In A Touch of Class, Lord Melbury is revealed to be what?

In A Touch of Class, Lord Melbury is revealed to be a confidence trickster. Basil believes the aristocratic guest is an important nobleman and gives him special treatment, but Polly realises that Melbury is an impostor planning to exploit the hotel.

The episode establishes one of Basil's defining weaknesses: his desperate desire to impress members of the upper class. He neglects ordinary guests and becomes unusually deferential to Melbury, while Sybil is less impressed by the visitor. Basil's snobbery makes him easy to manipulate.

Lord Melbury is not a hotel inspector, a retired colonel or a French dealer. Those descriptions point toward other guest types or storylines in the series. Mrs Peignoir in The Hotel Inspectors is a wealthy French antiques dealer, while Major Gowen is the elderly military figure who appears in several episodes.

A Touch of Class was the first episode broadcast, premiering on BBC Two on 19 September 1975. It introduces the show's central hotel setting and its main comic conflict: Basil's attempts to achieve status repeatedly make the business and his marriage more chaotic.