Eric Edelstein

Protea Hotel’s Arthur Gillis celebrated his 50th birthday last night by taking over the whole of his Extreme Hotel, continuing with a Pajama party for a few hundred guests this morning.

After a few hours sleep, I wandered downstairs in my eSquared Robe and you have to picture the scene. People everywhere in Pajama’s eating breakfast.

So I’m sitting with family and cousins eating breakfast, when at the table next to us, a guy with a very strange hairstyle comes to sit - totally shaved off with a big chunk of hair as a fringe - and his girlfriend.

They can’t speak english at all - apparently he is from Chile and she is from some European country. They had checked into the hotel in the morning, and were hungry, so the hotel management had invited them to eat at the breakfast buffet with Arthur’s party guests.

They obviously thought it was highly strange (which it was!!!) seeing everyone eating breakfast in Pajama’s, and were taking lots of pictures and making quite a noise. And some of the guests were fascinated with the couple, asking them where they were from etc.

I thought it was strange that they took HUGE helpings of food - the guy had taken a cereal bowl overflowing with yoghurt.

Anyway, as they couldn’t speak english, everything was a little bit of an effort - they wanted orange juice, the couple next to them wanted them to move up a few seats as other people were sitting there, and a couple of other small issues.

And then out of nowhere, the waiter started arguing with them…

And suddenly the arguing turned into SHOUTING, and the waiter HIT the Chilean guy - fist into his face!!

My first instinct was the party would be ruined, so I jumped onto the table, RAN down the length of THE TABLE, and landed in front of the waiter and tried to calm him down.

Everyone in the room was in SHOCK - not knowing how to react - imagine a guest being punched by the waiter. It could have been a scene straight out of PUNKED….

and it WAS!!!!!!

About 10 seconds after the fight (might have been more or less - difficult to know how long a situation like that actually takes), the 2 guests AND the waiter suddenly burst into HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

THEY WERE ACTORS - THE ENTIRE SITUATION HAD BEEN STAGED!!!!

Absolutely brilliant!!!!

I’ve already diarised to take off the entire week for Arthurs 60th, as there’s no way I’m missing the next party.

Eric & the poor Sushi Girl who had to balance on her elbows for over an hour.