With fees of $130,000 per year, Le Rosey, on the edge of Lake Geneva is the most expensive school in the world.

A roll call of Le Rosey’s illustrious alumni reads like a guest list for the most exclusive ambassadorial reception ever held. The kind where anyone whose name isn’t on the list is not merely turned away, but escorted from the premises by close protection officers who accessorise their bespoke suits with an earpiece and semi-automatic weapon.

They’re all there: leading lights from the entertainment industry, finance, shipping, fashion, society, politics – and royalty galore.

So many blue-bloods, in fact, that Institut Le Rosey, to give the Swiss boarding school its full name, is known as the ‘school of kings’. King Juan Carlos of Spain, King Fuad II of Egypt and King Albert II of Belgium were all students.

As were Prince Rainier of Monaco, the Duke of Kent, the Shah of Iran, the Aga Khan and Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece – not to mention her sisters Pia Getty and Alexandra von Furstenberg.

Then there’s French hedgie Arki Busson; a grandson of Winston Churchill; Dodi Al Fayed; Rothschilds and Rockefellers, Radziwills and Metternichs, as well as members of the du Pont and Niarchos clans. John Lennon’s son Sean is an ancien Roséen, as are offspring of Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor and – somewhat surprisingly – two members of indie rock band the Strokes.

The cost of educating one’s son or daughter at Le Rosey is around $130,000 per year. That makes its fees the most expensive in the world; two and a half times those of Eton, which has provided Britain with 20 of its prime ministers.

Then again, Le Rosey claims to be the only school in the world with two campuses. One is at Le Rolle on the edge of Lake Geneva and boasts two swimming pools, tennis courts, a school yacht, shooting range, an equestrian centre, and a recently completed £40 million concert hall, which resembles a spacecraft and has hosted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

But each year, for the winter term, the entire school decamps to Gstaad. Here, students take a large chunk of each afternoon off to ski, with some hurtling through gates as they hone their racing skills.

The facilities at Le Rosey are impressive, as it has the ratio of 150 teachers to 450 pupils, and they take very seriously verbal and emotional abuse’. The fees were reassuringly expensive, too.

What you are paying is like $500 per night,. It’s like staying at a Four Seasons hotel.