Oh dear yes, with a panicking and large autistic man who stopped the lift by pressing the buttons while we were heading down for breakfast. It was a small and very hot lift and he was a very large man and he flapped his arms and hands. 'I have been stuck in a lift between floors before and we all had to bellow. Are we stuck between floors?' he asked us.
I pressed the alarm.
After five minutes we heard a voice through the doors : 'Be with you in minute!'
The man tried to press the buttons again and we asked him not to, and he tried to pull the doors open and we asked him not to do that too. 'I have to press the buttons for all the floors', he told us. We asked him not to.
It was getting hotter and hotter.
After ten minutes, he said 'I don't think there's anybody there. I have to press the buttons!'. At that moment, the lift began to move very slowly- we couldn't tell whether it was going up or down but we eventually arrived at the ground floor. As the doors opened we shot out into the fresh air. He wouldn't come out and headed off back in the lift to wherever he was going.
The hotel staff were apologetic. 'It often gets stuck at the second floor, and also if you press more than one button it stops', they explained helpfully.
Is it not illegal to run a huge hotel with a lift that jams? What would have happened if a vulnerable person had been trapped? What if there had been a fire in the hotel? We would have baked!
It didn't help that I'm halfway through a Peter James crime novel on which a woman is trapped in a lift for 24 hours!
Ironically, after the gig last night, a Cockney audience member who was just heading home on his bicycle had a joke for Martin- the one about the kangaroo and the Geordie stuck in the lift (cannae geroot). Ho hum.
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