Quarantine heralds the death of Mid-Atlantic Man

As an ambitious journalist making my way in Fleet Street, I dreamed of becoming a Mid-Atlantic Man. Tom Wolfe came up with the term in the mid-1960s to describe someone who divided his life between London and New York. Not for social reasons, but because his career required him to spend time in both cities. Wolfe said the typical Mid-Atlantic Man worked in a field like advertising, public relations, television, commercial art, motion pictures or consulting. But journalists could join this exalted tribe too. David Frost, who was a kind of journalist, was the ultimate Mid-Atlantic Man. He practically had a permanent berth on Concorde.

I failed, obviously, but for a couple of years I came tantalisingly close. I got a job at Vanity Fair in 1995 and even though I was based in New York I would return to London about once a month. I could never afford Concorde, but I was such a regular on Virgin Atlantic that I obtained one of its coveted gold cards, which meant access to the Virgin Clubhouse at JFK.