The strange fight I ended up having in a hotel lobby over men’s sport on the telly

If I didn’t spend so much time in hotels, this telly thing probably wouldn’t bother me, I maybe wouldn’t notice it, but I’ve been touring for a long time now and it’s really getting to me

We are surrounded by male sport in a public area (iStock)

My comedy tour trundles on and midway through 60 dates, a 58-year-old girl can get a bit tired and fractious and sometimes she will behave like an imperious toddler, i.e. without dignity or fear of consequence.

Case in point: we are staying in a perfectly nice hotel. It has a pool, pleasant garden and a golf course within spitting distance (not that I do).

The staff members are great, the room has a bath as opposed to just a shower – luxury. There are adequate plugs and a decent hairdryer.

However, it also has an open-plan lounge. Within this large space are two big televisions, and both are tuned to a sports channel.

I think one is playing basketball and the other is playing men’s football but I can’t be sure – to me it’s just a blur of men and balls. Fortunately the sound is low enough for someone as deaf as me to tune it out.

It’s coming up for 11pm when myself and fellow grumpy person Lizzie Roper settle down on a sofa in the furthest corner of the room. She wants gin, I want lager, we both fancy a cheese board. We have just finished performing. We are working women and this is our winding-down time.

In the middle of the lounge, between the tellies, are four men in their 40s. They are dressed in smart casuals, they are not drunk or intimidating in any way, but they are huddled around a small screen, from which the tinny sound of a boxing match commentary emanates.

We are surrounded by male sport in a public area. The lounge is not busy: there is a cheery lesbian couple holding hands, a straight couple, the men and us, and no one is watching the big screens.

I politely mention to the blokes that we can hear their tablet. “It’s the match,” one of them informs me, equally politely.

It’s at this point that I wish that I had a small semi-automatic silver trumpet in my handbag and had the musical ability to start blasting out songs from the shows, but I don’t.

Lizzie and I do the next best thing: we find The Archers’ theme tune on her phone and play it on repeat as loudly as we possibly can.

The men are oblivious; they are wrapped up in “the match”. Sadly Lizzie and I can only stand three repeats of The Archers’ theme tune before throwing in the towel and taking our cheese board and drinks up to Lizzie’s room, where we perch on her bed and try not to drop Stilton on the bedspread.

In the morning I swim and have breakfast. The lovely chef finds me an off-the-menu avocado and arranges it for me beautifully: again, I cannot fault the staff in this place.

The sun is blazing, it’s a rare and glorious day, the lawns are magnificent, it’s midday, the lounge is empty, everyone is out in the garden or relaxing on the patio. The two big screens are showing more men’s sport, and again the sound is very low but no one is watching either telly. I stroll over to the nearest one and switch it off. The world doesn’t end, but the young barman does look a bit surprised.

“I can’t stand it,” I tell him. “No-one’s watching and it’s boring, this constant feed of blokes’ sport, so I’ve turned it off.”

A middle-aged man strides up to the bar and butts in: “Which is precisely what I do when you’re on my box.”

“Which is your prerogative,” I snap back pithily.

A middle-aged female member of staff edges over, looking stern. She could be undercover security, she could be a karate black belt under that uniform.

“It’s the hotel policy,” she tells me. “It’s what head office wants. All our televisions have to be tuned to sports channels, it’s the rule.”

But no one switches the television back on – they are probably waiting until I leave, when they can call me a “silly cow” and put it back on, regardless of the fact that the room is empty and no one is watching.

If I didn’t spend so much time in hotels, this telly thing probably wouldn’t bother me, I maybe wouldn’t notice it, but I’ve been touring for a long time now and it’s really getting to me.

It’s the casual acceptance that this is the norm – that’s what makes me rage. “Genug ist genug,” as the German saying goes.

So what I would like is for every right-thinking person who is staying in any hotel that adopts this “policy” to rise up together and “switch over”. Let’s make a date and let’s do it properly. A year from now, when the Eurovision Song Contest is back on the box, anyone who is being subjected to nonstop bloke sport in any hotel lounge in the land, I dare you, get up and switch the telly over to BBC1 – because sometimes the only ball the rest of us want to watch is a glitter ball.