Good pay, travel and a chance to meet the rich and famous are among the rewards awaiting a modern butler, writes Sue Milne.

The Weekend Australian – November 20-21 2004

“Celebrity couple requires butler. Duties include managing residences in New York, Paris and the Bahamas, accompanying family to exotic destinations, chauffeuring luxury cars, hosting parties for glitterati. Must be prepared to clean toilets.”

No, a butler’s lot is not always a glamorous one but there is still much to be said for a career in ‘service’, according to Cameron Griffiths, 27, a modern-day Jeeves who was head butler at the British High Commission in Canberra before landing a plum job as traveling butler and valet to Governor-General Michael Jeffery.

‘As valet-butler to the Governor-General I traveled all over Australia. I had to be very organized in that role – there were up to 30 bags to take care of and there was constant packing and unpacking. As a butler you have to be discreet – you’re living in your employer’s private space and see every aspect of their life’.

Griffiths, who recently returned to Sydney after nearly five years in Canberra and who is now working as a concierge at the Park Hyatt hotel, has never viewed life in the service as demeaning. ‘Most of us have a boss that we defer to and there are many perks to being a butler,’ he says, listing travel, meeting the rich and famous and monetary rewards. ‘It pays very well. The salary package can be quite generous and then most living expenses are usually taken care of – accommodation, phone bill, a car. The people who have butlers are amongst the richest in the world.’

According to Pamela Spruce, chief executive of Australian Butler Services, far from being quaint relics of the aristocratic England a century ago the thoroughly modern new breed of butlers – especially Australian butlers – is increasingly in demand.

‘Even the very richest families can no longer afford the extensive grace and favour staff they might once have had, so they employ a butler to organize the whole show. The butler becomes a sort of estate manager, with three or four residences around the world to run – a city apartment, a country house and a beach house, perhaps – and certainly more than one car,’ she says.

Some of those employing butlers don’t even qualify as rich.

Says Spruce: ‘When you look at the cost of outsourcing domestic chores – pool cleaning, dog walking, maintaining vehicles, cooking, cleaning – the butler can do all this and so it adds up to quite a saving. A good house manager can save his employer his salary in the first year of employment.’

Australian Butler Services – based in Canberra but with clients world-wide – grew out of Spruce’s domestic placement business for nannies and au pairs that she set up 10 years ago. She soon realized there was demand for more professional residential services so she set up Australian Butler Services, a training, recruitment and placement service.

Canberra is the obvious place to be, close to embassies, government departments and the governor-general’s residence, a top post for an ambitious butler.

Her $4,000 training runs over four weeks and most selected have experience in hospitality. ‘They emerge from the course with a new level of expertise and skills which equip them for duties at the highest level. One of the main areas we concentrate on is the psychology of working in private service – people can be quite different out of a work situation and in their own home,’ says Spruce.

Male butlers far outnumber women, but Spruce would like to see more females enter the profession. There are good rewards – the starting salary in Australia is around $50,000, rising to about $80,000 and butlers can earn much more overseas. In the US a good butler is worth his – or her – weight in gold.

‘We provide resort butlers – on Hayman Island, for example – and then there are private mega-yachts and cruise ships. Private service can be an exciting career,’ says Spruce.’