But it soon became clear.

For eight weeks they were told to sit back and let their actors treat their 'customers' badly - for a wind-up show due to be screened next month.

The guests - unsuspecting members of the public - had been lured to Hotel Getaway (Mere Court, to those in-the-know) after being told they had won a weekend break.

"We had to operate as a normal hotel even thought they brought their own staff and deputy manager," Sally Cole told the Knutsford Guardian yesterday (Tuesday).

For eight weeks genuine guests were told the hotel was fully booked as the TV actors set out to see how much the British public could endure.

"If any of the customers had a problem we had to send them to one of the actors in case we gave the game away," said Sally.

The TV crew had transformed Sally's dream hotel into the hotel from Hell.

From the minute the guests arrived things started to go wrong. Very wrong. No room booking. Shifty porters and a rather rude hotel manager.

The crew captured it all, of course, on hidden cameras for Hotel Getaway, which will be shown on Granada on Saturday January 8. TV crews shot 900 hours of film during their two-month stay at the Warrington Road hotel.

"One of the hardest parts for us was not telling the customers because the way they were treated was just dreadful," said Sally.

Yesterday she said she was looking forward to watching the finished programme.

"I have to say it is nothing like our hotel," she said.

As for the winners? They were the guests who stayed the longest.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.