UR TV CAST

The only language needed at this particular point of Granada’s state-of-the-art service station outside Reading, was: “Sausage? Bacon? Egg? Beans? Tomato? Fried bread? Chips?” “Look, I’m not interested in whether it’s a nice day out there or whether the weather is hot,” one disgruntled customer told the food server. “We get company executives here and we get truck-drivers here,” Mr James explained. “We have to make sure that our staff choose the right words.”It was midday I went in and joined the queue for breakfast. Each employee has to complete four days of customer training before being allowed “on stage”. We want our customers to leave with a pleasant memory of our loos.”The next most popular place is the restaurant.

“Until recently service stations assumed that the restaurant was the place were most people headed Consequently they made an effort to make it look nice But we’ve identified lavatories as an area everyone visits We’ve done them up nicely. Commuters can expect Italian-style waitress- service cafs, more play areas for children, betting shops, shopping malls and “food halls”. Business people and children are the new catchment group to be pulled in on the nets.Meanwhile, between junctions 11 and 12, four male masseurs were waiting in the entrance hall to soothe away those angry knots in the neck and shoulders. Then there was a choice of venue: the loos, the telephones, the mother and baby room, a shop, an amusement arcade, a Burger King and a restaurant.”All our customers go straight to the loos when they come in,” explained Dominic James, 30, general manager. Since the de-regulation of service stations three years ago, companies have had to vie with each other for planning applications to build new sites.

There have been 50 official applications since deregulation in England. Just eight have been approved – one at a site near Stafford on the M6, sold recently to Mobil for a rumoured £10m. Then why not have a meal while listening to the “soothing sounds” of Reading Symphony Orchestra, bathed in sun from the huge, dome-shaped sky-light above the central eating area?Competition accounts for the change of thinking. The service stations of the Nineties take a holistic approach: at Granada’s new venture, travellers can enjoy a free massage, learn stress-relieving and energising exercises. Toilets that one can smell from the moment a foot lands inside the building. Disinfectant, smelling of hospital, is sloshed all over the floors.But this is the “old school” of service stations.

Today’s buzz words are “the environment”, “service quality” and “product quality”. It looked almost pastoral.
Granada’s state-of-the-art service station between junctions 11 and 12 of the M4, which opened on Good Friday, is a far cry from the motorway “rest areas” of past years.The M1’s Watford Gap, dating back to the early 1960s, still sums up “pre-revolutionary” British service stations – foil ashtrays, stewed tea, lino, and food on the floor. At Heathrow, there are condoms and stockings tossed on to the kerb. But this, it seemed, was a service station with a difference The place was huge, with an eerie space-station feel Advertising balloons bobbed up and down in the breeze There was a sense of space and light, a coolness in the air. Surrounding it were sweet-smelling acres of freshly ploughed earth Parents and babies were sitting on patches of lawn The sun was out. For 18 miles we’d crawled along, waiting for someone, anyone, to decide Enough is Enough, do a U-turn and shoot off down the inside lane But no one did. So we just sidled along quietly – simmering tempers in simmering heat Windows wound down Arms resting in the sun

At last the service station appeared.