Hotels from Hell (ITV1) and House Trapped: When Houses Go Wrong (Channel 4): The best hotels are a home away from home but the ones in this show were quite simply hell on earth.

Dirty sheets, broken fixtures and infestations of bed bugs were just some of the delights revealed in the latest in the never-ending series of 'from Hell' programmes.

All the guests had booked their rooms in good faith and came away wishing they had stayed at home.

Three different parties had similar problems at the Dorchester Seafront Hotel in Blackpool.

Dawn Kane and Julie Skelton nicknamed the hotel 'a doss house' - they were accused of making their own ceiling leak and ordered to sleep on one edge of their mattress that hadn't been soaked by the dripping water. Maybe if they hadn't chosen a hotel because "the name sounded nice" they might have had more luck.

Allen and Eileen Cobbe paid more than £600 for a Christmas break at the hotel but left after one night because the room was so dirty, while a hen party of 13 could hardly endure the conditions they faced.

Also in Blackpool was a group of women students who were not only accused of stealing a £3,999 Santa with fibre optic eyes from their hotel but were also landed with a £4,000 phone bill.

Elsewhere in the country, a cliff collapsed into a hotel trapping two guests, one of whom was only saved by his false leg.

All in all, it was enough to make you cancel your summer holiday and stay at home - that was, until you tuned into When Houses Go Wrong.

In the present economic climate, I thought the biggest headache for home buyers was getting a foot on the property ladder but according to this show that's the easy bit.

Once you've signed on the dotted line and moved into your dream home the real problems start.

Anti-social neighbours, dodgy developers and next-door sex shops were just some of the nightmares faced by the poor people featured here.

The show was presented by Simon O'Brien - yes, the good looking one from Brookside and an attractive estate agent called Fiona.

Supposedly, O'Brien has reinvented himself as a property developer which seemed to give him the right to patronise people who made basic errors when buying their homes or had little control over what happened.

This series is dressed up as an advice show - helping us poor viewers avoid the pitfalls that others have suffered but in reality, it is a ghoulish excuse to look at their ghastly mistakes and feel very smug that we don't have the same problems.

* Steve Pratt is on holiday

Published: ??/??/2003