Faced with the prospect of becoming non-petting zoos for aggrieved travellers with as much self-awareness as a gregarious Covid particle surfing the crest of a spit-flecked “BUT I’M EXEMPT!” screech, airport hotels are scouring Britain’s desolate shop doorways, needle-strewn alleyways, and House of Lords hibernation cupboards, to fill their rooms with a better class of undesirable.
“It’s not fear of the virus, just a perfectly rational aversion to entitled, resentful tossers,” confirmed Best Western Gatwick manager Alan Larson, hastily shepherding in a couple of bag ladies and a man wearing a tricorn hat topped with a magnificently cantankerous live chicken. “Give me a hotel overflowing with syphilitic drug-addled vagrants any day over Charlotte and Peter ‘you can’t expect us to miss the Montserrat guava carnival’ Vanderwelt, or middle-ranking financiers covering up their humiliation at flying commercial by screaming for organic polenta and Swedish masseurs 24/7.
“We’ve sent Janine from reception down to Dover with strict instructions to cram a bunch of traumatised, non-verbal immigrants into the hotel shuttle minibus, ensuring we’re full before the next tube of arrogant arsewipes hits the tarmac.”
As well as bed and board, it's been revealed the first unlucky travellers to emerge from mandatory quarantine in a stagnant Travelodge outside Luton airport and human centipede corral may also be forced to spend thousands on trauma counselling and reintegration into British society.
“Where are we?” asked a disorientated Terry Raines, recently returned from Saga’s ill-advised frog-licking tour of Eritrea. “The hunger, the lack of sanitation, the desperation, and we could only get UK Gold; how long were we locked in that flock-wallpapered hellhole- two years? Three?”
On being assured it had only been 10 days, Mr Raines burst into tears. “You mean.. it’s still Boris?” he whimpered, before being shepherded away to the Priti Patel welcome zone and complimentary water-boardarium, a broken man.
