Box and Cox: It’s nice to know that divorce doesn’t mean that an estranged couple have to divvy up the good hotels between them. No sooner had Tom Cruise checked out of the Cipriani in Venice to go to Croatia than his ex-wife Nicole Kidman (right) swept into the lobby with her luggage for a few nights to publicise her controversial film Birth.
Kirker Holidays (0870 1123333, www.kirkerholidays.com) charges £622 for three nights’ B&B at the Hotel Cipriani, including flights with British Airways and water-taxi transfers.
Home from home: He has a perfectly nice multimillion-pound mansion in Los Angeles, with a perfectly nice pool, but in recent weeks Robbie Williams has taken to hanging out at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Who can fathom the ways of toned and tattooed multimillionaire singers? Perhaps he likes the poolside cabanas, each with phone and fax machine, which make it just like home. Or maybe he just wants to relive the hotel’s Rat Pack heyday, when Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr lived it up in the Polo Lounge; or perhaps he has to make sure that he’s not late for tea with fellow regular Ozzy Osbourne. Who can tell? A room at the Beverly Hills Hotel costs £228 with Leading Hotels of the World (00 800 1010 1111, www.lhw.com).
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Most enviable commute: Not only is Scarlett Johansson staying at the Covent Garden Hotel while filming Woody Allen’s latest movie, but the director has decided to use the hotel’s lobby and restaurant as locations. In a scene reminiscent of The Player, two other guests, Tim Robbins (left, in town to oversee the opening of his play Embedded at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith) and Dennis Hopper had to pick their way through the cables and lighting equipment to greet Allen, while Meryl Streep checked in later that night.
The Covent Garden Hotel (020-7806 1000, www.firmdale.com) has double rooms from £205 a night.
Monaco spa: Robert de Niro and Bono have been chilling out at the newly redesigned Hotel Métropole in Monte Carlo.
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A belle époque setting for the Monaco social scene since 1886, its 21st-century attractions include a spa and adjacent bar — the perfect place to retox after a detox.
Prices at the Hotel Métropole (00 33 7 93 15 15 15, www.metropole.com) start at £230, room only.
Starry blight: An entry in our occasional series on celebrities you might not want to follow. The Perrier-Jouët suite of Blanch House in Brighton recently played host to loved-up Stu and Michelle, of Big Brother 5. The tales that emerged — swilling champagne in the bath, prolonged romps on the velvet- covered bed (all detailed at length in Heat magazine) — might make some people want to set up an exclusion zone around what could otherwise be described as a perfectly nice hotel.
A night in the Perrier-Jouët suite at Blanch House (01273 603504, www.blanchhouse.co.uk) costs £220, including breakfast.