Why UK motorway services are nothing like the rest of the world
Naming and shaming Britain’s Worst Service Station would be TV gold, says Porter
Coming next on Channel 5, Britain’s Best Service Station, with JB out of JLS. Not a joke from an Alan Partridge sitcom but, I swear on the holy BAFTA, an actual show broadcast earlier this year. Spoiler alert: the winner was Gloucester Services on the M5. The sausage rolls aren’t cheap and they don’t seem to sell normal crisps, but I have to agree, it’s otherwise pretty good.
With that important issue sorted out, it occurred to me that other former pop stars might be looking for work and have some strong feelings about the food and loos available to long-distance drivers, so here’s what I propose: Britain’s Worst Service Station, with Lee from Steps. Or maybe Tina out of S Club.
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The question is, how to assess such things? British service stations are weird places, quite unlike anything found on major roads in other nations. In France and Italy they have petrol stations with shops in them but they’re not of the scale of a typical British service area. Also, the sandwiches often seem to be made by someone’s mum, and I mean that in a good way. In the US, they have large gas stations where you can buy other things, including, weirdly, many different kinds of beer, but the sprawling one-stop facility of the kind operated by Welcome Break or Moto doesn’t feature much. More likely, you pull off the freeway into a small village of fast food outlets and decide what flavour you would like for today’s saturated fat and corn syrup.
UK-style service areas are a uniquely British thing and that means we, or at least Faye from Steps if she agrees to front it, must judge our most terrible ones with some uniquely British criteria. Let’s start with location. Specifically, is it right next to the motorway, or do you access it by leaving at a junction for a nearby town and then driving around at least two roundabouts in a state of confusion, desperately swapping lanes while chasing where it says SERV on the road? If the services have taken you such distance that the motorway you were on isn’t audible, or indeed visible without a drone, that’s a strong contender for Britain’s Worst Service Station, as Abz from Five will explain. But don’t worry, even services that seem to be bang-slap next to the motorway can claw back some points by having a bladder-taunting slip-road that feels about six miles long.
And speaking of long journeys, any serious contender for the title must show total dedication to putting the loos far away from everything except the neighbouring county. The judges will be particularly impressed if the main concours is enormously wide and permits the easy procession of hundreds of people, while the entrance to the loo is of a width and angle immediately familiar to potholing enthusiasts. Of course, the resulting log-jam of awkward shuffling and wet-handed emergency stops won’t deter our experts (including Sabrina from Mis‑Teeq and Ben from A1) from checking out the lavatories themselves to make sure they are as badly designed as possible.
As a bare minimum, any serious contender will have made the gents needlessly complicated by creating an ingenious hall-of-mirrors effect so that it’s not immediately obvious if there are urinals, never mind where they might be. For real attention to detail, finding the one working soap dispenser should turn into a germ-handed game of Whac‑A‑Mole, and full marks if the thoroughfares are so narrow that it’s effortless to commit the spine-chilling faux pas of nudging a urinating stranger. The judges will also be interested to see how the designers of the men’s facilities have managed to make it look like customers have had a little accident. Needlessly aggressive taps that direct a tiny tsunami at your trousers are a classic, but a truly modern services will have installed a long bank of those Dyson hand-dryers that look like dismembered mopeds and expertly blast the water from your hands straight onto your strides. Don’t worry, host Gareth Gates still gives strong marks to old-school services with only one functioning dryer that operates with the ferocity of being breathed on by a cat.
Rest assured, our highly experienced review panel, led by presenter Suzanne from Hear’Say, will be asking all the questions that matter. Is the branch of WH Smith incredibly cramped and laid out like a hedge maze? Is it very hard to reach the fast food ordering touchscreen because there are 200 people milling about waiting 47 minutes for a burger? Does the lavatory in the nearby fuel station have the look and smell of a recently exploded sewage works? Is the slip-road out of the whole place so badly surfaced that there’s a delightful challenge in gaining speed without losing major suspension parts?
As for the winner, it’s not for me to say. The competition is strong and, once Channel 5 comes to its senses and commissions this thing, all will be revealed by your host, Craig David.
This story was first featured in evo issue 349.
