JANE FRYER: Could I finally get a good night’s kip on the ‘sleep system’ beloved by Beyonce that costs up to £500,000?

So here I am on the world’s comfiest bed — wallowing, luxuriating, stretching, yawning and jumping. Yes, apparently, leaping about in your pjs is actively encouraged as it helps to massage the hand-crafted mattress.

But also marvelling that, finally, I have something in common with Beyonce, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Courteney Cox and, by the sound of it, the entire royal family of Sweden.

Because now I know exactly how they feel as they snuggle down for the night.

I can experience the same enveloping softness Brad feels as his jaunty blue-and-white- check topper cradles his lower back. 

The sense of lying on a cloud that Beyonce must get every night. The gentle support that George Clooney enjoys, after all the effort of looking so handsome all day. 

I can safely say that Miles had one of the best night’s sleep he’s had in years. He was asleep in about 30 seconds and snoring like a train within a minute. Pictured, Jane Fryer and her husband Miles putting the bed through the test

I have something in common with Beyonce, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt (pictured), George Clooney, Courteney Cox and, by the sound of it, the entire royal family of Sweden

The sense of lying on a cloud that Beyonce (pictured) must get every night. The gentle support that George Clooney enjoys, after all the effort of looking so handsome all day

For they all reportedly own a bespoke Hästens bed, just like mine, hand-made in the village of Koping, an hour and half from Stockholm, by a 170-year-old company that takes sleep extremely seriously and very much prefers the term ‘sleep system’ to bed.

Of course, some buyers stick to the relatively austere 2000T model that I’m currently tucked up in — a snip at just over £50,000 and composed of a base, box spring and mattress topper, with three interacting spring systems, 35 hand-crafted layers of natural materials and an awful lot of hand-teased horsetail hair.

Others have opted for the £70,000 Dreamer — one of the company’s best sellers and flying out of the factory.

But a surprising number, including gazillionaire Canadian rapper Drake, have gone all-in and plumped for the three-metre by three-metre Grand Vividus, a hand-stitched, hand-crafted beauty finished with leather, decorated with stingray skin and topped off with gold trimmings which weighs 500kg and costs about £500,000.

What? Yes, you read correctly. Half a million pounds — for a bed. Surely, the world has gone completely barking mad.

Or has it? After all, the uber rich already spend so much money on all sorts of rubbish — gold-plated bathtubs, islands, endless homes and more cars and planes than they could ever use.

But a bed, well, a bed is actually useful. Particularly if it lasts for ever and is so extraordinarily billowy and pillowy that it helps you sleep better, even with all the awfulness whirling around in the world right now.

And, by all accounts, Hästens beds do just that.

Which is why I am here, lolling about on one in the Infinity Suite at The Langham hotel in London, ready to put it to the test.

Because as well as boasting wonderful restaurants, bars, and the most spectacular flower arrangements I’ve ever seen, in this exquisite suite, The Langham also has its very own sleep system, along with an understanding with Hästens so that guests (albeit only those with a spare £5,500 for a one-night stay) can really try before they buy.

But I can also say, hand on heart, that I have never lain awake listening to my husband snoring in a more comfortable bed

Funnily enough, this was one assignment on which my husband, Miles, was extremely keen to join me. And don a pair of Hästen’s soft cotton pyjamas, down glass after glass of the ice-cold Taittinger provided by the lovely Langham, and pretend to be stinking rich, just for a night. He even promised not to snore. If he ever got to sleep, that is, because he’s a terrible sleeper.

Sadly, sleeping is not one of my great life skills, either. Not since having children.

Some weeks, the stars align, it’s all fine and I get a good seven hours before the alarm goes off at 6.40am. But, in between, are great swathes of bad nights. Wide awake between three and four. Fantasising about a good night’s sleep. Mornings with gritty eyes and grey skin.

Which is a shame because, according to Hästens’ sleep expert, Dr Chad Eldridge, sleep is the elixir of life and health. Everything unravels without it.

‘All systems of the body are directly affected by sleep,’ he explains. ‘It plays a major role in cardiovascular, metabolic, and hormonal health, as well as being the time in which the demands you place on the musculo-skeletal system are repaired.’

On top of all that, it also helps with memory, makes you look better, keeps you slim, protects from cancer, dementia, strokes, flu, and makes you happier.

Blimey. No wonder I’m falling to bits. Or that the quest for the perfect night’s sleep is a serious — and highly lucrative — business.

Hästens like all their customers to have at least two hour-long sessions, lying quietly in their beds, in their shops

Sadly, with the greatest will in the world, I am not going to be buying a bed today and so, as I float on my perfect cloud, we chat

Which is why, before Miles and I barely stroke our smooth white bed, let alone bounce around on its cloud-like top, I pop round the corner to one of Hästen’s four London stores, (in Wigmore Street), to pick up some top sleep tips from Rodrigo and Cameron, who live, breathe and practically pulse with high-quality sleep.

Rodrigo starts by whisking me downstairs to a room awash with blue-and-white-check beds.

‘They all look the same, but they are completely different,’ he says, ‘We do not want people to be led by the look, just how they feel.’

Which means that some are soft and enveloping, others are harder, with the feeling dictated by the layering of the material inside — a bit like a giant lasagne.

In my limited experience, choosing a mattress is a stressful thing. Fifteen minutes in John Lewis, or wherever, while you perch on ten different beds and bicker with your partner over who is cooking dinner later.

Here, it’s rather different, as lovely Rodrigo quizzes me on which position I usually sleep in — my back. How firm my current bed is — crazily hard. How many times I wake in the night — about four. And tuts sympathetically.

In fact, being properly fitted for a bed feels surprisingly intimate. (Until he rather breaks the mood by telling me that we all lose about 250ml of water when we sleep. 

Which in a normal bed stuffed with man-made materials such as latex, will slop about at the bottom of the mattress. But in the Hästens, the horsehair wicks it away almost instantly, and hey presto, no night sweats.)

And then, finally, he pops me into bed, saying rather masterfully: ‘I will say how I think your body looks best. Then we choose a bed together — because the best bed is the bed for you.’

Anything you say, Rodrigo.

And wow! The softness! The give! Just enough, but not too much. The sense of being enveloped, cherished, almost. And all under the warm cloud of the special Hästens duvet (between £2,000 and £4,000) and pillow (£300 to £600), softer than soft and stuffed with German and Norwegian down.

In fact, it’s almost too much after a hectic day. I can actually feel my eyes brimming.

Which is why Hästens like all their customers to have at least two hour-long sessions, lying quietly in their beds, in their shops. Presumably, so there’s time to get over the shock of how amazing they all are, and to work out which is the best one for you.

With a normal customer, Rodrigo would leave them alone to slumber.

‘I can tell the moment they’re in if it’s the right bed for them,’ he says. ‘Their faces change. They relax.’

Sadly, with the greatest will in the world, I am not going to be buying a bed today and so, as I float on my perfect cloud, we chat.

About the factory in rural Sweden where it will take 15 top workers at least 600 hours to make a Grand Vividus.

About the site visits conducted by the technical team, to work out how to get the beds in once they’re finished. (And, presumably, with the half-tonne monsters, to double check that the bedroom floor is strong enough to support it.)

How they never give freebies and never have sales, but have endless happy customers forever rushing back in, crying, ‘Oh my God, you’ve changed my life!’

‘Then they come back and purchase beds for the country home, for the kids, for everyone…’ says Rodrigo.

And just when I think it couldn’t get any more surreal, he tells me about their specialist massage service.

No, no, not for the customers! For the mattress topper, which needs rolling, kneading, swishing, squashing, anything to move the horsehair around a bit as the mattress starts adapting to your body.

Surely, he’s pulling my leg now!

But no.

‘Ideally, once a month in the first year,’ he says. Though, alternatively, you could just jump about on it a bit.

‘We do not discourage jumping on the beds,’ he says. ‘In fact, we positively encourage it!’

What would I give for a Hästens bed. Not quite fifty grand, but maybe a kidney. Perhaps it is better never to try them — never to know.

It does seem a crying shame that most of us mere mortals — particularly the really knackered ones — can’t afford to buy a single Hästens, let alone a fleet of them. Not even a second-hand mattress from eBay — where prices seem to start at a staggering £20,000.

‘Of course, you could just buy the topper — we can’t stop you, but we really wouldn’t recommend it,’ says Cameron.

And so with that, I haul myself out of Heaven and head back to the luscious Langham where, for one night only, we drink cocktails in the Artesian Bar, soak in our infinity bath, sip champagne and, eventually, hunker down in a bed made for billionaires. Which brings us to the million-dollar question, did we sleep like babies?

Well, one of us did.

In fact, I can safely say that Miles had one of the best night’s sleep he’s had in years. He was asleep in about 30 seconds and snoring like a train within a minute.

I did not have quite such an A-list night — and I made a mental note to ask Rodrigo whether Beyonce and Brad et al tend to snap up two beds at once and stick their snoring partners in the other room.

But I can also say, hand on heart, that I have never lain awake listening to my husband snoring in a more comfortable bed.

In fact, I almost didn’t care that I was still awake.

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