With apologies to Monty Python, after our first year of GGL (both Mrs firstlight and I) I figured it would be interesting to those of you trying to get GGL to list the benefits we've received and what was useful and what was not, hopefully we can bust a few myths.

The good points:

Jokers / space releases:
Really helpful in allowing you to sleep 355 days before the flight you want to take. No midnight adventures. We've used a joker /avios for our Greece summer holiday (5 of us) - while there might have been avios availability for some flights there was no availability on the convenient times and dates we wanted to travel in high season. First class avios tickets on popular redemption destinations like the Maldives or Singapore have been easy. Being GGL enables you to redeem large quantities of avios - we've got through about a million avios in the last year on flights; we would not have been able to do this otherwise.

Guest List priority telephone line
It's a myth that you always get answered on the first ring, we've waited up to 15 minutes at busy times but that's because the agents are prepared to spend a lot of time with every customer to fulfil their needs. The agents are very helpful and also will talk to the BA holidays team for you which has been a godsend when there has been disruption causing BAH to be inaccessible.

Partner cards
Giving a silver card to people who are not frequent travellers has proven a joy for us. For one recipient it enabled them and their partner to select seats and enjoy the lounges at T3 LHR, Finland, Japan and Australia for a holiday. They were incredibly grateful; as frequent flyers we sometimes forget that for many others lounges (including T3 lounge hopping), free seat selection and more avios is really worth having - not just on BA but on other oneworld airlines.

Welcome and upgrades
GGL does not automatically result in your path to the plane being strewn with rose petals, nor does it automatically result in profuse welcomes and upgrades for every flight. We have found upgrades (both at the gate and onboard) and offers of drinks are more frequent in short haul than when we were gold, but for long haul there is very little difference as we normally travel in J or F and golds are generally welcomed there anyway.

Service recovery
If you have a problem on a flight and put in a complaint the response has been pretty immediate in our experience, most likely within 24 hours - which is a lot faster than most seem to get.

Concorde room
The food has generally been better than Galleries First although recently maybe not quite so great, and the drinks selection is certainly better, but the thing that makes the CCR good for us are the friendly staff who over the last year have come to know us, as we go into the CCR every chance we get. Being able to have a full meal before flight even for avios funded ET trips has been great for us and the friends, relatives and work colleagues we've been able to take in there.

Hilton Diamond membership
The $15 food and beverage credit has proven useful and we were upgraded to a suite during one trip. Definitely useful if you stay anytime at a Hilton property.

The not so good points:

Blatant sexism at the Concorde room entry
Many times the BA staff member at the entry has assumed that Mrs Firstlight is my guest rather than being entitled to enter in her own right. I'm not a rampant feminist but it really is unacceptable that the agents behave in this fashion in today's world.

Special Services
You might get the impression that GGL people get whisked from Concorde room to the gate by limousine and are escorted on short connections by a BA employee specially allocated to clear a path for you through the airport. This does not happen (at least for us) and we found out there are several levels of GGL - we are at the lowest level so special services doesn't exist for us.

Priority email line
There's no real point having a priority email line if you have to provide so much personal information over an unsecure connection. BA need to improve this so you can send a secure email to them like many other companies do.

Special treatment on partner airlines
There's no difference we have found being GGL on partner airlines; you are a bog standard oneworld emerald with treatment as such (for example being group 2 on American Airlines long haul flights)

So is it worth going for? Our opinion is yes, I've requalified for another year starting today, initially with the reduced TP level of 2250 but subsequently 'properly' with more than 3100 TPs. If all things go right in my travels over the next 12 months - and now BAHolidays extended the double tier points offer, maybe I'll get another year at GGL.