knows how to treat his staff royally.

Mr. Letterman, host of NBC's Late Night with David Letterman, treated an employee to a round-trip passage on the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2 , which spent Friday at Dockyard.

Of course there was a trick to the gift -- employee Mr. Chris Brown was told, as the show was taped before an audience, he had 15 minutes to reach the New York terminal in order to qualify for the trip.

"David is always playing around with the NBC pagers,'' National Broadcasting Company (NBC) spokesperson Ms Rosemary Keenan said. "He called Chris in the studio and handed him the ticket and $600 cash. He said he had 15 minutes to reach the boat which was about 10 minutes away.'' Ms Keenan said Mr. Brown, in his early 20s, first thought the ticket was a joke but then grabbed at the chance for a free cruise and raced across town to the terminal.

"He just walked on the boat,'' she said. "David gave him money for clothes and took care of all the expenses. He's always doing fun things but they're usually not this extravagant.'' The spokesperson added that Mr. Brown was one of several college graduates employed by NBC.

"Pagers are employees who are fresh out of college and who work at the studio to gain valuable learning experience,'' she said.

Mr. Brown and some 1,399 other passengers on board the QE2 , berthed at Dockyard at 8 a.m. on Friday and left for New York at 5 p.m.

Late Night with David Letterman is shown week nights on cable channel 6 at 1.30 a.m.