When I turned on the lights in my “Very Small Room” at easyHotel, the latest offering from the “serial entrepreneur” Stelios Haji-Ioannou, they blew up. Sparks flashed alarmingly from the switch, I jumped back and the overhead lights fizzled out.

I went back to the very small reception to explain what had happened. The assistant, who was wearing a grey shirt left loose over his trousers and an orange (easyGroup colour) tie, went to have a look. “Oh, I am very sorry sir — this is most unusual,” he said, before leading me to another room, with “Tiny Room” written on the door, on the third floor.

It was even smaller: a double mattress, a pod-like bathroom and a couple of square metres of floor space, a hook to hang my clothes on (no wardrobe), a cereal packet-sized flat-screen television (£5 extra for a remote control), and not much else. I was staying in one of the cheapest hotels in London — the first of Stelios’s easyHotels, in South Kensington — and had been downgraded.

It was rather depressing. I looked at my room (which didn’t have a window — only three of the 34 rooms do) and thought to myself: I really don’t want to spend much time in here, it looks like a (bright orange) prison cell and feels as though it might run out of air in the night.

But then again, it was exceedingly cheap — I’d paid £35 over the internet (the lead-in price is £20) — and was spotlessly clean. And Gloucester Road and Earls Court Underground stations were only a five-minute walk away.

Even so, it’s not a place you want to hang about in. I dumped my bag and headed out in search of a pub. As I passed the reception, a nearby resident who said he was a lawyer was having an argument with the manager. “I mean, do you have planning permission?” he asked, sounding desperate. “This orange sign is simply terrible: the orange is . . .” he paused, looking fraught, to find the right word, “bilious.”

“I’m so sorry you think so sir,” the manager replied patiently.

My room had more orange than most; there was orange paint spilt on the bedroom floor. And the shower was so small I could hardly move without bashing my arms on the tiny washbasin. Added to which, in the night, I was woken by the sound of traffic on Cromwell Road. It’s not the Ritz . . . but what else can you expect for this price?

TOM CHESSHYRE

Bottom line: Tom Chesshyre paid £35 for a double.

Need to know: easyHotel (www.easyhotel.com), 14 Lexham Gardens, London W8.

Access all areas: Yes, there are wheelchair-friendly rooms.

Room: 3 out of 10.

Food: No.

Service: 7 out of 10.

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