July 24, 2001 01:47 AM

(With apologies to Yoz).

I am in Birmingham, in a room on the sixth floor of the City Inn Hotel, and there is manual over-ride switch in the bathroom.

No, really. A shiny silver Grohe shower control, with calibrated temperature and pressure controls. Clearly shamed by Eddie Izzard's safe-cracking routine, the designer has done the unthinkable. The shower actually works.

Turning both dials fully anti-clockwise gives a nice warm 40ºC jet strong enough to make people with pretty decent domestic plumbing feel at home.

And that's when you use the manual over-ride.

Remember the sequence in "Roxanne" where the fire crew are lifted off the ground by the hose? Release the safety catch, set the Grohe on full pressure and you can make the whole stainless-steel showerhead and its metal-clad tube hover at waist-height like a landspeeder. Honestly!

And if you hanker after the showers James Bond endlessly took in the novels (or you're a fan of saunas) depress the over-ride switch on the other dial, steam yourself silly, and then crank back it to the other extreme for the complete 007 experience.

It's very refreshing, when a week hardly goes by without one of us sending an "OFFS" email, to find something that actually works. Properly.

Admittedly, the whole hotel's only five months old, which may explain the comfortable double bed, smart sofa, writing desk with power socket, modem port and (at no extra cost) ISDN. The only possible disappointment would be for bathtub fans - there are none in any of the 300 rooms. But there's a bowl with a pair of those black goggle-eyed fish on the front of the reception desk, and some extremely friendly people behind it.

Despite my arrival past midnight on Sunday, the desk staff were more than happy to rummage through lost property and bring a power lead for my razor up to my room.

Things like that make a twelve-hour journey (Virgin express from Watford caught with seconds to spare, preceded by drive back from a weekend in Kent, stopping via the Maiden Lane office to load the boot with acquisitions due home since February, unloading at home and back-tracking to Watford Junction) quite bearable.

Oh, and a there's a fully-equipped gymnasium. Well, I assume it's fully-equipped. I haven't been in a gym since college, but there are more machines here than there were there. I used a treadmill for the first time, running a kilometre while trying to decide whether you're supposed to let go of the handrests (anyone?), and cycling through 5km of University Challenge (which makes a change to University of London).

In all, though I've never had the Four Seasons experience, I reckon this hotel is easily on a par with the Sheraton Manhattan.

Which is not bad, given it's a £51/night business hotel.

Speaking of business, that's why I'm here, and as I have to be at my client's office before nine tomorrow, I'd better send this, and hit the sack.

But first, a quick shower :-)