It's cheap, but at what price? Some things are so appallingly awful they almost seem unreal; the superhuman effort that appears to have gone into their construction defies you to accept that they can exist. The McBurney is one of these things.

The whole experience is like something out of a film: the main entrance is permanently locked shut. Access (if you must have it) can only be gained from an alley around the other side of the building which is filled with bin-bags and more skips than can possibly be useful to the building site directly opposite.

Inside, the inhabitants consist of a bizarre combination of malcontents, psychos, men on the phone to their estranged spouses and lost tourists thinking hard about the alluring pictures of well-appointed rooms and cosmopolitan cafeterias displayed on the hotel's web page: pictures apparently of the same hotel from a parallel, and much cleaner, universe.

It's a strangely fascinating place as well, and will provide a rich vein of entertaining stories once some distance is put between yourself and this hovel: the small old man who rides up and down in the elevator so he can explain to his captive audience how, after reading a book called Civilization: a Personal View, he now 'knows too much'; the urine-stained communal showers, where you feel marginally dirtier on leaving than when you entered, and, of course, the heavy plant machinery that starts up a 6am.

However, as you lie in your rickety bunk bed listening to Joe 'crank her up to the next one' outside and worrying vaguely that the smell from the toilets has now permeated everything you own, it will be understandable if you simply want to hurt someone.

Of course, this entry is based on one researcher's visit. If anyone can come up with some more positive opinions of the McBurney you should get in touch...