Modern manners

Thursday

Tanya Gold

American English

Ralph’s Coffee & Bar is in the Polo Ralph Lauren flagship store on Regent Street. It is rare that fashion admits food exists and when it does, it usually does something insane with it, like when the Berkeley Hotel celebrated fashion week by inventing a shoe biscuit, so you could eat your shoe. But Ralph Lauren, who dresses Melania Trump because other designers will not — believing that the withholding of couture equals meaningful opposition to tyranny, a position that makes me laugh even as I place my head in the oven — goes beyond couture and into the weird lands of lifestyle. Don’t know who you are, but want

Harry Mount

Bye bye, Buller

RIP the Bullingdon Club, 1780–2017. It isn’t quite dead — but it is down to its last two members. That’s barely enough people to trash each other’s bedrooms, let alone a whole restaurant, as the Bullingdon was wont to do, according to legend — not that we ever did that sort of thing in my time in the club, from 1991 to 1993. The Bullingdon, or Buller, as it is sometimes known, just couldn’t survive 11 years of bad headlines — from 2005 to 2016, when three of its former members, David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson, were the most powerful Conservatives in the country. For more than a decade

Angela Patmore

Gaslighting the nation

Arguably the cruellest thing you can do to human beings is to rob them of faith in their own sanity. People can endure physical torment, even torture, so long as their minds are clear. If they feel sane, they can still make sense of what is happening to them and work out how to survive. But if you undermine somebody’s mental stability, they soon unravel. In the words of John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, ‘Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;/And in the lowest deep a lower deep,/Still threatening to devour me, opens wide.’ Chipping away at a person’s mental health is known as ‘gaslighting’, after Gas

Mark Mason

Let’s not dance

Why will people simply not believe you when you tell them that you don’t want to dance? Their reactions mimic the classic pattern of grief: first confusion, then denial, then anger. They tug at your arm like they’re trying to pull it from the socket. ‘Come on, you have to dance!’ ‘No I don’t.’ ‘Oh come on! You want to really.’ ‘No I don’t.’ ‘Yes you do! Of course you do! Everybody likes dancing!’ It’s at this stage that I sometimes get all dark on them, losing the smile, injecting a note of firmness or perhaps even menace, and pointing out that if I wanted to dance I would be

Carol Sarler

Bad publicity

Whatever calamitous infelicities David Beckham did or did not email to his publicist, few will doubt that he has lived to rue the day. Nevertheless, I’ll bet teeth that he is pointing his ruing in the wrong direction: that he is tormented by the moment he pressed ‘send’ — but not similarly kicking himself for hiring a publicist in the first place. It will be left to thee and me to wonder what was the point. When you are already richer than God, you are one of the sporting legends of your generation and your face would be recognised by a yeti in the wastes of Siberia — why might

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 9 February 2017

Q. A (very attractive) man I knew at university invited me to a party given by him and his girlfriend. When I got there I found the girlfriend has reinvented herself as a hat designer and there was a pop-up shop at the party. I was bullied into buying one even though, patently, none of them suited me. Because of the social nature of the event I was embarrassed into pretending I thought it was wonderful and I shelled out a lot of money. What should I do now? — Name and address withheld A. Offer the hat to a pushy and aggressive friend. If she says she doesn’t like

James Delingpole James Delingpole

My poor Boy. He’s going to end up just like me

Boy is planning his gap year. Every few hours he rings from school to give me a progress report. ‘I’m allowing three days for Denver. Is that long enough?’ ‘We-e-ll, it’s pretty key in On the Road. Maybe five?’ ‘And I’m definitely stopping for a day in Farmington.’ ‘Where?’ ‘It’s where the Horace Walpole library is.’ ‘Oh, of course. Silly me.’ Actually, I don’t much mind where he goes so long as it’s nowhere near where I went for my gap year: Africa. I love Africa. I’ve had some of the most amazing, thrilling, dramatic experiences of my life there: climbing the Great Pyramid before dawn and seeing the graffiti

Andrew Watts

In praise of pink Lego

There aren’t many toy companies that could make headlines in the business press merely by expanding their London offices — ‘Lego blocks out Brexit concerns’ — but Lego is not like other toy companies. Last week it was named the world’s most powerful brand by the consultancy Brand Finance; this week the second Lego movie is opening in cinemas; the University of Cambridge will shortly be appointing its first Lego professor of play. For a company that, a decade ago, was losing $1 million a day, this is a remarkable reconstruction. But Lego has spent those ten years regaining ‘belief in the brick’, according to its new British chief executive, Bali

Cosmo Landesman

Toff luck

F. Scott Fitzgerald got it wrong; it’s not the rich who are different from you and me — it’s the posh. There is no social act so rude or outrageous that it cannot be explained and then excused on the grounds that the perpetrator was posh. I was recently at a drinks party and saw a man scratching his bottom in front of the buffet table — a full, hand-down–trouser buttock-scratch. With the very same hand that he’d used on his bottom, he picked up a sausage, examined it and put it back in the pile. He then picked up another sausage and put it back. Then, after another quick

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The dishonouring of David Beckham

How will we remember him, do you suppose? If you’re a committed football fan, possibly for that exquisite chip from the halfway line which left Wimbledon’s Neil Sullivan clutching at cold, empty air. A lovely goal, executed when he was only 21 years old, and which seemed to presage so much. As a stalwart of a Manchester United side that was as successful as any British club has been? Or, if you’re only an occasional football fan, for those moments when he was in an England shirt and either clutching victory from defeat (a free kick against Greece) or defeat from victory (a petulant kick at the calf of some

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 2 February 2017

Q. My granddaughter has asked to use our barn for her 21st birthday dance in June. We can only sleep 30 in the house, but she won’t let me arrange billets with neighbours for the other 70, saying ‘everyone will sleep in their cars’. This seems short-sighted. It goes against the grain not to offer folk beds after a late-night shindig. Should I overrule her? — E.C., Adelstrop,Glos A. The reason the young no longer need beds after 21st dances is first that they tend to stay up all night and second they are prurient about drink-driving, so would in any case be unable to drive to a guest billet

Thursday

Miriam Gross

Diary – 26 January 2017

Did you know that if you use the f-word while talking to a BT representative, they hang up on you? Here’s how our conversation went when I finally got through after several abortive attempts and ‘holding’ for at least 15 minutes. Me: ‘I’m ringing because the engineer who was supposed to come between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. has not turned up. I’ve been waiting for over five hours. My name is xxx, my reference number is xxx.’ BT man: ‘Could you give me your date of birth and the first line of your address?’ Me: ‘My date of birth is xxx, my address is xxx. This is the third

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 26 January 2017

Q. I recently made an arrangement with a flaky friend from university to go to my gym together. Half an hour after we were supposed to meet she called saying she was at the cash machine looking at her bank balance and she didn’t think she could afford the £20 guest entry fee. She suggested cancelling but I was dressed and raring to go so I offered to lend her the money. She politely declined saying, ‘I don’t like owing people money.’ I volunteered to pay the fee. On the way to the gym she said she was hungry and, opening a wallet stuffed with cash, bought luxury snacks costing

David Butterfield

Keep the change

Can we do without cash? Since 2015, digital payments in the UK have outnumbered those in cash, and we are invited by the great and the good to cheer this on. The fully cashless era will be magnificently convenient, they say, with goods delivered directly to the door: no fumbling for change, just tap and go. Some London branches of several chains (Waitrose, Tossed, Doddle) don’t accept cash any more. Many others fast-track customers who can pay by contactless means. Businesses and banks want to abolish cash because they have near-pathological fears of the black market and tax avoidance. Yet we should worry about the death of cash, because physical

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Vinyl madness

I was at home enjoying an online episode of Tales of the Texas Rangers when my daughter interrupted me, wanting something on Amazon. Just to explain, Tales of the Texas Rangers was a 1950s NBC radio series featuring Joel McCrea as Ranger Jayce Pearson. There are 90 half-hour episodes available online. Once you tire of binge-listening to these, there are perhaps 200 more episodes of Dragnet and about 400 of Gunsmoke to choose from, the latter featuring the voice of William Conrad (detective Frank Cannon to anyone my age) as Marshal Matt Dillon. Yes, I realise it’s a bit weird using a fibre-optic broadband connection to listen to 1950s radio,

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 19 January 2017

Q. At a drinks party at Christie’s this evening my face was splattered with flecks of spit from the guest I was talking to. I desperately wanted to wipe them off but felt that would have been impolite (and in fact I had no handkerchief anyway). What is the top way to deal with this problem? — F.I., County Down A. Ideally you would drop something and then quickly wipe your face with your hand while your interlocutor is bending to pick it up for you. Should he/she fail to perform this courtesy, scoop it up yourself with one hand while wiping with the other. Q. My son goes to

Melissa Kite

How did you kill that hat?

The well-dressed lady turned the fur collar over in her hands and fixed me with a withering stare. ‘Is this real fur?’ I was helping out in my friend’s clothes shop, a fashionable haunt in a chichi area of south-west London. ‘Yes,’ I said, bracing myself. She stroked the luxuriant fur, then asked, ‘What is it?’ ‘Fox?’ I said, making the answer a question, as you do when you are expecting protest. ‘Where did the fox come from?’ This was too much. I hadn’t the foggiest. So I fixed her with a meaningful gaze and said: ‘Northcote Road. It was going through the bins.’ She didn’t laugh. Was she going

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 12 January 2017

Black background A Morris dancing troupe with blacked-up faces had to abandon its performance in a Birmingham shopping centre after being heckled and accused of racism. — There are several explanations for the tradition of Border Morris groups blackening their faces, but it was certainly established by 1509, when a Shrovetide banquet for ambassadors featured torch-bearers with blackened faces. — Some believe it to have derived from Spain and Portugal, where dancers blacked up as Moors. Others believe that it derives from the practice of poachers blackening up to conceal themselves in darkness. — Blacking up is punished more mildly now than in the 18th century: a 1723 anti-poaching law

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 12 January 2017

Q. My son decided to go straight into work and has got a job. The problem is that it is in central London and none of his friends are available to share accommodation since they are all either on gap years or, if in London, in university halls. He’s been lucky enough to find a berth with a friend’s parents. He pays rent but, though they’ve given him his own small fridge, he doesn’t cook there — he doesn’t know how to and also he senses they would prefer he didn’t. Consequently he eats at Pizza Express every night using vouchers. He is a sociable boy and is used to

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Making work for ourselves

In 1929 John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2029 people in the developed nations could enjoy a perfectly civilised standard of living while working for 16 hours a week. His hope was for our precious hours of extra leisure to be devoted to such edifying pursuits as playing Grand Theft Auto and watching kittens skateboarding on YouTube. (Actually he didn’t predict that bit — he suggested we’d be listening to string quartets and attending poetry recitals but, hey, that was the Bloomsbury Group for you.) Today, however, not only has the work week stayed constant but, in direct contradiction of the theory, the better-paid now work disproportionately longer hours. In