A glass of red wine, a roaring fire going (in the fireplace, not the grill pan), and a programme about a luxury hotel on TV. This is an excellent evening. We saw footage of the penthouse suite that goes for around £6,000 a night, we heard from guests and staff about how one can justify such expense in these straitened times (my favourite – the fashion designer who declaimed, ‘you know….there will always be….luxury’, as if this constituted an adequate answer), we went to New York to interview top level travel agents who would describe the aforementioned penthouse as a ‘mid-range’ room to their clients.

And all the while I was enjoying a sense of righteous anger driven entirely by envy (isn’t that the best kind?) rise within me with every top up of red wine. And then the Melchors appeared. An elderly couple from California who had been married for decades, made a fortune in IT, and seemed to enjoy life immensely in their home that looked like a very expensive cave with a Louis XV dining table in it (Americans, eh? Etc etc).

It was revealed that the Melchors had been making regular trips to London for over 40 years, and always stayed at Claridge’s. The staff had a special briefing ahead of their arrival, where the very particular type of bedding they required was discussed, along with the arrangement of the furniture (‘Mr Melchor has the wing chair here, with a little table with biscuits on a plate to the side’) and the fact that they ‘love to be introduced’ to new staff.

This year, they were spending Christmas at Claridge’s – 16 nights in the £5,000 Royal Suite. We can all do the maths on this, and it equals ‘obscene’, or ‘mid-range’, depending on your perspective, and it’s certainly a tough watch to have this type of wealth laid out for display. It was revealed during the show that over the course of their stay, the Melchors only left the hotel twice, which is either an indication of how very good Claridge’s is, or how awful the London transport system has become. Either way, they had a great time, with readily available biscuits and the correct duvets and everything else that goes with a stay at such a top class hotel.

Meanwhile, in my living room, I glared at the Melchors. At various points in the show I became anxious, tearful, furious, hypnotised, despairing, slightly aroused, hysterical and completely exhilarated, or a combination of all of the above. But I didn’t expect to be moved. Then, at the end of the programme, a short message told us that Mrs Melchor had actually passed away in February this year, just after the making of the show had finished, and I found myself wondering how Mr Melchor was doing.

In fact, I sort of fell a little in love with the Melchors, and Mrs Norma Melchor in particular. I was prepared to hate them (by which I mean, be madly jealous of them), but in fact they were rather inspiring. They were in clearly still very in love, they were romantic, they had a fabulous time together, and they enjoyed their money.

A few moments research told me that Norma Melchor had started her career as a nurse, and ended up founding the El Camino Hospital Foundation, a campaign to help raise money for the eponymous health facility in California that is still going strong today.

After she married her husband, and money was made (the details were a little hazy), she donated to and supported the hospital for the rest of her life. I suddenly found I was incredibly glad she had spent her final Christmas in Claridge’s, spending an obscene amount of her own money and not going out if she damn well didn’t feel like it.

This was a woman who helped when she should, and enjoyed herself when she could. The same probably can’t be said of all the guests at Claridge’s, but the Melchors left me feeling very festive.