer holidays.”
After leaving school at the age of 17, Graham attended Battersea College of Hotel Management, although his tenure with the south London institute would prove short-lived.
“I only stayed for six months,” he says. “I lost interest because I wanted to get into the kitchen and, there, it was more about the management side of things. I didn’t want to learn how to do laundry, I just wanted to cook.”
Shortly thereafter, Graham won a place at the Sorbonne University in Paris, which is renowned as one of the finest institutions for studying French culture and language. Today, Graham is a skilled linguist but, back then, he decided not to attend the celebrated Sorbonne.
“Much to the disappointment of my parents, I didn’t go. Instead, I jumped on a train and went down to the south of France.”
It was at this time that Graham began seeking unpaid work in French restaurants in order to finesse his blossoming culinary skills.
“I used to find the best restaurants, places that had one or even two Michelin stars, and I’d work for nothing. I would say to them: ‘I don’t want any money, I don’t want any accommodation – I just want to gain the experience. I want to further my knowledge of French cuisine.’ And that was what I did.”
Such was Graham’s dedication, in fact, that he continued to visit France and volunteer to work in restaurant kitchens even after he had relocated to Jersey and opened the Mornington Hotel.
“I would close the hotel at the end of October and then go over to France and work for nothing. I loved it. I would then bring my experiences back to the hotel kitchen.”
Alas, Graham’s cooking skills occasionally met with disapproval from the hotel’s guests, or at least those from the UK.
“The average British guest didn’t always appreciate the delicacies of French food,” he says. “For instance, filet de canard [fillet of duck] has got to be pink in the centre, but sometimes it would be sent back with a request for it to be cooked properly. I used to leave beef and lamb in the oven for about 45 minutes longer than I should because, if I served pink lamb or pink beef, I’d hear: [Yorkshire accent] ‘Take that bloody thing back t’kitchen and tell t’chef I want it bloody well-done’.
“Things are much better today, certainly in Jersey and London, but, back then, British food didn’t have a very good reputation. Growing up, my mum and dad always overcooked everything. It was only when I went to France that I discovered food that was cooked to perfection.”
It was during his time in France that Graham met and befriended David Inches, who was the faithful and long-serving butler of former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. The friendship endured for many years, but it also resulted in what Graham today describes as “the biggest mistake of my life”.
“David was half Welsh, half Italian, and we would often go out for coffee and drinks together,” he recalls. “I was still only very young and, on one occasion, David asked me where I was from. I told him I was from Woodford Green in Essex. Later, David told Sir Winston that he had met a young English student who was learning French, and Sir Winston sprung to life when David told him where I was from. You see, Woodford Green was Sir Winston’s constituency when he was in parliament. All the time I lived there, he was our Member of Parliament. And he said these very words to David: ‘You’ve got to bring this Woodford boy along and we’re going to give him some English tea with French pastries’. And David would be there with his camera to take a photo of Lady Churchill, Sir Winston and me.”
Sadly, the planned encounter never came to pass, with Graham – who was then still a teenager – finding himself too nervous to meet the fabled wartime premier.
“I’d seen him on the Buckingham Palace balcony with the King and Queen of England, and I thought: ‘Whatever will I talk to him about?’ I come from a very Conservative family, but I just couldn’t do it. My nerves got the better of me. And so I lied and told David that I couldn’t make it because my dad had been taken ill with a stroke. I said: ‘Please do explain to Sir Winston that I can’t come along’.
“Anyway, ten days later I was walking in Roquebrune, which is the village where Sir Winston lived, and David saw me. He said: ‘You told me you were going back to England.’ I said: ‘I’m so sorry, I lied. I sincerely apologise.’ I just didn’t have the confidence to meet the man who was the world statesman at the time. It really was the biggest mistake of my life. Can you imagine a photograph with Sir Winston and his signature on the back? Oh well.”
Sadly, the late, great wartime PM never came to visit the Mornington Hotel, although a number of other famous faces have passed through its doors over the years, including It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum legend Windsor Davies, British bandleader Syd Lawrence and erstwhile Doctor Who star Colin Baker.
“We also had American singer Jimmy Helms stay with us,” says Graham, singing a snatch of Helms’ 1973 hit Gonna Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse.
“And we had Alex Higgins come to stay in 1972. It was a week after he’d won his first snooker championship. I was in reception and someone said: ‘Ooh, Alex Higgins is here.’ I thought: ‘Oh God…’ But as it happens he was very charming and was no problem at all, aside from taking up with one of the chambermaids.”
Today, Graham lives happily with “my Barbara” in St Peter (“We’ve never got round to tying the knot”) and still enjoys cooking, whether for himself and Barbara or for his extended family (he has four adult sons).
Although now retired, he clearly relishes reliving memorable moments from his career in the hotel business and, before I leave, there is just time for one final anecdote.
“I remember the lift once got stuck between the first and second floors of the hotel,” says Graham. “There were two old-aged pensioners inside and I poked my head through the gap and said: ‘Whatever happens, don’t move.’ One of them replied: ‘We can’t bloody well go anywhere.’ The problem was that both ladies had left the dining room early to go to their rooms because they’d both taken constipation tablets. By the time the men came to fix the lift they were both desperate to get to the toilet.
“Thankfully, it was fixed in the nick of time and we averted disaster.”
*A Seasonal Life: Tales of a Jersey Hotelier by Graham Anderson is available now on Amazon UK
