Harry Mount

You can get the staff

Technology lets us summon home help at the tap of a screen

issue 04 May 2019

 Montego Bay, Jamaica

When the Kennedy clan were children, JFK and his siblings would tear off their clothes before leaping from the pier at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts — safe in the knowledge their servants would pick up their discarded clothes.

That used to strike me as the ultimate in entitlement before I ended up here in a hotel in Jamaica. I’m being waited on hand and foot in a way that wouldn’t have disgraced the Kennedys — or a 19th–century duke. Someone’s just rung to ask when would be a good time to fill my fridge with beer. A driver is waiting to take me on a tour of Montego Bay. When a friend, also staying here, forgot her diary, her butler brought it from her room to our breakfast table. I thought this level of service was confined to holiday resorts and then I suddenly realised that I, like much of the British population, am now dependent on a new boom in servants.

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