the insider tells all

Most companies have a cabaret as part of their training course. The idea is to give everyone the chance to express themselves - and to get an insight into their personality. It's just that sometimes they end up getting more than they bargained for:

One infamous night involved a treasure hunt where you had to be the first to hand over a particular item to the quizmaster. When the call went out for a condom, some competitors ran off to washbags and bathrooms. Cool as you like however our unnamed heroine calmly opened her wallet and handed one over.

Never has a woman become so instantly recognisable to so many men!!!

It's well known that resort staff sometimes have their eye out for a scam. The Insider recently learned of an unusual, if inventive, one.

Two sharp chalet boys had sussed out that they could claim for more petrol each shopping day than they needed. The beauty was, rather than use it up on trips to other resorts, they stowed it all away until the end of the season.

Each week they would fill empty wine casks, meticulously dried out with hairdryers, so that by April, they'd siphoned away enough for the whole trip back to the UK. So they looked like a bunch of alki's with all the casks on the roof, and there was a slight fire risk, but hey, get that initiative!

If you're a resort rep, at some point during the season, one of your guests will get injured. Usually they deal with it, sometimes they don't. Sally recently told The Insider about a nightmare guest from Courchevel. I'll hand you over to Sally, who has her own inimitable Lancashire style!

'She was fooking mad. Get this right, she wanted a wheelchair to push him round resort in, like that'll be any fooking use in a snowdrift. So I looked into it and it wasn't possible - there aren't any fooking wheelchairs in the whole of the Three Valleys. So, get this right, she then asked for a toboggan to pull him around in, like a fooking husky!

So I went along to the hire shop - they already thought I was a bit of a loon in there...thank God they didn't ask me what it was for. Anyway, she went right off the idea when she found out the cost and I told her I didn't think the insurance would pay for it. So, then she gets this new inspiration - what about a chair? - she says to me. She wanted a fooking plastic chair to carry around for him and put down whenever he got tired and needed a rest. And I used to think I was fooking crazy...'

I picked this one up at the airport last winter. It was a typical gruelling transfer day. Flights were late, luggage had been lost, guests were tetchy and Chris, one my mates working in Alpe d'Huez, was waiting to get back home.

The only problem was one of his guests, a man of the cloth, who was refusing to get on the coach. I have to admit, it did look a bit ropey, like it would usually be on the school run - but it had managed the famous hairpins a few times already that season.

Chris was pretty patient, trying to persuade him to get on, but the dog-collared Billy was having none of it. So finally, he made one last attempt to appeal to his Christian nature: "Sir, I know it may not be the best bus in the world, but if Jesus could travel on a donkey, do you think you could just try this?"

The reply, I understand, was not suitable for publication here!