Hotel Manager (Andy Hay)

The Hotel Manager ran The Ullswater Hotel in the Lake District.

In 1990, when teenagers Steve McDonald and Joanne Khan fled Weatherfield on Jim McDonald's motorbike before Joanne's sister Flick could take her home to Canterbury, they made it as far as Patterdale village in Cumbria before the bike broke down. Seeking money and digs, Steve tried his luck at the Ullswater, and they were offered jobs washing-up in the hotel restaurant at £1.90 an hour, plus accommodation. Running the hotel like a rod of iron, the manager wasted no time in letting Steve and Joanne know who was boss, stopping to yell at a staff member for being rude to customers while talking them through the job and knocking their pay down to £1.50 an hour when he discovered that Steve had lied about having experience working in kitchens.

Steve thought that they had landed on their feet but Joanne refused to share a bed with him and walked out after one shift at the hotel, hitchhiking back to Weatherfield on her own. Worried about her, Steve sneaked the use of the phone in the hotel reception to call home, but had to hang up after a few seconds when the manager spotted him. Despite being fed an obviously false story that Steve had got bored while staying with an aunt in Penrith, the manager was nonplussed when Liz McDonald arrived at the hotel to bring her son home. Uninterested in Liz's reason for wanting to see Steve, the manager instead complained about how unreliable kids were. His feelings were well founded, as Steve agreed to return home the moment he saw Liz, leaving his disgruntled employer in the lurch.

1990

 * Fri 27th Jul
 * Mon 30th Jul
 * Wed 1st Aug