Jeremy Clarkson was absolutely buzzing about the Manchester hotel he stayed in recently

Jeremy Clarkson was recently in town, and the former Top Gear star wrote about the trip in his Sunday Times column over the weekend.

But what was it about Clarkson’s trip to Manchester that made it worth a whole article?

Well, it was the hotel he stayed in. While that might seem quite unremarkable on its own, it turns out the car lover actually hates hotels.

According to his column, in Manchester homeless women look like Ivana Trump and the postmen dress up as Chippendales for a night out, but he also had some nice things to say – specifically about Dakota Hotel, where he stayed during his visit to our city.

First Clarkson explained why he usually doesn’t like hotels: “There are more than 17m hotel rooms in the world and all of them are wrong in some way. Some smell so powerfully of extreme cleaning products that your septum starts to bleed. Some are several miles from reception. And many have doors that are opened by electronical key cards that don’t work. Ever.”

This wasn’t the case at Dakota, though: “Unusually, it had rooms that had plainly been designed by someone who’d stayed in a hotel before. The light switches did what I was expecting when I pushed them. You didn’t need a degree in astrophysics to open and close the windows.”

He continued: “The temperature was maintained at a level that felt like there was no temperature at all. And the shower controls were located by the door to the cubicle, not on the other side of the icy jet that starts the moment you turn the tap.

“The decor was halfway between businesslike and what I’d put in my house. I had a look round the room and some of the stuff I would happily have stolen.”

Bearing in mind how grumpy he usually is, this is huge praise.

If you want more info about the hotel, or fancy booking a little trip of your own, head over to the Dakota website here – you won’t be disappointed.