Guests complained of 'shabby', smelly rooms with mouse droppings and dead insects.
A real-life Basil Fawlty ran an ‘awful’ hotel and swore at his guests after drinking ‘quite a few vodkas’, a court heard.
John Dixon Hart appeared before Hull Crown Court after wrongly claiming rooms at his guesthouse were either three-star or four-star and advertising online with misleading photos.
Judge Mark Bury branded him Basil Fawlty, John’s Cleese’s famously rude hotel owner in Fawlty Towers, while a council investigator who visited the Grade II listed property felt one star would be ‘flattering’.
Minster Garth Guest House in Beverley, a market town in East Riding, Yorkshire, had received a barrage of complaints between 2021 and 2022 about ‘shabby’ and dirty rooms, stained bedding, musty and tobacco smells, broken tiles, mouse droppings, dead insects and poor security.
Some guests also complained about Hart’s ‘unwelcoming behaviour’. The judge said he called one woman a ‘c***’ and another a ‘f***ing letch’ and told her she was a ‘sponger’.
An investigation by trading standards found minimum standards of ‘hygiene, health and safety’ had not been met, while adverts with misleading information and photographs had been used on popular websites Expedia, LateRooms and Booking.com.
Judge Bury said: ‘How you managed to keep it (the hotel) going, I have no idea.
‘I have heard how you treated guests. I am absolutely staggered you had any. I wouldn’t even have dreamed of staying in a guest house like that.’
Hart told him the reason they attracted customers was ‘the price’. ‘We are always the cheapest in Beverley,’ he said.
Guests who complained to trading standards officers provided photos of the conditions they found themselves in, the court heard.
Judge Bury said: ‘Pretty gruesome photographs of some bedding. Shower areas leave a lot to be desired.’
Michele Stuart-Lofthouse, prosecuting, said one guest recalled they had ‘no option but to go into town and buy cleaning products’ themselves ‘given the smell and how awful the room was’.
She added: ‘There was a bin with all the previous occupants’ rubbish in it.’
Another woman said the place was ‘an absolute dump’, the court heard, with a door handle missing, ‘threadbare’ carpets and ‘stained’ bedding.
It was claimed that the building was ‘tatty and run down’ with ‘unkempt grounds’.
There were also delays in checking guests in because of an unmanned reception area.
The Georgian building, with its impressive exterior, sits in the shadow of Beverley’s historic Minster Church and Judge Bury said it was ‘a great shame because it’s a good spot’ and had ‘huge potential to be a successful business’.
Hart got into arguments with guests who wanted refunds, the court heard, including a group of international equestrian judges in the area for an event.
He claimed many guests wanting money back hadn’t booked ‘flexible rates’ and were ‘reporting exaggerated problems’.
However, in regards to calling a woman a ‘c***’ during one particularly nasty exchange, he said: ‘I’m terribly sorry if I did.’
Judge Bury added: ‘He called some lady he had never met a f***ing letch and told her she was a sponger.’
At an earlier hearing Hart said that guests expected ‘the world’ and admitted telling them to ‘sling their hook’ and that he ‘gave arrogant responses’.
Judge Bury told him: ‘I sometimes think you should be called Basil Fawlty.’
Hart said he had been suffering a ‘lot of personal stress and upset’ at the time after his wife left him.
‘I wasn’t paying attention to the business,’ he said.
‘In the evening, I was in the habit of drinking quite a few vodka and cokes and that worsened my behaviour towards guests.
‘We have got 12 or 13 rooms and, if people are all turning up at the same time and demanding attention, it can all get a bit fraught.’
Hart said he and his wife were now back together and he had made improvements to the guest house, including redecorating and sorting out various issues.
‘My dream is to let my two boys and stepson carry it forward,’ he said. His sons are 10 and eight, the court heard, and his stepson, aged ’23 or 24′, was already helping out.
‘There have been quite a few more positive reviews recently,’ he added. ‘I had the whole place redecorated last year and decent carpeting. I regularly replace the bedding.’
Judge Bury replied: ‘Washing it would help.’
Hart continued: ‘My wife does help. The window frames have been repainted. I don’t think there is a broken pane in the whole house and I have done all these things single-handedly.
‘A reasonable person would arrive and think, “This is good value for money”. If you look at the reviews, we are getting some tens and nines and sevens regularly.
‘They are getting a room that they ought to be paying double for. It has the potential to be a gold mine.
‘I am hoping that my sons can take it over. We’ll see what happens. I am working hard to that effect.’
Hart claimed that he had only a ‘meagre income’ from the guest house because of costs and bills and that he ‘lost a lot of money last year’ but added: ‘Because it is such a fantastic building with such fantastic potential, I am desperate to try to find a way around it.’
Hart was jailed in August last year for 22 weeks for public order and harassment offences.
Judge Bury acknowledged Hart, who served just over a month, had made the ‘most impressive’ progress he’d ever seen since leaving prison, including giving up drinking apart from the ‘odd glass of wine’.
‘There’s absolutely no public interest in sending you back there,’ he said.
Hart, of Minster Garth, Keldgate, Beverley, admitted six offences involving misleading commercial practices between June 1, 2021 and March 22, 2022.
Among these offences were adverts with misleading information and photographs published on websites Expedia, LateRooms and Booking.com to attract customers by false pretences.
It followed an investigation where trading standards found the hotel had not met minimum required ‘hygiene, health and safety’ standards.
Hart had been due to face a 10-day trial but changed his plea to guilty.
He was given a nine-month suspended prison sentence, 20 days’ rehabilitation. and ordered to pay £729 compensation to reimburse eight guests who had complained.
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