About 350 to 400 butlers are trained each year in Britain, estimates Gary Williams, former head butler at the Ritz and now principal of the British Butler Institute. Of these, only about half stay in the UK, he says. The rest go overseas, particularly to increasingly middle-class China and to the oil-rich countries of the Gulf.

Butlering in Bahrain?

Roughly 30% of the people hiring British butlers are in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, says Swedish-born Sara Vestin Rahmani, who runs the British Butler Academy. Like the British Butler Institute, the Academy is London-based but offers courses worldwide.

Employers are a mixture of royals, sheikhs and oil proprietors, with an average of at least three houses – and 15 staff per home, Rahmani says.