How I began as a butler by Robert Watson

Aged fifteen I started my career as a commis waiter in a 5-star hotel in Bournemouth, the hotel was very old school, gueridon and silver service, a huge menu of over 80 dishes all written in French which looking back was a problem for the guests since 99% were English of whom perhaps maybe 1% spoke French there was also menu-de-jour which changed daily also written in French.

I started as a commis waiter and worked my way up to become a relief waiter but could see there was no way I was going to get my own station since none of the waiters had any intention of leaving.

I left and became a station waiter in another 5-star hotel in Bournemouth, six days a week breakfast lunch and dinner

At 18 I left Bournemouth for London over the next 15 years worked in many different London hotels in a variety of positions, room-service waiter, restaurant manager, receptionist, night manager, night auditor, F. & B. manager to name just a few.

I was F. & B. manager in a small boutique hotel in central London, the owner sold the hotel and asked me to become his butler since he knew that I had a wide range of experience. This is where I started my Butler experience

In 1990 I accepted a position as a butler at the Lanesborough, I thought that this was something I had not done before and was interested to see how it would work

After a couple of years, I became manager of the butler department I really enjoyed working with the team of butlers since most of them had started working at the Lanesborough on the same day I did and as a team we created our own systems, standards and procedures since no one in the hotel had any hotel butler experience there was no one who could tell us what a hotel butler did we had to work it out for ourselves

 Although I thoroughly enjoyed the experience after 5 years as Butler Manager I became a little bit bored, I felt that I was not pushing myself or learning new things

That is when the light on in my head, I thought ‘you know all this stuff now is the time to pass it on to others’ so I took the bold step of leaving and starting my own butler training company.

The first training project I did was at the Bellagio in Las Vegas in 1998 since then I have trained in many places around the world and probably close to a thousand butlers.

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