A night that ends with coffee rather than a cab home
A night booking is ten hours at £1,800, and it is the one engagement on the sheet worth writing a day ahead. Not because the desk needs the notice, since a night is arranged inside the hour when a diary happens to be clear, but because the choice is widest then. Ten hours is time she cannot offer anybody else, which is why half the figure is asked for in advance and why the answer to a Friday request at eleven at night is occasionally an honest no.
It is a straightforward stretch of time rather than a different kind of evening. Dinner if you would like one, whatever is running on Bow Street if the timing suits, the walk home, then the hours nobody schedules. Breakfast is part of it. The whole ladder sits on the rail, and everything shorter than a night lives on the room call page.
Who suits this call
A shortlist rather than the whole company. If none of these is free on your night, the desk will name three more who carry the same evening just as well.
What ten hours is, and is not
Ten hours counted from the time written on the sheet: a nine o'clock start ends at seven, a midnight start ends at ten. She sleeps. That is worth stating plainly, because some houses are vague about it and guests arrive braced for something that runs all night without pause. What you are booking is a night in someone's company from one end to the other, the quiet middle of it included, and the morning is the part regulars say they booked it for.
Why a night wants a day of notice
Ten hours blocks everything else she might have taken, and the pieces around it, a later table, a car at six in the morning, are often arranged well before the evening starts. A message the afternoon before gives the desk room to do that properly and gives you a real choice of names. The figure is written into the thread when the night is confirmed, and nothing about it changes after that.
Rooms that suit a night rather than an hour
Any address on the circuit works, though the rooms people return to for this are the ones with something to look at in the morning. The river side of Strand and Aldwych is the obvious choice. The garden squares of Bloomsbury are the quiet one, where a townhouse room with a conservatory downstairs suits a night that opens with a long dinner. Private flats are booked for nights as often as hotels are, and a porter on duty at four in the morning notices nothing whatever.
The morning, and how it ends
Room service, usually, and a slower hour than either of you expected. She leaves at the time on the sheet rather than slipping out at five, unless you would both rather she did, in which case say so the night before. Nothing is added for breakfast and nothing is added for the hours you spend asleep. Wanting the morning extended is the same conversation as any other extension: a message to the desk, and an honest answer about what her day holds behind you.
Who suits a ten hour night
Violetta is the tallest on the sheet at 178 cm, sleek, unhurried and entirely at home in a large room. Danielle is the slower reel of the company, which is the right register for a night with no schedule in it. Margo asks for patience and repays it, and is the name regulars write to once they know how they want a night to feel. Luna is dark auburn red, twenty two, and good at the late hours. Two of the four are slender.
If the night has to move
Cancel with three hours in hand and nothing is owed, and the desk will happily pencil in another date instead. Inside two hours, half the figure stands. A night nobody arrives for is charged in full, which is rare enough to barely mention. Should we ever have to cancel from this side, nothing is owed at all, and you are told what happened rather than given an invented reason.
This evening, answered
Not strictly. Nights are arranged the same evening whenever a diary is clear, and the desk knows inside 10 to 15 minutes whether one is. A day of notice simply means choosing from everybody on the sheet rather than from whoever happens to be free.
Yes. The ten hours run from whatever time is written on the sheet. A seven o'clock start takes in dinner and a performance and still ends at five in the morning, and plenty of guests prefer that version for exactly this reason.
A ten hour booking takes her whole night off the sheet, and pieces of it are often arranged in advance for you. Writing the afternoon before keeps the choice of company wide and the timings calm.
No. The figure is the ten hours end to end, breakfast and the slow part of the morning included. Anything ordered from the hotel goes on your own bill, as at dinner, and there is no late charge or early charge of any kind.
Written for this evening
Other evenings
Call the stage door
One message names the evening you want and the desk answers inside a quarter of an hour, at any point on the clock. Tell us the day, the hour, how long you would like and where she should come, and the rest is written down for you.
Running order
- Half hour
- Beginners
- YouCurtain up
- Interval
- Final bow