The Chap Issue 105

ISSUE 105

AUTUMN 2020

EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE

Martin Freeman “You could say I’m a mod, but with a small ‘m’.

I don’t wear a parka, but I do question what I wear and what I listen to, which is what it’s all about”

TOM SIMPSON

The dramatic end on Mont Ventoux to the legendary British cyclist’s career

TIGER BAY BLUES

Chris Sullivan on how Calypso entered Britain via the Cardiff coast

SCOTT SIMPSON

The Talented Mr. Simpson’s collection of Riviera clothing 05>

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ISSUE 105

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Editor: Gustav Temple

Art Director: Rachel Barker

Picture Editor: Theo Salter Circulation Manager: Susan Brennon

Sub-Editor: Romilly Clark Subscriptions Manager: Jen Rainnie

Contributing Editors: Chris Sullivan, Liam Jefferies, Alexander Larman

OLLY SMITH

LIAM JEFFERIES

CHRIS SULLIVAN

ALEXANDER LARMAN

SUNDAY SWIFT

Olly Smith is an awardwinning wine writer and broadcaster. He has been International Wine and Spirits Communicator of the Year, and Drinks Writer of the Year at the 2017 & 2016 Great British Food Awards.

He is a regular on Saturday Kitchen and BBC Radio 2.

Olly hosts his own drinks podcast www.aglasswith.com

Liam Jefferies is The Chap’s Sartorial Editor, in charge of exploring new brands, trends and rediscoveries of forgotten gentlemanly fashions. Liam’s expert knowledge covers the dark heart of Savile Row to the preppy eccentricities of Ivy Leaguers. You can follow him on Instagram @sartorialchap

Chris Sullivan is The Chap’s Contributing Editor. He founded and ran Soho’s Wag Club for two decades and is a former GQ style editor who has written for Italian Vogue, The Times, Independent and The FT. He is now Associate Lecturer at Central St Martins School of Art on ‘youth’ style cults and embroidery.

Alexander Larman is The Chap’s Literary Editor.

When neither poncing nor pandering for a living, he amuses himself by writing books: biographies of great men (Blazing Star) and examinations of greater women (Byron’s Women). His book about Edward VIII’s abdication,The Crown in Crisis, is published this year.

Sunday Swift is The Chap’s Doctor of Dandyism.

She writes on dandyism, gender, popular culture and the gothic. Her writing has appeared in academic journals such as Gothic Studies and in popular books on cult television.

She is currently working on a book about dandies in television and film.

MATT DECKARD

SOPHIA CONINGSBY

Matt Deckard is a Los Angeles-based flâneur and sartorial investigator.

He previously worked for Stetson Hats and runs the annual LA Tweed Pub Crawl. He is also a menswear designer and writer specialising in historical clothing, and has written about action-back suits, felt hats and footwear.

Sophia (pronounced to rhyme with ‘a fire’) is a writer and cigar expert from Devon who likes shooting guns, smoking cigars and nature. Sophia spends her autumns and winters hunting with a sparrow hawk and her springs and summers fly fishing on the Devon rivers.

Office address The Chap Ltd 69 Winterbourne Close Lewes, East Sussex BN7 1JZ

DARCY SULLIVAN

GOSBEE & MINNS

PANDORA HARRISON

Darcy Sullivan writes about artists, aesthetes and algorithms. His articles have appeared in The Comics Journal, The Wildean and Weird Fiction Review.

He is press officer of the Oscar Wilde Society and curator of the Facebook pages ‘The Pictures of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Arkham Hillbilly’.

Peter Gosbee is a jeweller, antiques purveyor and keen disciple of the sartorial arts, often to be found at markets, briar in hand and suitcase brimming with treasures.

John Minns was brought up in what is commonly known as the rag trade. He cut his sartorial teeth working with ‘the King of Carnaby Street’ John Stephen.

Pandora’s dark history includes curating gothic fashion for the V&A Street Style exhibition in London, and contributions to the Gothic Dark Glamour exhibition and book curated

by The New York Fashion Institute of Technology. She is a self-styled neophyte occultist, currently studying the tarot and oracle cards as a means of self development.

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THE CHAP MANIFESTO 1 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WEAR TWEED. No other fabric says so defiantly: I am a man of panache, savoir-faire and devil-may-care, and I will not be served Continental lager beer under any circumstances.

2 THOU SHALT NEVER NOT SMOKE. Health and Safety “executives” and jobsworth medical practitioners keep trying to convince us that smoking is bad for the lungs/heart/skin/eyebrows, but we all know that smoking a bent apple billiard full of rich Cavendish tobacco raises one’s general sense of well-being to levels unimaginable by the aforementioned spoilsports.

3 THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it.

Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.

4 THOU SHALT NEVER, EVER, WEAR PANTALOONS DE NIMES. When you have progressed beyond fondling girls in the back seats of cinemas, you can stop wearing jeans.

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5 THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE’S HAT. Alright, so you own a couple of trilbies. Good for you - but it’s hardly going to change the world. Once you start actually lifting them off your head when greeting passers-by, then the revolution will really begin.

6 THOU SHALT NEVER FASTEN THE LOWEST BUTTON ON THY WAISTCOAT. Look, we don’t make the rules, we simply try to keep them going. This one dates back to Edward VII, sufficient reason in itself to observe it.

7 THOU SHALT ALWAYS SPEAK PROPERLY. It’s really quite simple: instead of saying “Yo, wassup?”, say “How do you do?”

8 THOU SHALT NEVER WEAR PLIMSOLLS WHEN NOT DOING SPORT. Nor even when doing sport. Which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Except cricket.

CONTENTS 8 AM I CHAP?

Readers submit themselves to the ultimate sartorial assessment

10 SARTORIAL ODDITIES

A Russian Constructivist jumpsuit, a latex three-piece and the innovative Sophistisandal

12 EXTREME BUTLING

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth on sartorial and etiquette matters

9 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WORSHIP AT THE TROUSER PRESS. At the end of each day, your trousers should be placed in one of Mr. Corby’s magical contraptions, and by the next morning your creases will be so sharp that they will start a riot on the high street.

16 SARTORIAL THUG

10 THOU SHALT CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. By interesting we mean moustaches, or beards with a moustache attached.

30 T HE CHAP TAROT

Our man in Nottingham’s coddiwompling diary

FEATURES 22 MARTIN FREEMAN INTERVIEW

Chris Sullivan meets the stylish actor to discuss mods, clothes, Acid Jazz and the poor standards of actors’ clothing Pandora Harrison helps readers gain insight, wisdom and enlightenment

36 K ATE MOSS

Sunday Swift unravels the mythology of Kate Moss

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AUTUMN 2020

22 SARTORIAL FEATURES 44 SCOTT FRASER SIMPSON

We spent a rainy afternoon in Worthing discussing Riviera and Palm Beach styles with up-and-coming new menswear designer the talented Mr. Simpson

60 LAUNER

Liam Jefferies on the 80-year-old leather goods company who make exemplary wallets for gents and handbags for the Queen

64 G ET THE LOOK: THE HEP CAT

The essential components of this pre-rock ‘n’ roll 1940s and 50s style of dress, and where to acquire them

68 P ALM BEACH STYLE

Darcy Sullivan on how a resort for the wealthy in the 1950s gave rise to a distinct sartorial style

75 STETSON HATS

Matt Deckard, creative director of Stetson, on how he brought the romance back into the heritage brand

82 C OMMUNITY CLOTHING

Patrick Grant’s sideline from Savile Row in the creation of a brand that has jump-started the British manufacturing industry

87 U TILITY CLOTHING: CC41

Peter Gosbee on how Utility Clothing was initially seen as frugal and unstylish during the Second World War but went on to form the defining silhouette of 1940s Britain

LONGER FEATURES 94 TOM SIMPSON

Gustav Temple’s tribute to the golden boy of British cycling who styled himself on Major Tom and whose career was cut short during the 1967 Tour de France

102 DRINK

Olly Smith on what beers to stock up on at home, now that pubs have ceased to be so appealling

106 T EQUILA

The arrival of a new premium tequila that is not served from rifle belts in ersatz cantinas in the suburbs

110 FLY FISHING

Sophia Coningsby shares her passion for the solitary pursuit of fly-fishing along the rivers of England, with only a tasty Cuban cigar for company

116 T IGER BAY BLUES

Chris Sullivan pays a visit to the docklands of Cardiff, to find out on how Caribbean music entered Britain in the 1950s via the taverns of Tiger Bay

REVIEWS 128 A UTHOR INTERVIEW

Gustav Temple interviews our own literary editor Alexander Larman about his new chronicle of Edward VIII’s abdication The Crown in Crisis

135 BOOK REVIEWS

Books about the Beatles, Philip Larkin and Oscar Wilde

138 COCKNEY SINGALONG

An interview with Tom Carradine, dapper ivory-tickler who keeps old Cockney songs alive and also played in the stage production of Hi-De-Hi

146 A HISTORY OF MEN’S GROOMING

The importance of maintaining a well-groomed appearance, from brilliantined locks to waxed moustache

152 THE CAPTAIN’S LIP WEASEL

The results of our moustache growing competition, judged

by Captain Fawcett’s right hand man

157 ANTIQUES

How to spot the potentially priceless items in a handful of loose change

160 CROSSWORD

Cover photo: © Jim Smeal/Shutterstock

ISSUE 105

SEND PHOTOS OF YOURSELF AND OTHER BUDDING CHAPS AND CHAPETTES TO CHAP@THECHAP.CO.UK FOR INCLUSION IN THE NEXT ISSUE

“Here I am in Qatar,” writes Steven Beutel, “where I have stared into the abyss for so long, it (the abyss) has begun to look back – What if nothing exists? Would I still be appropriately attired? Thus then, I say unto thee: what is the pathway not only to overcoming this conundrum but doing so with panache; and reconstructing, inside myself, the civilised universe that I see disappearing around us?”

Indeed, sir. Or, to put it another way, what is that vast abyss of cloth below the buttons of your double-breasted suit?

“We rather think we did our fellow Brits proud at a Transylvanian New Year's Eve party (20s theme),” writes Robert Keehan, “but what says The Chap regarding our chapess (and chap) credentials?”

Transylvania has changed a lot since the good old days.

Splendid gothic furnishings seem to have been replaced by suburban 1980s fixtures and fittings, and the curse of Dracula is now that men’s jackets will always have jetted ticket pockets.

Simon J. Walker also closed his eyes in a contemplative reverie, during which he considered the deeper questions of life. To wit, how did a jetted ticket pocket ever find its way on to a tweed jacket, and why do I find it so difficult to insert my watch chain correctly into my waistcoat?

Neil McCormick found a Tootal scarf in a dustbin in the park. He put it on, thinking it might improve his rather drab outfit. It didn’t.

This re-creation of Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434) is uncanny, right down to the laminated flooring, which was de rigeur among 15th century Flemish merchant’s homes. Van Eyck also wore an early form of Birkenstock sandal, on warmer days.

Stelios Charalambalous thought that, by cleverly co-ordinating his shoelaces with his spectacles, he would distract the eye from his appalling outfit.

Another recreation of a famous painting, this time one of Gilbert & George’s filthy daubings.

Mark Bott was so excited to receive a letter announcing that he would be featured in The Chap that he celebrated by carpeting his driveway in moss.

Nial McGuiness was so pleased with his new carpet that he wore a kilt so that his knee would rub pleasingly against it.

s ar tori a l o ddit i e s Highlights from the fashion world’s AW20 (both 1920 and 2020) season collections, which range from the slightly odd, through the downright bizarre, to the actually rather useful

THE VARST In 1919, Russian Constructivists Alexander Rodchenko and Vavara Stepanova created the Varst, an all-purpose wool/ leather jump suit. Designed to create a new aesthetic for the new world of socialism, the Varst didn’t catch on with Russia’s rural peasantry, but today has a new appeal to those for whom workwear now looks far too bourgeois.

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THE COW SHOE From The Evening Indepe ndent, May 27, 1922: SHINERS WEAR COW SH OES “A new method of evading prohibition agents was revealed here today by A.L. Allen, state prohibition enforcement director, who displayed what he called a “cow shoe” as the latest thing from the haunts of moonshiners.

The cow shoe is a strip of metal to which is tacked a wooden block car ved to resemble the hoof of a cow, which may be strapped to the human foot. A man shod wit h a pair of them would leave a trail resemblin g that of a cow. The shoe was picked up near Por t Tampa, where a still was located some tim e ago. It will be sent to the Prohibition departme nt at Washington.

Officers believe the invent or got his idea from a Sherlock Holmes story in which the villain shod his horse with shoes, the imprint of which resembled those of a cow ’s hoof.”

LATEX THREE-PIECE Marnie Scarlet is a burlesque performer who enjoys wearing outfits made from latex. She dons this one when performing her routine entitled ‘Total Banker’.

The outfit is not available to the public, thank goodness.

THE SOPHISTISANDAL Gents! Feeling t embarrassed abou als nd sa ng weari this season? Want to keep the ‘old dogs’ cool, but still wish to cut a dash down at the out club or out-and-ab the dreaded sandal/ at d he as Ab n? tow I know I am, but white socks combo? comfortable, they’re so damned aren’t they? n revel in the Well, now you ca ration’ whenever ae e ‘to pleasure of full e, with Emporio you bally well pleas dapper sandalSonnambulo’s new brown or black in brogues. Available e a bit on the shifty calfskin or, if you’r side, suede.

SUPER ANKLE-WALKING FINS And for the beach, why not try a pair of Emporio Sonnambulo’s vulcanised ‘Super-ankle-walking-fins’. Stand out from the crowd, turn heads as you promenade or cause a sensation at a beach party in your ‘Super-rubberankle-walking-fins’. Be the envy of all as you stroll along the coast with silken indifference, from beach to briny.

“Flip-flops?

What? A thing of the past, sir.

It’s Emporio Sonnambulo Super-anklewalking-fins for me.”

Sir Alec Guinness

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Extr eme

Butling

Our erstwhile butler Mr. Bell has moved to the outskirts of Amsterdam to become a tulip farmer and goat fancier. He left us in the capable hands of his factotum and personal assistant, Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth, who is here to offer readers advice on social, sartorial and etiquette matters. Send your queries to gimpley@thechap.co.uk

Borgo Prund: If one is not a member of any gentlemen’s club, may one wear a club tie of any description and, if so, which colours should one choose?

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: On the day of his execution, when Neil Cream, the notorious murderer of women whom some believe was the never-identified Jack the Ripper, was seen by hangman James Billington putting his tie on at dawn, Billington is said to have remarked, “I don’t think that will be necessary this morning, sir.”

The rule with club ties, Master, is that, even if one is entitled to wear them, they should only be worn at official functions held by the office represented by the tie. Eton ties, for example, may only be worn by members of the Old Etonian Association. You may have heard the tale of a chap who had not been to Eton – but wished he had – seeing a match seller wearing an Old Etonian tie.

To impress his lady friend, the young chap said to the match seller: “What do you mean by wearing

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an Old Etonian tie?”

“Because,” replied the match seller, “I cannot afford to buy a new one.”

So the simple answer to your question, Master, is no. However, there is nothing to stop you forming a club of your own and paying a visit to CH Munday Ltd (chmunday.co.uk), who will fashion you a ‘descript’ tie in any colours you wish. The only club of which I am a member is of course the Pink Penguin Club, and I only joined it because I like their tie. I have no idea what they do but I’m sure it is splendid.

ceremony anyway, by slipping into the church unnoticed (this will be easier for you than it would be for me) and taking an aisle seat on a rear pew.

Then, at the crucial moment, stand up dramatically and shout “Why?” Slip away immediately and then appear at the reception, making no mention of your outburst. If asked, deny all accusations. Maintain this stance until the day you die.

David Ambleton: Is there any occasion when placing one’s hands in one’s pockets is acceptable?

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: Of course not, Master, with the single exception of members of the royal family, who may place up to four fingers (but not the thumb) in the pocket of a doublebreasted jacket. In Prince Charles’s case, he might be lucky to squeeze one of his sausage fingers in.

Also, don’t forget: with DB jackets, the bottom button is only undone when seated.

Jason Wilson: I’ve been invited to the wedding of an old school chum. However, there are two distinct sets of guests – those invited to both the ceremony and the reception, and those invited to just the reception, which latter category I fall into. Is this a snub and, if so, what is the appropriate response?

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: Master, I’m afraid it is! Here’s what I would do: attend the actual

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Grace: I am publicity manger of Quartet Books. I’d love to tell you about our forthcoming title Marked Cards by Manoli Olympitis. This is a raucous memoir of a glittering career in international business. At the age of 28, Emmanuel ‘Manoli’ Olympitis was the youngest (non-family) executive director of a merchant bank in the City of London; at 38, he was the youngest chief executive of a leading, publicly quoted financial services group; at 43, the youngest executive chairman of one of the four largest Lloyd’s international insurance brokers; and at 50, he was at the forefront of the e-commerce boom as executive chairman of Pacific Media plc. He was also a member of the British Olympic Fencing Squad in the 1968 Mexican Olympics.

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: Manoli Olympitis, you say? I recommend equal doses of Canesten and Laudanum. That should clear it up.

Francis Venison: I recently espied an acquaintance, who is normally very well dressed, sauntering about the local high street in a pair of pantaloons de Nîmes. Should I mention this when we next meet?

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘when we next meet’, Master? I would aver that there is nothing further to discuss with this individual. n

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Diary

SARTORIAL THUG

S

artorial Thug is a fortysomething (although he looks much younger) gentleman, described by some as a bounder, rascal and rotter, and by others as a disgrace and reprehensible miscreant. He currently resides in the beautiful joy-filled city of Nottingham and dedicates his time to loafing about, coddiwompling, searching out well-mixed cocktails and deplorable indulgences with trollops and strumpets. A chap who appreciates the finer things in life but struggles with some of the ways of the modern world, in

particular the extraordinarily bad dress sense of ‘lads’ and the general unnecessary hipsterisation and wokeness of society. Should the need arise, he is not afraid of a spot of old-school fisticuffs – on the cobbles, no weapons, although his attempts to goad celebrity chefs into a fistfight has so far fallen on deaf ears. When he is not sipping Negronis and Martinis in a sex dungeon, he can be found on Twitter @SartorialThug giving words of wisdom, telling you how it is, and regaling tales of debauchery.

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This is Sartorial Thug’s diary from earlier this year

7th March

8th March

This is where I left you last time. Little did I know that this would be the last time for months that I would be intemperate in an actual public house, thanks to this pestiferous death pandemic.

It started as a standard Saturday coddiwomple in Nottingham and it went on to champagne in an art gallery, then some poncy craft beers in a poncy craft beer establishment and ended with the ubiquitous rascality in my private chambers.

My female drinking companion persuaded me to try something called an ‘espresso martini’; I can categorically say I won’t be trying another one of those. Her lack of taste in the cocktail department was almost a deal-breaker but she had quite enrapturing upper works and sturdy calves, so I gave her another chance and invited her to Thug Towers to see my coin collection (see below).

Hangover or Covid-19? I’m assuming it was a hangover as a bacon sandwich cured it.

16th March It’s been over a week since I left the house and now we are being told to avoid hostelries. People are panic buying toilet rolls and pasta. I’ve stocked up on Gentleman’s Relish, Star Bars and alcohol.

Some people have spectacularly miscalculated their priorities.

23rd March The lockdown is official. I am going to miss: bimbling around town, getting up to roguish mischief and the company of strumpets. Things I won’t miss are: being forced to mix with the general populace and seeing sockless, skinny pantaloon de Nîmes-clad buffoons making the place look untidy.

27th March I had to step out for only the first time since the lockdown. Most of the people I encountered seemed to be blighted with more than just COVID-19 and they certainly did not appear to be taking notice of the hand washing memo or the social distancing diktat. Two people coughed their putrefactive rheum without covering their mouths.

Thankfully they were far enough away not to infect me, but close enough to hear me tut very loudly while shaking my head in disgruntlement.

11th April (I think) who knows?

Even for a chap who unindustriously loafs about doing proper diddley-squit most of the time, the tedium of lockdown is outrageous. I’m a numismatist and have rearranged my coin collection twice. I have also been watching other coin collectors on the YouTube and spent two hours watching someone sort through hundreds of pounds worth of 50ps and £2 coins, looking for the rare ones. I need something to keep me busy, so I have decided to become a harmonica player.

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12th April

30th April

My harmonica is now in the bin.

Spent most of the day flicking playing cards into a selection of hats. 10 points for the Fez, 5 points for the Deerstalker, 3 points for the Bowler, 2 points for the Boater. I might set up a proper league once the death plague has passed. I’ll see if I can get some sponsorship from my local turf accountant.

24th April I was invited to a chap’s virtual night out via Zoom. It’s like a normal night out but you only have to be dressed from the waist up, you serve your own alcohol and there is less chance of the evening ending up with fisticuffs, on the cobbles, no weapons. I broke with what appears to be Zoom protocol by maintaining my wifi connection throughout, neglecting accidentally to put myself on mute and not sitting in front of a showoff bookcase. I was a bit disquieted about my first foray into this new video chat shenanigans, not having used anything like this since MSN messenger was a thing. One of my main worriments was just how unspeakably some of my friends would be enrobed while relaxing in the comfort of their own homes; a couple of them look objectionable enough when we go on a proper night out. Thankfully most of them were adequately caparisoned and most had pants on.

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1st–19th May

of this thing, it won’t be a consequence of people on the beach, or protesters, or felonious music revelry, or people celebrating their sporting team victories. It will be caused by people who can’t comprehend what two metres (6 feet 6.74 inches, or 2.187 yards) is and who reach over one, breathing toxicity down one’s neck as one looks for some passable asparagus, and then proceed to finger all the loose broccoli. They are the real dangers here.

Stayed in.

13th June One thing I have learned from the protests over the last few weeks (apart from the fact that BadenPowell had some strange views on masturbation) is that people’s toggery seems to be getting even more abysmal, rather than better. Barely a cravat or cufflink to be seen among the rabble, and don’t get me started on the state of the headwear.

20th May Regular visitors to my Twitter account, especially on Sunday evenings, will be aware that I am a big fan of Antiques Roadshow. I am more of an antique silver and medals kind of chap, but gun enthusiast and Law Society expert witness in firearms and ballistics Robert Tilney deserves a special mention in my ramblings. Quite stupendous in the trouser department, with monumental upper lip furnishings, Robert rarely disappoints with his choice of strides on the programme. He seems to be a big devotee of mustard (who isn’t?) but he is not averse to pink, purple, red (of course) and even tartan trews. A chap whose passion for guns is matched by his passion for interesting leg coverings, I doff my Fez to him.

23rd June These ever-changing rules are getting quite discombobulating. Social bubbles, two social bubbles, maximum of six people, one metre-plus, no large gatherings, pubs can open but theatres cannot. Just let me know when the sex parties can resume. When the drinkeries do finally open, I might give them a miss for a few days. I have a feeling that opening day could degenerate into the most hellacious kind of Christmas Mad Friday, brimming with part-time pubgoers who don’t really understand conventional pub etiquette, whose last haircut was performed by themselves or their partner, decked out in awful clobber that has become too small due to lockdown weight gain.

My private members club will be much more civilised, and some of the staff would benefit from the addition of a full face mask.

27th May Monthly phone call to my Aunt. She is quite beleaguered with being cooped up but has a number of subordinates running around after her, probably after my inheritance. She is refusing to receive any visitors, including her favourite nephew, for the foreseeable future and says this will probably be the case until the New Year. I don’t believe a word of it, and anticipate being summoned at a moment’s notice sometime in October, just in time for the second wave.

2nd June I needed to go to the supermarket. Loathsome places at the best of times; even more abominable when you have to queue to get in. If we get a second wave

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Interview: Martin Freeman (p22) Chap Tarot Cards21 (p30) • Kate Moss (p36)

Photograph: Chris Colls for Net-a-Porter

Features

Interview

Ma r tin F r eem a n Chris Sullivan meets the stylish actor to discuss the mod aesthetic, music, Mark Powell, badly dressed actors and acid jazz

M

artin Freeman is that rarest of creatures. He is a world famous thespian who is not only very good at his job but, even by the standards of the most anally retentive style monger, is also an extremely stylish individual with exemplary taste in music.

Indeed, this star of stage and screen (both big and small) has displayed his considerable knowledge of music by assembling, in partnership with Eddie Piller of Acid Jazz Records, a series of compilations called Jazz On The Corner, the second of which has just been released on double vinyl, CD and download. A quite exceptional collection, your man has chosen, among others, The Magilla, saxophonist Stanley Turrentine’s 1966 mod jazz workout for Blue Note, Chico Hamilton’s conga led mambo The Conquistadores (1965) and Roberta Flack’s priceless anti-Vietnam anthem Compared to What (1969).

“Going through my records again for things that haven’t appeared on loads of comps (as far as I know of, anyway) is a fine excuse to do my favourite thing and pretend it’s work,” writes Freeman in the sleeve notes. Certainly, he is gripped by both great music and fine clothing and, even though he finds it hard to describe himself as a mod, he certainly subscribes to the subculture’s ethic.

“Some people think it’s odd that I care so much about this or that collar but that is how I am.

For me it’s always the details. I sometimes wish I didn’t care about my appearance, as life might be a bit easier” 22

© Jim Smeal/Shutterstock

“I’d call myself a mod with extreme trepidation,” he chuckles and squirms. “Or perhaps better, you could say I’m a mod but with a small ‘m’, which just means I don’t wear a parka, but I do question what I wear and what I listen to, which is what it’s all about. I think there should be a test in school that asks people, ‘Do you know why you are wearing that, and what you are trying to say?’

It’s just another way of looking at the world and

is more of a sensibility than a style. Japan is very mod, in the way they care about presentation and detail. It takes a certain amount of thought to dress differently, no matter what the style.

“It’s not being Ghandi, it’s not curing cancer and it’s usually a male aesthetic that, although it is important to me, isn’t as crucial to most of my friends. Some people think it is odd that I care so much about this or that collar on a shirt, but that

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is how I am. For me it’s always the details. The difference between an item I like and one I don’t can appear so minimal to everyone else but, to me, it makes a massive difference. I sometimes wish I didn’t care about my appearance, as life might be a bit easier.”

Freeman, whose diction is sharp and precise, his accent neither common nor posh, speaks in long paragraphs such as this, expressing adoration for something in one breath and disdain for something else in the next, each sentence lined with a sardonic wit. His well-formed sentences are punctuated with expletives (“I swear too much; I f***ing hate it!”), answering any question I ask with refreshing candour, while showing a distinct brand of self deprecation not usually found in actors. He is the type of chap that you would love to spend time with over a few jars of the brown frothy stuff.

Martin Freeman was born on September 8th, 1971 in Aldershot, Hampshire. The youngest of five children, his parents separated when he was a small child, only for his naval officer father to die of a heart attack when Freeman was just 10. Subsequently, he was schooled at a Catholic comprehensive, found an outlet in acting, developed a certain flair on stage, was soon treading the boards and went on to attend London’s prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama.

“The romantic myth that I was hanging around with bricklayers as a youth isn’t true, as by the time I went to drama school I was hanging around with people in youth theatre, and not with people who thought acting was weird. The only time I felt torn was when I was in a school play, because it didn’t seem that cool or very hard prancing around on stage.

“In Aldershot, even if you say you want to be an actor or a painter, some of your contemporaries will question your sexuality but, fortunately, I had enough backbone not be concerned by those people, and thank the Lord for it. But when you see your mates out in the playground playing football and you’re rehearsing Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat it’s not that easy but, with the help of my family, who were really supportive and still are, I got over it.”

As an infant, Freeman, having been inadvertently introduced to punk by his older siblings, sang along to the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Buzzcocks.

“That was what I heard all day long, and because I sensed it was naughty I used to sing them to be mischievous and wind up my dad,” he smiles fondly. “My first proper style was Rude Boy and Two Tone. I was only nine but really thought I looked like one of The Specials. But that started me off and then the modernist thing came later as I started to work it all out in my head. Mod appealed to me because it was a lot softer than Two Tone and didn’t have DM’s. Some days I still want to go out with a 1969 skinhead, but unfortunately I have a round face and I look like the moon so, it’s not that clever a look for me.”

“When you see your mates out in the playground playing football and you’re rehearsing Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat it’s not that easy but, with the help of my family who were really supportive and still are, I got over it” In the 80s Freeman, as is the wont of many latter day jazz-loving mods, was entirely enamoured of Paul Weller and The Style Council.

“The first thing I bought for myself was a very cheap three-button Prince of Wales check mod jacket in 1988. I had matching trousers, loafers from Hobbs and a Ben Sherman shirt and I looked like a freak. I can recall going out for a meal with my mates when I was 16. I had that look going on with the brolly and all that, while my friends were doing the Wall Street look with the braces and shirts with striped bodies and white collars. We were all thinking that we were very grown up.”

In the late eighties and early nineties, while he attended The Central School of Speech and Drama, he was bitten by the Acid jazz bug, a

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“The blessing of The Office was also a curse.

The blessing was that it really helped me on my way but the curse is that I was expected to not do anything else for a long while. I meet people and they say, ‘Are you Tim from The Office?’ And when I say yes, they say, ‘Have you done anything else?’

“Some people actually think I was an office worker. But before I did The Office I was seen as a bit edgy. I used to go up for parts as gay bare-knuckle boxers and nasty debt collectors.

I did a two-part TV drama called Men Only about these five football players who rape a nurse on a ketamine-fuelled, horrible night. But afterwards I played Lord Shaftesbury in a four-part TV series, Charles II: The Power and The Passion, directed by Joe Wright who helmed Atonement. Consequently, there was a picture of me in a paper with the heading Tim in a Wig. Now that really got me down. I asked myself if I would always be Tim in a wig, or Tim in a concentration camp or Tim in a bear skin, so I had to broaden my horizons.”

“And then I played Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I wasn’t a huge fan anyway but then I had to wear that bloody dressing gown. It was a thick towelling dressing gown and, as we shot it over summer, it was really hot and so unglamorous and so shit. Mos Def had a nice suit, Zoe Béchamel had a lovely little powder blue number, and I had to wear that!”

“Most actors are a shower of bloody scruffs or think that they should dress like Hamlet off stage,” chides Freeman. “There’s a lot of billowy shirt sleeve going on but there’s not many mods. The great thing about being an actor is that, unlike Jude Law who is a heartthrob, I can, and usually do, look like shit on screen.”

When not in front of the camera, Freeman is one of the world’s best-dressed actors. A man who feels equally at home in Jermyn Street, Savile Row or Soho, his chosen tailor is Mark Powell.

“I first heard of Mark Powell in the mid nineties after I’d just left drama school. I was working constantly at the National Theatre for like five bob a week and didn’t have a lot of money then, but got a suit eventually from his shop in Soho, near Carnaby Street. He knows my taste. He knows exactly how high I like my trousers and does not try and dress me

curious cross pollination of jazz, soul, funk and mod sounds and a nouveau modernist mode, which pressed his every button.

“It was something that just struck a chord with me,” he admits. “I was a bit of a home body and would go to the occasional gig or club night, but it was really just records for me, as I was always rehearsing or working on a play. I’d save up my pennies to go to Beggars Banquet or Our Price in Kingston to drop some money on vinyl, and that became a passion for me that still continues to this day. I still feel that, leaving your house and finding something you’ve looked for, for ages, or something you’ve saved up to buy, is something very special, but I could be wrong. A friend told me that his teenage son still loves music but in a different way, that it’s not about how you acquire it and what format it is on.

“I am not a total luddite, but I think if you care about music you should get out of the house to buy it and the only dispensation is if you’re disabled.

Pressing buttons and downloading is such a joyless way of buying music, as there is no interaction with the staff and fellow collectors. I always wonder, do they [downloaders] listen to this stuff ? Do they know the lyrics?”

“Most actors are a shower of bloody scruffs or think that they should dress like Hamlet off stage.

The great thing about being an actor is that, unlike Jude Law who is a heartthrob, I can, and usually do, look like shit on screen” Just as the actor’s passion for vinyl recordings increased, so did his presence on screen in series such as The Bill, Casualty and World of Pub, until he became a household name as Tim Canterbury, the relentlessly harmless foil to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s grotesque creation, the entirely nauseating egomaniac David Brent in The Office.

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like he dresses. He’s done me many great suits – a beautiful black suit with two pearl buttons; a nice striped 3-button – boating Ray Davies circa 1966 – that would look good with a punt in your hand. I’ve also got a few of his very flamboyant, even dandy three-piece suits that have Oxford bags with turn-ups and jackets with gauntlet cuffs and shawl collared waistcoats, which I never thought I’d wear but now love. Still, I have to be careful with clothes because in my mind I am 6ft 1, but really I am quite short – 5ft 8 – which can be a problem.

“I love all kinds of loafers – penny, tassel, fringe – it’s a part of that pre-mod jazz look of the late fifties, sort of Gerry Mulligan, Steve McQueen, which influenced the British modernists. Loafers have been a staple of my wardrobe since I saw Terry Hall in them on the cover of Do Nothing.

Can’t beat them.”

Freeman has of course not only thrown off the yoke of Tim Canterbury but has smashed it to smithereens, and is now even more famous for playing Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of The Rings trilogy, followed by Dr Watson in Sherlock opposite Benedict Cumberbatch, as Lester Nygard in the excellent series 1 of the US TV series Fargo, and most recently as the acerbic dad Paul in his own creation, Breeders, based on his life as the parent of a 12- and 15-year-old, a mainly joyous experience that can also have its frustrations.

Freeman’s favourite films are The Godfather One and Two, which he counts as one film, while his top TV series is The Sopranos: “One of the greatest TV series ever made. It is an incredible achievement – a modern Greek tragedy.”

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All in all, Freeman appears happy with his lot and happy to have seen myriad youth cultures come and go. “Now, because all these styles happened so long ago, teds, mods, northern soulers and punks can hang out together, because we’re not all in hoodies,” he grins. “I have more in common with a passionate heavy metal fan than a fashion label freak. But what I like about getting older is that you lose that tribal thing. Now I just like stuff because I think it’s good, as I’m old enough not to care about being cool.”

He thus regards collating these compilations with Eddie Piller on Acid Jazz and passing on his considerable knowledge as a total pleasure.

“It was always the music that led me. And that

was Acid Jazz and Talking Loud. We’ve all got compilations that we bought as a teenager that inspired us, but we don’t come out of the womb with this knowledge, and the idea that these albums on Acid Jazz can be a part of that learning process for people is the absolute reason for doing them.”

Will he ever change his personal style?

“I know what I like and haven’t changed in years. If you like something, stick with it. I am not going to be a goth in ten years. I just know what I like now and know that I will still be wearing it in ten years’ time.” n Jazz on the Corner 2 (Acid Jazz Records) is available at all good record outlets

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Arcana

The Chap Tarot In the second part of her guide to The Chap Tarot, Pandora Harrison continues her quest to help readers gain insight and enlightenment

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elcome back dear reader. You will recall in the previous article I initiated you into the occult world of the tarot.

In this instalment I wish to guide you more intimately through the ‘pip’ or number cards.

These are the cards upon which the commonly known deck of 52 playing cards is based. The modern suits of clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds have their origins in the tarot. The Arabic suits of the 13th century Mamluk deck were polo-sticks, coins, swords and cups, but in time European influence changed these symbols to something more relevant, thus polo sticks became clubs and the scimitar sword became a broadsword, etc. In Germany there were hearts, bells, acorns and leaves but in France there were hearts, tiles (diamonds), clovers

“The pipe is also the emblem of the social discourse or commercial negotiations that are transacted in the smoking room of a gentlemen’s club. In tarot terms, this suit is symbolic of ambition, power, competition and business endeavours, creativity, new ideas and growth”

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(clubs) and pikes (spades). By the 15th century the French and Germanic pip card suits more closely resembled what we know today. The art of reading just pip (suit) cards is known as Cartomancy, which had its peak in the 19th century.

In a standard tarot deck, the pip cards are known as the Minor Arcana or ‘lesser secrets’. In a reading, the pip cards all follow a pattern, with each suit daring to reveal a specific aspect of our daily lives. Allow me now to delight and inform you with my chappish interpretations of the suits.

they a vice, a diversion or entertainment such as gambling. The pipe signifies cogitation, divining inspiration as to whether or not to place one’s chips on black or red. The pipe is also the emblem of the social discourse or commercial negotiations that are transacted in the smoking room of a gentlemen’s club. In tarot terms, this suit is symbolic of ambition, power, competition and business endeavours, creativity, new ideas and growth.

THE CHAP SUIT OF GLASS “Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.” – Oscar Wilde

THE CHAP SUIT OF PIPES “Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.”

This is the equivalent of the tarot suit of cups and the playing card suit of hearts. In chappish terms, this suit will indicate the querent’s enjoyment of food and drink in the form of fine dining, the local hostelry, a cocktail bar, entertaining privately at home and the wine cellar.

– Lord Byron

This is the equivalent of the tarot suit of wands and playing card suit of clubs. In chappish terms, this suit will indicate the querent’s reliance on tobacco and other forms of illicit pleasure, be

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The glass illustrates the partaking of libations, thus leading to inebriation. When you are in your cups, you run the risk of everyone becoming your best friend and perhaps an unexpected guest gradually appearing more attractive. Additionally, you may find yourself enlightened, philosophical and inclined to pontificate. In tarot terms, this suit is symbolic of emotions (both positive and negative), various relationships and matters of the heart and happiness.

and so on. The masks are Thalia, the muse of comedy and Melpomene, the muse of tragedy; illustrative of the operatic battles within your soul

“The Butler card represents a mature adult, in control of his desires, successful in life, confident, admired by others, in control and able to direct their will.

Jeeves’ finest qualities include being omnipresent, knowledgeable and privy to a sure-fire hangover cure”

THE CHAP SUIT OF MASKS “As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.”

– Charles Baudelaire

This is the equivalent of the tarot suit of swords and the playing card suit of spades. In chappish terms, this suit will indicate the querent’s appreciation of culture; theatre, books, film, music

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or the physical and moral conflicts of Shakespearian proportions that we face on a daily basis.

Consider the eternal struggle involving the selection of an opera, a sporting tournament or a delightful modern farce on your favourite streaming platform, or, more wearisome still, which wine to have with that vegan nut roast your partner insisted on.

In tarot terms, this suit is symbolic of challenge, struggle, action, justice, change and decisiveness (or lack thereof). represents a man of simple taste, easily satisfied with the best he can afford. In tarot terms, this suit is symbolic of health, wealth, material possessions and success (or failure) in the physical world.

THE CHAP SUIT OF SHEARS “There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

A SELECTION OF MAJOR ARCANA CARDS FROM THE CHAP TAROT DECK

This is the equivalent of the tarot suit of coins and the playing card suit of diamonds. This suit will indicate the querent’s aesthetic sensibility and value of luxurious things. The tailor’s shears illustrate the golden age of style; it is our outer image and how we desire to be seen. After all, is not a man judged by the cut of his cloth, the bouquet of his fragrance and the resilience of his moustache wax? This suit is success and material wealth but, remember, the acquisition of taste and style need not require resources obtained by the selling of one’s soul.

Taste is not just a matter of money; an eminent appearance can be cultivated through clever, prudent individuality and thrift. In simple terms, the shears are about success and to dress the part, but it also

#5 THE HEADMASTER/ HEADMISTRESS (THE HIEROPHANT) When one thinks of education and guidance from a trustworthy source, one simply must think of Alastair Sim’s cinematic portrayals of Wetherby Pond, Miss Millicent Fritton and Dr Stephen Potter. The Headmaster/Headmistress embodies educational or intellectual traditions, be they good or bad, teaching us how to win without actually

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cheating, thus moulding us into decent chaps/ chapettes. He/she does this by supplying much needed spiritual guidance and a moral code as an understanding of life, or Lifemanship. This position of authority represents an elite class leading the masses. It is, however, down to the student and neophyte to recognise when they are being told what to do and think and surrendering all responsibility to developing an unhealthy inner sense of absolute obedience. As observed by Miss Fritton, “In other schools, girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared.”

Reversed – the card denotes unorthodoxy, forming original ideas, gullibility, a rejection of traditions and a falling into cultish dogma and extreme political beliefs.

#6 THE ROYAL W.E. (THE LOVERS)

The Royal W.E. is a colloquialism for Wallis and Edward, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who are the ideal representation of the card best known by another name, ‘The Choice’. This card is all about choice; a choice between two desires: your outward life or your hidden inner desire. Many choices made form the path we tread, and none more famous than the choice made by Edward VIII in 1936, when he chose the distinctly left-handed path of abdication, avoidance of a constitutional crisis and marriage to an American divorcée.

Theirs was a stylised morganatic marriage, between people of unequal social rank, which in the context of royalty prevents the passage of the husband’s titles and privileges to the wife. Edward made his choice and the rest is history (see page

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128). If a specific problem is to be considered in the reading, the card is seen as representing help in some way, be it practical help or emotional support. Reversed – the card represents a destructive love, particularly in a bad marriage, dominating romantic or sexual problems, personally or socially; an immature or fantasy love.

#7 THE BUTLER (THE CHARIOT)

The classic illustration for the Chariot card is that of a regal, calm looking man driving two horses who appear to desire to go in opposite directions.

The card’s meaning can easily be summed up by the phrase ‘order out of chaos.’ There is but one man who is capable of this heroic feat, and that man is Reginald Jeeves, butler extraordinaire (well, valet actually). Jeeves, the man his wealthy young employer Bertie Wooster labelled a ‘domestic Mussolini,’ is in possession of such wisdom and countenance that he is frequently relied upon to solve farcical problems inconspicuously.

The Butler card represents a mature adult, in control of his desires, successful in life, confident, admired by others, in control and able to direct their will. Jeeves’ finest qualities include being omnipresent, knowledgeable and privy to a sure-fire hangover cure. He is also widely respected at The Junior Ganymede Club, a private club for valets and butlers. In a reading, the card signifies that the querent can successfully control a situation by the sheer force of their personality. Reversed – the card signifies a situation out of control which without resolve will mean disaster; a lack of will power.

#8 A STIFF UPPER LIP (STRENGTH)

Ideally, the stiff upper painted lips of the Quentin Crisps of the world, champions of self-expression and controversial commentary. This card foretells of an inner strength, the ability to confront yourself calmly and without fear, enjoying life with controlled passions and not getting carried away.

It represents an ability to face our hidden inner selves and the emerging of supressed feelings as a form of release and positive energy. From his early years in the 1920s, Crisp expressed his true self outwardly in a feminine style, finding strength in a colourful appearance, from his painted fingernails and toes to his henna-tinted hair and powdered face.

Although Crisp suffered his share of dissenters and open hostility, he maintained his stiff upper lip by extolling philosophically on the

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importance of contemporary manners as a means of social inclusiveness. As an octogenarian writer and actor, Crisp illustrates this card’s meaning of finding the strength to continue, or begin, a new difficult project, despite fear and emotional strain.

In a reading, the card represents an ability to face life, a difficult problem or time of change with hope and eagerness. Reversed – the card indicates weakness, an inability to face the slings and arrows of life, overwhelmed and pessimistic and tormented from within; passion becomes the enemy. n In my third instalment, we will cover 4/5 more cards and a three-card layout for a simple reading. The descriptions I have given the cards are very close to the actual meanings, so in practice the reading will work as intended.

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Dandizette

Kate Moss Even at 46, she’s one of the most recognisable British models of all time, and when her face doesn’t grace the cover of a fashion magazine it’s splashed across a red-top.

She is the poster girl for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and, more than that, she’s survived.

Sunday Swift unravels the mythology of Kate Moss

“Dandyism is the construction and control of an artificial image for the consumption of others.

Kate Moss has not only created one of the most recognisable images in our contemporary culture, but also found a way always to keep that image new through constant reinvention”

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The Face. It was not a standard photoshoot with a large crew full of stylists and technicians working together to create an image: rather, it was just Moss, spontaneity and realism that Day was after: “I wanted just to photograph her as herself, to try and get it as a documentary as possible. And get her character and her presence in the picture.

Because fashion photography really wasn’t about that in the 80s, it was all about the photographer.”

And so Grunge was born, and the face of this new aesthetic was Kate Moss.

Curiously, amidst all this talk of spontaneity and dirty realism, Phil Bicker, the visionary director of The Face, says, “It looked natural and simple but it was carefully constructed to look like that. In fact, as I recall, I sent them down there two or three times until they got it right.” Grunge, like punk, was built on the artifice of real rather than the real itself.

o-one was ready for Kate Moss. When she emerged, supermodels were buxom, athletic creatures: Kathy Ireland, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer. No one could have guessed that these Amazons would be unseated by a 5' 7" teenage girl from Croydon.

Katherine Ann Moss was born on 16th January 1974 in Croydon, London. Her mother Linda was a barmaid and her father Peter was an airline employee. She led a relatively quiet life until one day, waiting for a flight from New York to London, she was approached by the founder of Storm Management in London. She was fourteen.

For two years, she did small jobs but when she turned 16, everything changed. Photographer Corinne Day was interested in the anti-supermodel quality of Moss for her shoot in the magazine

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Artifice or not, fashion designers were immediately inspired by Moss. Colin McDowell, fashion journalist of The Sunday Times, says, “There’s a great deal of hysteria in the fashion world, as everyone knows. One photographer gets over-excited about something, and their editor gets over-excited, then more photographers get over-excited, then more, and suddenly, you have a personality.” This is what happened to Moss.

ad campaign with them – McQueen, Dior, Gucci, Chanel, Bulgari, etc. She continued to reign as one of the most successful models in the world and, despite multiple scandals, has remained so for over thirty years. One way she’s done this is by ensuring that she stays ahead of the curve when it comes to fashion. By the mid-90s, grunge’s popularity was waning. Moss started pairing peasant blouses with boutique and charity-shop finds. When that look entered the mainstream, she embraced softer satins and feather-ruffed tops, large fur pieces, tailored suits and leopard prints. When she tires of these, she’ll undoubtedly adapt, and she will still be looked to as the one who sets the trends.

Moss once said, “In a way, it’s like the photographer always has his vision of me. The pictures that I’m known for are not really my image, they’re always the photographer’s vision of me. I can look a hundred different ways, but what people see of me in pictures is not really my image.” This is crucial to her dandyism. In some ways, like fellow Dandies Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe before her, it is the idea of Moss – not necessarily Moss herself – that has made her so iconic. Everyone has projections they place upon Moss, and people rarely seem to care whether these ideas of her are true.

One of these projections on her was that her waifish figure was due to anorexia and bulimia.

“What can you say?” Moss complained. “How many times can you say, ‘I’m not an anorexic?’”

Unlike some dandies, however, Moss doesn’t complain about the way people have taken her image. She rarely counters when someone prints inaccuracies about her. Even when she does try to set the record straight about something, the tabloids don’t listen. “People don’t hear me talk,” Moss once stated. “They don’t expect me to.”

Honore de Balzac seems to have predicted this in 1830, when he wrote, “Dandyism is an affectation of fashion. In playing the dandy, a man becomes a piece of furniture for the boudoir, an extremely ingenious mannequin that can sit upon a horse or a couch, that bites or sucks on the end of a walking stick by habit – but a thinking being… never!”

“When people see an actor speak, they think they know him or her,” Moss says, “whereas I’m just a face or a body to them.”

In 2005, artist Marc Quinn created several different Kate Moss sculptures. One of them, the Sphinx, was cast in solid gold. “Human beings often create images,” says Quinn, “begin to worship

“Honore de Balzac predicted Moss in 1830: “Dandyism is an affectation of fashion.

In playing the dandy, a man becomes a piece of furniture for the boudoir, an extremely ingenious mannequin that can sit upon a horse or a couch, that bites or sucks on the end of a walking stick by habit – but a thinking being… never!”

Calvin Klein saw something in Moss and he used her for his 1992 campaign with Mark Wahlberg, one that was filled with scandal. The press labelled the thin, delicate, androgynous models like Kate, with dark circles under their eyes and little makeup, as ‘heroin chic’. Despite all the models being of age, the U.S. Department of Justice received complaints about the campaign for sexualising children. Klein, Moss et al were accused of promoting anorexia and drug-use. It became too much of an annoyance for Klein, who pulled the campaign. Nevertheless, Moss’s new look gained a foothold in popular culture and she became the poster child for grunge. Designer Jean Paul Gaultier described this new movement to Vogue as “Nothing more than the way we dress when we have no money.” But Moss turned it into ‘a look.’ Journalist Angela Buttolph says that, at the time when Kate made her debut, “Politically in England… there was a lot of unemployment, and kids just wanted to stay up all the time, raving.”

Name a brand, and Kate Moss has done an

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Photograph: Chris Colls for Net-a-Porter

Photograph: Guy Marineau

them and then forget the images were initially invented by them. They are left with an abstract image that is impossible to measure up to. This is the basis of all celebrity and religious imagery.”

Peter Lindberg, a photographer who has worked with Moss for over 20 years, argues, “The emergence of an icon is something very, very complex. The icons themselves contribute almost nothing to this. As a non-icon on the path to becoming an icon, you somehow reach a stage where people make you into an icon. Once it gets started, you can’t stop it anymore.”

Since all we have of Moss is a face or body, we project a variety of different ideals of a character on to her. The rock-star rebel with the burntout lifestyle; the grungy Cinderella teen turned princess; the princess turned stable mum and savvy businesswoman. As Salmon quips, “looking for Kate Moss behind the masks woven by legend would be in vain. Kate Moss is a composite object, a mixture put together by fashion and magazines.”

But while Marilyn and Jackie O lost control of the images they so carefully built, by refusing to be anything more than a face or body, Moss has left the work of creating and interpreting her identity

up to us. She remains, in many ways, truer than any other dandy to Baudelaire’s declaration that “a dandy does nothing.” Because she has completely divorced herself from the iconography that’s created her, we can never completely consume her – like we did Marilyn and Jackie – because we will always continue to create a new image of her when she appears on the cover of the next magazine.

This is not to say that there is no ‘real’ Kate Moss. While we are busy maintaining the myth that is Moss, Kate gets to live her life how she pleases.

She’s a contributing fashion editor of British Vogue, whose cover she’s graced over 30 times. She designs clothes and fragrances, proved to be a talented musician, and she’s even parodied her own image in Comic Relief, Little Britain and Blackadder. After 25 years of partying, Kate is living a quieter, healthier lifestyle with her teenage daughter Lila. She supports a wide variety of charities, and in 2016 opened her own talent agency, to manage not just her own modelling career but also those of others.

We continue to do the hard work of building and maintaining Moss’s myth, and all Kate Moss has to do is pose – a face and a body. She’s so much more than that, but refuses to let us see it. n

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SARTORIAL •

Scott Simpson (p44) • Launer Wallets (p60) • Get The Look: The Hep Cat (p64) • Palm Beach Style (p68) • Stetson Hats (p75) Community Clothing (p82) • CC41 Utility Clothing

(p87)

Interview

SCOTT SIMPSON A rainy day in Worthing seemed like the perfect setting in which to meet a young fashion designer whose new collection evokes a 1950s French Riviera. John Minns spoke to Scott Simpson about how vintage is the backbone of all his designs, his early mod influences, his views on the paucity of youth subcultures and what exactly ‘retrospective modernism’ means

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n your web site you state that vintage has been your guiding hand since the very beginning?

When I was 16 I started getting into scooters, so while at college I got myself a little Vespa. Then I joined a scooter club in Brighton, and they would take me along to soul clubs and teach me what mods were about. I’ve always believed in studying anything as much as you can to build up informed knowledge.

Yes, vintage is a foundation for me, for the whole brand, for my whole identity. I was born and grew up in Hong Kong, and my dad, who has been a huge inspiration for me and my clothes, brought us up around plenty of old stuff. He took us to school in a Morris Traveller, and he’d pull us along to antique shops, all of which made me appreciate older things.

Did your father’s passion for antiques have a bearing on how you studied the mod scene?

Very much so. The clothes I designed at the beginning were an exact reflection of what I needed.

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Saffron and Green Striped Lido Shirt

The Talented Mr Ripley Anzio Italian Knit Shirt

The first thing I needed was a duffel bag and I was searching for that specific piece, so I decided to make it.

I never had any formal training, but when I was young my dad would take me to tailor’s shops in Hong Kong. Instead of going to a shop and buying a shirt, he’d go and have one made for the same price, with all the details you want. The ability to create something with the right people who were enthusiastic was so much better than just going into a shop. The whole process now is not just me making something, it’s the involvement of, for example, the maker in Italy who sends me videos of the yarn arriving at the factory, and his excitement at starting to make things with it. The pattern cutter who remembers something they did in the fifties and bringing that into something new.

“Everything I’ve learned about clothing has been through the lens of that mod passion for tailoring and knitwear and being obsessed by clothes. But after a while I needed to take myself out of it because I felt restrained.

And by breaking away from it I found this beautiful enjoyment of learning different fits and colours” 47

So a personalised service is paramount?

Quite a lot of what I have done with this label is extending that personal touch, and having that connection with the customer. As it grows, that becomes more difficult but there is still that thread that runs through. It becomes more difficult to answer a question from a customer about how they should take their waist measurement. However, I’ve not yet reached that point where I lose control of it, even though I can’t answer every email.

“I had a cape made at a tailor in Thailand, based on a famous shot from the sixties of some models wearing Hardy Amies; one had this jacket with side pockets which I drooled over, another had this shawl-collared fur car coat and they all had tiny pork pie hats.

I was obsessed with Italian tailoring at the time and its influence on British fashion” This approach certainly benefitted Ralph Lauren and Tommy Nutter.

I love Nutter and am also quite familiar with Edward Sexton’s work. It was really him doing all the work and he continues to do so on his own. I love the element of a house cut that is essentially a brand and the family side of it; everyone who works there being part of that team or that crew. One thing I hear a lot from people who work on Savile Row is that they have somehow to maintain that look but without alienating too many people. In my opinion, some of them have gone too far into their own thing and ended up alienating people, not just on price.

The tailor who really obsessed me was Hardy Amies. One of the first pieces I ever had made was

48

The Talented Mr Ripley Ischia Italian Knit Shirt

Empire Waist Wide Leg Pleated Trousers

when I went to Thailand aged 19 to see my dad, and I had a cape made at a tailor on an island. I’d seen this famous shot from the early sixties of some models wearing Hardy Amies; one had this jacket with side pockets which I drooled over, another had this shawl-collared fur car coat and they all had tiny pork pie hats. I was obsessed with Italian tailoring at the time and its influence on British fashion. So while my girlfriend sat by the pool in Thailand I’d be off to the tailors for fittings, asking to get the club collar just right and the snap-button closure. They loved me and they hated me, but at the end of it I came away with something like ten shirts, three capes and eight suits, all for around £300. From that I saw where I really wanted to be in my work.

But I’m totally hands-on; I can build cars or motorbikes and at work I’ll turn my hand to cutting fabric if it’s required of me. My dad Fraser was like that and that’s the reason for the name of my label – Scott Fraser Simpson – because a lot of it is owed to my dad and the ability to turn your hand to making stuff.

Do you do a lot of sketching, like most fashion designers?

Yes I do. I think for a lot of designers there is always that connection with particular vintage pieces that provide the genesis for their own work. We’re never completely changing the face of clothing; it still has to have two arms and a front and a back.

Of course you can experiment with the construction more, but for me it was about taking the clothes you really loved and respected, and elements that had been lost along the way from vintage clothing. I’ve seen a diluted version of some of those clothes I admire from the sixties in the shops now. Those details, be it the buttonholes, or the internals of the jacket, or a little tag of fabric on the zip to pull it up. Those little touches were always what I found most amazing about those old clothes. And the fabrics themselves had much more variety and much more colour.

“If it keeps going the way it is, the value engineering of clothing – the overusage of fabric, the wastefulness of collections, the mass consumption – will dilute our clothing into either those only aimed at people who are super anal about clothes, or those for people that just want it for one pound and don’t care where it comes from”

Have you ever used vintage fabrics in your collections?

I made a collection a year ago called the Lido Shirts, with a lido collar, broad-striped front in a linen cotton mix. I found the fabric in the back of a mill up in Leeds. I was being shown around the place and we’d go past rooms and I’d say, what’s in there, can I have a look? They attached no value to it; it’s old shit to them! So they might have a few rolls of this amazing fabric and I’d only need to make 20 shirts or so with it, so it was enough for a small limited run.

I’ve seen collections I’ve worked on as a freelancer get sold off for 50p to TK Maxx, because potentially they don’t have enough buyers for wholesale. I used to feel really disheartened by that model, not only because you lose the connection with your customer but also because you lose the ability to do something that’s meaningful. Clothes

Did you have any foundation in actually making things?

In terms of university training or anything, no I didn’t. When I was 17 I moved to London and was involved in modelling, while studying creative design and advertising. I was part of the fashion scene and I would see how fashion labels would run. They’d shoot stuff on this day and that would be for the next season, and so gradually I pieced together the jigsaw of how everything worked.

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Ochre Cuban Collar Shirt

Off White Wool Fleck Suit

aren’t just a commodity; they’re a feeling, an idea, an energy. These little details aren’t expensive to add in, but they’re worth it.

“I’m doing my best to think about creating a look, season upon season, collection upon collection, that could endure, and there are people that follow it. Today there’s a lack of subculture and being able to feel freer from the confines of what is acceptable and not acceptable; there are so many tickboxes of what you have to fulfil when you’re dressing”

So, like Tommy Nutter, some of your clothes could end up at Christies in the future?

The brand philosophy when I started this thing was ‘retrospective modernism’, essentially taking design elements from the past and bringing them into the future, and also preserving them for the years to come. Carrying those good practices through; otherwise, if it keeps going the way it is, the value engineering of clothing – the overusage of fabric, the wastefulness of collections, the mass consumption – will dilute it into either clothes for people who are super anal about cut, or clothes for people who just want it for one pound and don’t care where it comes from. It could get so far down that road that clothes will have no meaning at all.

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Empire Waist Peg Trousers in Jet Black Irish Linen

Blue Fleck Wool Suit

endure, and there are people that follow it. Today there’s a lack of subculture and being able to feel freer from the confines of what is acceptable and not acceptable; there are so many tickboxes of what you have to fulfil when you’re dressing.

There was great creativity during the Second World War, when there were restrictions on what could be made.

I think that’s the best thing. Out of restrictions or the lack of money comes creativity. Sometimes the people with the least amount of money can do the most with what they have.

Do you think there is a conservatism among those of a supposedly fashionconscious age?

I don’t know for sure, because I wasn’t there at the famous fashion high points of the past to compare them, but there’s always going to be that main vein that you can play off. I feel like people are caring less about what clothes are about, and more about the question of what their clothes will say to people.

You might get a group of youths who will react badly to what you’re wearing, but you get one of them on their own and talk about clothes they’ll admit they’re actually quite interested in highwaisted trousers or whatever.

Look at the Sapeurs…

Exactly, the perfect example! It’s pure passion that drives the Sapeurs. I met one guy who used to come into Mendoza Menswear, when I worked there.

He would give me these DVDs of Sapology from France. I found it amazing that this subculture was still living in these times. Unfortunately we barely have anything now.

“I feel like people are caring less about what clothes are about, and care more about the question of what their clothes will say to people.

You might get a group of youths who will react badly to what you’re wearing, but you get one of them on their own and talk about clothes, they’ll admit they’re actually quite interested in highwaisted trousers or whatever”

Do you ignore high street fashion when coming up with your designs?

I feel I can get a good sense of where they’re at in fashion. Like the Cuban collar thing, which is now everywhere. What I really enjoy is reaching that guy who says, ‘I’m really interested in highwaisted trousers, what’s that like?’ And then a few months later he says, ‘This has changed my life!’

Or the older guy who thinks, I can’t wear this, it’s for a younger man. Then he tries it and says, ‘This is brilliant!’ I like introducing people of all ages to a different fit; I try to champion a wider cut.

Although I came out of the Italian tailored fit, I moved into a much wider, baggier cut. I enjoy the movement of the fabric and the fit, and that you could wear something that didn’t necessarily have to be your exact size.

Do you think that people in the future might struggle to define what the look of the 2020s was?

There are little trends and things that, with a looking glass in the future, you’ll be able to see. But it won’t be like the nineties, for example, with the drop shoulder, or the power suits of the eighties; there is no defining silhouette for our time. I’m doing my best to think about creating a look, season upon season, collection upon collection, that could

It doesn’t always work, though, does it?

You can’t really have a fat mod.

Unfortunately there are quite a lot of them! When I was in the mod scene, I always felt a bit stymied by the confines of the idea of what mod should and shouldn’t be. It seemed to be about being an individual and setting yourself apart from the rest, but actually it was always a strain of the same look.

57

Not to knock the mod look at all, because everything I’ve learned about clothing has been through the lens of that mod passion for tailoring and knitwear and being obsessed by clothes. But after a while I needed to take myself out of it, because I

felt restrained by the confines of the mod aesthetic.

And by breaking away from it I found this beautiful enjoyment of learning different fits and colours. n www.scottfrasercollection.com

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White Wide-leg Cotton Gaucho Trousers

Wallets

MONEY LAUNERING Liam Jefferies on the Royal-Warranted leather merchants who have devoted the last 80 years to making wallets for gentlemen and handbags for the queen

“A lifelong fan of the brand, the Queen bestowed a Royal Warrant on Launer in 1968, and has purchased more than 200 of their bags since then. They have held up against the strain of a pair of reading glasses, a fountain pen and a single, precisely folded £5 note (£10 on Sundays)”

R

eaders of this illustrious gazette will know themselves to be more on the considered side when it comes to attaining a certain individuality through one’s garments; cuff button placement, lining colour and material, even the soles of one’s shoes can be afforded a distinctive characteristic to differentiate it from the bunch.

Why is it, then, that such a personal item as where one’s most valuable possessions are stored, be they monetary or personal, should be subjected to a prosaic and quotidian strip of leather as identikit as everyone else’s? For those seeking a more bespoke billfold, look no further than Launer of London, a British manufacturer of luxury handbags and other

small leather goods, bringing about an erstwhile unseen level of customisation to the gentleman’s pocketbook.

Founded in 1940 by Sam Launer, a Czechoslovakian immigrant who came to London with his wife and two sons during the Second World War after German occupation of his homeland, the company first began manufacturing their wares in a small rented workshop in Soho. Launer first sold a handbag to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 1950, who subsequently gave one to her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

A lifelong fan of the brand, the Queen bestowed a Royal Warrant on Launer in 1968, and has purchased more than 200 of their bags

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since then, and they have held up against the strain of a pair of reading glasses, a fountain pen and a single precisely folded £5 note (£10 on Sundays).

In 1955, after the death of founder Sam Launer, the company passed to his son Freddie (Sam’s other son had been killed in action in the RAF during the war) and Launer remained a family business until purchased by Gerald Bodmer in 1981, who in 2011 introduced colour to a palette that had previously been solely black, brown and navy.

Since then, Launer has become known not only as a supplier to royalty, but also for their wide range of bold yet elegant colour schemes. The company has taken the concept of bespoke leather goods one step further still, with a wallet that can be completely customised by its owner. This made-to-order service covers five bags and the heritage Eight Card Wallet.

This best-selling wallet exhibits all the understated style which has become synonymous with over 70 years of heritage, with turned-edge calf leatherwork, two sections for banknotes, and the space to store eight credit cards, so no more jostling for a place between your Private Club

membership card and the loyalty card from your tobacconist. An online tool allows one to choose from a colour and leather selection as extensive as it is curated, while the website renders an impression of one’s selection on the instanter. The almost endless choices mean one can be assured of a unique and personal item, for no additional cost.

To further add to this, an embossed monogramming service is also available, as are rolled gold plated corners. Every style is handcrafted in the Launer London factory in Holtshill Lane, Walsall, a 6,500 square foot Edwardian building previously used for the manufacturing of fine leather bridlery since 1904.

This process requires a level of skill and investment of time in equal measure, with one piece taking up to eight hours on average to produce.

Utilising only the finest calfskin, suede, lizard, ostrich or crocodile, the leathers are cut and split, with even the slightest imperfection discarded.

All leathers are sourced with due diligence from reputable tanneries with strict governance. Linings are found in the form of refined goat suede, and

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each part is cut and separately assembled before being crafted into a finished item. This is all done by a single expert craftsman, and endures a meticulous inspection against a rigorous criteria at each stage, to ensure total and sempiternal composition.

This process culminates in a product of such quality and longevity that one can afford to disregard any notions of replacement, save perhaps for their Launer wallet falling down a bottomless hole or being mauled by the family hound.

Launer goods are available from Selfridges, Fortnum & Mason and Fenwick or from www.launer.com n

@sartorialchap

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Sartorial

Get The Look

HEP CAT STYLE Digby Fairfax on how to dress like the sort of 1940s/50s buck who frequents jazz clubs, clip joints and reefer parties

L

et us make one thing crystal clear: we are not speaking of the contemporary hipster.

While jazz-jumpin’ chaps from the midtwentieth century were sometimes referred to as ‘hipsters’, we are going to use the term ‘hep cat’ to distinguish this stylish breed from their bearded millennial counterparts.

Chaps who favour the forties may be perfectly happy in their three-piece suits, demob trilbies and co-respondent shoes, but should they wish to delve slightly further into alternatives, the hep cat look is but a small step away and opens up a whole new world of possibilities, while still maintaining the sartorial decorum expected of a Chap.

SHOES The definitive hep cat shoe is of course the saddle shoe, whose originator in the 1950s, GH Bass, disappointingly does not see fit to continue producing them, at least not on the eastern seabord of the Atlantic. The most economical UK versions are those peddled by Rocket Originals (www. rocketoriginals.co.uk), available in navy and cream or brown and cream (£99). For a sturdier item, head over to Mark McNairy (www. markmcnairy-uk.com) for the previously featured Saddle Shoe in navy suede with brown leather saddle (£245).

For a simpler look below the trouser, Rocket Originals sell a plain white Nubuck Gibson (below right), while www.penahaus.com provides an impressive display of 1950s-style shoes, including a plain black suede number called the Wolf Black (below left).

£99.00

€140.00

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TROUSERS You might think that hep cats, what with all the dancing £49.00 and fighting with flicknives, would favour a belted trouser, but this is not always the case. Braces can accompany the hep cat’s raiment, and if you seek the most authentic number, Simon James Cathcart (www. simonjamescathcart.com) purvey the ‘Biscuit Dot’ variety at £49.

The trousers for them to support can also come from Cathcart, for instance a pair of Open-Weave Arkwright Trousers or Grey Wool Ellington Trousers (below).

The Peg Trouser is a belted option for the braceless; try Morellos, whose English-style Pegs (£70) have a saddle seam down the side and come in burgundy, navy or black. The Scott Fraser Collection has many wide-legged trousers, notably the ‘classic’ (£249), which are made to order and feature a 10-inch hem and high waistband.

£49.00

£42.00

SHIRT It must be understood that the hep cat shirt drifts rather far from the Jermyn Street particulars. Most hep cat shirts are worn tieless (don’t worry, there is accompanying neckwear – see below) as they are cut to be worn with an open collar. The 1950s ‘Gab Style’ shirt is usually sported in pastel colours, often in two-tone colours. The ones from Morellos (www. morellos-clothing.co.uk) come in at £50, in a range of colourways from russet brown to racing green. The Steady Rust Brown Panel Shirt (above) from Ozone Clothing (www.ozoneclothing.co.uk) is another variation, tending towards a bowling shirt. Simon James Cathcart makes a vintage-inspired polo shirt with long sleeves, available in similarly rustic shades of bottle green, mustard, burgundy and rust.

£149.00

£59.00

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£60.00 £130.00

KNITWEAR Often the hep cat look will blur the boundaries between shirt and knitwear, and the two are rarely worn together.

Instead, there are various iterations of a knitted item that has shirtlike qualities, for example those from Morellos, who describe their knitted 7-button pullover as ‘The Belmont Jersey Top’ (£60) and it comes in various combinations of black and muted fifties colours.

Should you wish to step slightly closer to Jude Law’s Riviera style in The Talented Mr. Ripley, you can acquire an authentic reproduction from the Scott Fraser Collection (www.scottfrasercollection.com), the Ripley Ischia Shirt (below), in either yellow and cream or pale blue and cream, for £310. At the racier end of the knitwear spectrum are those from Ozone Clothing (above), whose reproductions of an Italian style of knitted shirt (£60-£78) mostly feature diamond and zigzag patterns.

£310.00

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JACKET Unlike traditional Chap clothing, there are a bewildering variety of jackets to adorn the hep cat silhouette. The closest to the traditional suit jacket is the Box Jacket, and Revival Vintage sell original vintage examples, as well as reproduction fifties bomber jackets. Box Jackets are also available from Morellos (£120). Then there is the Hollywood Jacket, reminiscent of Elvis Presley’s garb. Ozone Clothing’s iterations include one in a very 1950s shade of pistacchio green (£95). Penahaus make Hollywood Jackets in shades or rust and cream (£225) that would not have looked out of place in Roger Moore’s wardrobe of the 1970s.

The ‘Gab Jacket’ (short for the tightly woven fabric Gabardine), hops towards the rockabilly look in this most relaxed style of jacket. Outerlimitz (www.outerlimitz.net) make the classic version in black and pink (below), while sturdier versions are available from Heyday Vintage £95.00 (www.heydayonline. co.uk) in pale blue and atomic red (above) at £130.

Vintage versions at around £50 are available from Revival Vintage (www. revivalvintage.co.uk).

£30.00 NECKWEAR

HEADWEAR

Hep Cats wear ties, but you won’t find a regimental stripe among their wide-tipped, colourful numbers known as ‘swing ties’. Both Timmy Pickles (www. timmypickles.co.uk) and Revival Vintage sell excellent vintage ones. The other hep cat neckwear garment is a neckerchief.

But don’t think you can simply repurpose your vast armoire of pocket squares. A neckerchief, in order for it to be rolled diagonally, requires a width of at least 22 inches, 00 £4. compared to the traditional 16-inch pocket square. Peter Christian produce a small range in classic paisley designs at only £4, while a fuller range but still priced at a modest £5 comes from www. tiesplanet.com. A more rakish design (pictured) was once available from Simon James Cathcart but sadly these may now only be acquired from Messrs E. Bay & Co.

Oddly enough, despite the wealth of choices for the potential hep cat in all other garments, when it comes to headwear you have only two options: floppy Baker Boy Cap or Pork Pie Trilby. The top of the range linen baker boy cap comes from www.sussextweed.co.uk priced between £70 and £90. For a mid-range, sturdy baker boy cap, head over to Stanley Briggs (www.stanleybiggs.co.uk) for their Hardwick Cap in light grey Harris Tweed (below).

You can get the same item in cream linen from www.cotswoldcountryhats.com for a mere £20, and while you’re there, take a look at their pork pie titfers. They stock a total of 17 different styles, ranging in price from £20-£35.

The one pictured above is their Crushable Grey with Diamond Crown (£30).

£65.00

£80.00

SUNGLASSES The hep cat would likely call his sunglasses ‘shades’ and who are we to judge, as long as he only wears them when there is sunshine blasting in his eyes and not while on the dancefloor.

Dead Men’s Spex (www.deadmensspex.com) carry a large stock of 1940s and 50s-style sunglasses, and will furnish you with a pair of Tortoise Shuron Sidewinder frames for £80, and they’ll add non-prescription tinted lenses for an extra £20, with prescription lenses at £45. Black Eyewear’s (www. blackeyewear.com) Woody sunglasses come in at £177 and come in a bewildering (and very ‘hep’) range of 18 different colours, from light tan to jet black. Should you prefer a tinted lens, the only shades in the Scott Fraser Collection feature rose-tinted lenses and tortoiseshell frames (£150).

£177.00

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Sartorial

RESORT FASHION Throw on a foulard and button your blazer as we explore the bygone world of Palm Beach style with Darcy Sullivan

W

“While the idea may seem bizarre today, so would some of the clothes. Double-breasted jackets with shorts?

Flag-sized cravats with polo shirts? Gabardine as beach attire?”

hen it comes to high-def fashion tips, you really can’t beat the Esquire caption writer in his heyday: “To Palm Beach via the French Rivera: Here are two important new fashions in beach wear. On the left, the combination of the new mocha coloured linen and cotton mixed beach shirt, made in collarless style, with seaweed color beach slacks that are as new in cut as they are in color, distinguished by the four-inch waistband with self straps and buckles. The sandals are of natural color and twine with leather soles and heels. The other sketch shows the new beach suit in côte blue,

of which the shorts are cut rather full and long, with a vent at the side, after the Tyrolean shorts

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from which they originally derived. The color is that worn by the French militia, a flattering shade to men of all ages, particularly to the suntanned.

The suit is two-piece, the shorts in a linen or mixed linen and cotton and the shirt is a lighter weight of the same material. The shirt carries a high set collar, four-button front, half sleeves and two patch pockets.”

The above description (pictured right), from February 1938, explains in you-are-there detail what the smart set were wearing in resorts. Decades before street style blogs and Pitti Uomo photo spreads, readers of magazines like Apparel Arts and Esquire relied for guidance on captions and illustrations, by skilled artists such as Laurence Fellows and Robert Goodman. While the idea may seem bizarre today, so would some of the clothes.

Double-breasted jackets with shorts? Flag-sized cravats with polo shirts? Gabardine as beach attire?

Welcome to the peculiar world of resort wear. It’s not just the WTF combos that strike the modern chap as a bit silly, it’s the whole idea of high-style beachwear. Most dandies don’t go near the beach, not just because they share a completely reasonable terror of the sun but because there are no mirrors there, and there is sand. Men who do go to the beach – again, sand! – don’t bone up on

the latest styles beforehand. Shorts and a T-shirt will do. The male sex may be happy to follow rules when it comes to formal wear and the width of lapels or ties. But they balk at being told how to dress to relax.

During the golden age of menswear, the 1930s and 40s, it was a different story. Fashionable resorts in Florida and Europe hosted a parade of smart casual peacockery, as the well-to-do modelled the style for a summer – before the most daring souls created the following year’s definitive looks. And now, menswear designers such as Simon James Cathcart and Scott Simpson are taking inspiration from the styles of summers past.

WELCOME TO PALM BEACH While the French Riviera was the European capital of resort wear, it found an unlikely sister city in Palm Beach, a Florida resort that held its own against Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo. It still draws the rich and powerful – Trump’s infamous Mar-a-Lago resort is there, which tells you something. In its prime, there was even a Palm Beach suit. Classic Palm Beach style included among its staples: • Double-breasted navy blazers • Seersucker and linen suits and separates • Shorts and wide-legged trousers

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Gene Kelly relaxing in Palm Beach casual wear

where the point wasn’t just the garments themselves but also the way individuals put them together.

No high-society hob-nobber made a greater impact than Edward, Prince of Wales, later Duke of Windsor. His penchant for sartorial juxtaposition was ideal for the hodge-podge experimentation of resort style. Indeed, as Woody Hochswender notes in Men in Style: The Golden Age of Fashion from Esquire, his ensembles were so frequently cited that an April 1935 Esquire caption stated, “Every third or fourth issue we swear off mentioning the Prince of Wales, getting sicker, if possible, of talking about him than you are of hearing about him.”

• Gabardine • Khaki, polo and sailor shirts • Boaters and fishermen’s caps eck shoes and co-respondent (spectator in • D the US) shoes

• Cravats and foulards

Instantly recognizable, the styles also evolved quickly, on both sides of the Atlantic. “Summer fashion spread from one spot to another, like pollen carried by a swarm of cosmopolitan bees,” wrote Farid Chenoune in A History of Men’s Fashion.

“This explains its cross-bred, international nature, the product of rapid, multiple borrowings from fishermen’s gear, sailor’s uniforms, sports clothing and colonial dress (both military and civilian). In this respect, summer clothing was already more modern than any other, and Americans were its most eloquent advocates.”

Celebrities like Noel Coward, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire rubbed shoulders with land barons, socialites and swells. As sunny weather melted the rules of attire, men were rewarded for their creativity, and the most influential styles would be photographed, drawn, described, reported and copied. Resorts were a catwalk for street fashion,

SUMMER’S END Whatever happened to resort wear, this lynchpin of louche? As Christian Baker said about the Riviera in The Rake, “It wasn’t long before the (sic) hoi polloi caught on, and the rot set in.” Once the nouveau riche could throw on a jaunty scarf and a Greek fisherman’s cap and stroll along the promenade at the Côte d’Azur, the cachet quicly wilted. Barker argues that by the 1950s and 1960s, what had once been exclusive had become – horrors! – merely popular.

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The Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson

Terry-Thomas mocks the look in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

I would counter that the 1960s youthquake was a bigger part of resort style’s downfall. Young people became the arbiters of ‘in’, and the idea that fashion was set by rich old people seemed prehistoric. TV shows and movies made the classic Palm Beach/yacht club look like the uniform of a clueless elite, aka The Enemy. Characters such as Thurston Howell III in the American sitcom Gilligan’s Island and Judge Smails in Caddyshack wore navy blazers and cravats to signal that they were luvvie buffoons; Terry-Thomas’s safari shirt, shorts and thigh-high socks lampoon the look in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Today, Palm Beach and Riviera fashions may seem as out-of-step as playing tennis in a longsleeved shirt and jacket. But the style has echoes in the Ivy League preppy look, which sneaks back into hipness every few years when nobody’s looking.

And as a signifier of an aristocratic past, resort style shows up in films like The Talented Mr. Ripley, looking fresh and perhaps even cool to our eyes. When you think about it, dressing up rather than down in the ultimate casual environment, where most fellows can’t even be bothered to wear a shirt – what could be more chap than that? n

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75 YEARS AGO WE WEREN’T EVEN ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT THIS WATCH, LET ALONE TAKE OUT A FULL-PAGE AD. In 1943 the British Ministry of Defence commissioned Vertex to make a military watch. Its specifications and even its existence were highly classified, and Vertex founder Claude Lyons was sworn to secrecy.

Even in September 1945, when the military campaigns in Europe and Asia werÄ™ finally over, he still never spoke about it. It wasn,t until 2018, our centenary year, that Vertex first acknowledged the Calibre 59, with the creation of the M100. Now, to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, and as a tribute to all the soldiers, sailors and aircrew who wore Vertex watches, we have created the limited-edition Bronze 75.

The official MoD Broad Arrow, an edition number, a store number and the W.W.W. stamp make it a faithful homage to its wartime predecessor, just not nearly as confidential.

Read more at vertex-watches.com

Sartorial

STETSON Matt Deckard has designed hats for heritage hat brands Dobb’s, Knox and Christies, and held the auspicious post as the last creative director of Stetson Hats. He tells the story of how the brand came into being in the Wild West and how he left his mark on the iconic hatter

I

t’s been over half a century since a gentleman looked out of place without a hat. Since then, it’s been decades of hat wearing decline, with all the driving to work and leaving your hat in the car, or just staying indoors as you video into your job from the air-conditioned comfort of your lounger. By the 1960s, the de rigueur necessity of the hat to complete a man’s outfit was already seen as old-fashioned (and at the time that was a bad thing).

Today, the hat for nearly everyone who wears a suit has become an affectation. And even when you find a shop that carries classic felt hats that would co-ordinate with the outfit of a Chap, it’s less than likely that you will find one that doesn’t turn a chaply anachronistic look into an unintentionally comical approach.

“There was a time when you could say the word Stetson and the whole world knew it was a hat brand.

Today, the baseball cap has taken over and the most worn hat is from a company called New Era: pushed as seasonal, easy to make and easy to throw out” 75

Portrait of John B Stetson in the Stetson Mansion

The history of Stetson is one of innovation and bringing quality mass production to the hatting world. If this were one of those classic magazines from the 1930s like National Geographic, I could go on for a third of the article about history, maybe using one photo of a donkey with hat bodies strapped to its back, but I’ll save that for the book. The more concise story to tell is how John B. Stetson made his way West in the USA after leaving his father’s hat company, ‘The No Name Hat Company’, to look for gold, like many other Americans in the 1800s. As America’s West took shape, John B. found that he had a better knack for making money by making and selling a better hat to the frontiersmen and cattlemen.

There was no magic to the hat that took the frontier by storm, which was dubbed The Boss of The Plains. 1850s American men were very much in short brims and tricorns with the sides sewn up, but John Stetson running around with his wide flat brim, which held up well to the elements, was obviously an advantage to those first pioneers heading west, into a frontier where living on the trail had become the norm.

The original Boss of the Plains was one made on the trail and sold to someone who saw its amazing attributes; John B. Stetson decided then and there to send the specs to his dad’s company,

and sell them to the dry goods shops out West by the dozen. The main factor that produced a fur-felt which held up well under the elements was access to beaver and nutria and hare (a large plains rabbit) fur from animals that lived in marshes and streams.

It put Stetson on the map as the durable well-made brand for anyone serious about quality over a name. And so Stetson became ‘the name’ in hats.

By the 1920s, Stetson was the number one selling hat in the world. With the focus going back to shorter brims for the city, those still living in towns with dusty roads would often laugh at someone wearing a Stetson bowler, and the phrase, “It must be a fake” would be uttered when Stetson was named.

There was a time when you could say the word Stetson and the whole world knew it was a hat brand. Today, the baseball cap has taken over society, and the biggest name and most worn hat is from a company called New Era: pushed as seasonal, easy to make and easy to throw out.

Production done by the lowest bidding factory overseas, as disposability has overtaken repair and durability. A far cry from the long-lasting hat of the frontiersman, who looked to make it his own as it got steeped in grime and character, while it continued reliably to shade his head from all the elements in comfort.

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A century later, Stetsons are still made in the USA. Today you can say Stetson to the person next to you and they may think it’s a cologne, but more than likely they have no idea what it is – at least anywhere outside of the rodeo circuit and cowboy world, as Stetson is often thought of as the general name for a cowboy hat around the globe.

colours of the past that had been the core of the brand when it was the centrepiece of the world, and take that baton to make the highest quality hat for today, in styles that looked good enough that you’d choose to grab your hat before you went out the door, rather than go out bareheaded.

My job was to sell romance.

From the outset, inspired by the past and encouraged by my hat wearing friends (ie all of them), I was able to bring back brand-defining styles using the original machinery with the original hat making techniques, many dating back to the 1920s and before. Sourcing from my own archives, I applied the original elements that I loved, in an attempt to redefine iconic styles to suit the fashion of the modern day. I installed in the new line pieces that could fight the trend of fast fashion, to create that item you could put on your head knowing it added, rather than took away, from your outfit.

I reintroduced a line of women’s hats and watched as more and more styles populated the

THE LAST CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF STETSON As the creative director of a brand that had become focused on cowboys, my job was to turn that around. I came to Garland, Texas with a mission: to redefine the thing I loved, and to figure out how to pass on that passion to everyone else.

My mandate was to rebuild the dress hat division of the brand, which had atrophied during the decline of hat wearing in general, in a market where cowboy hats had become the sole focus.

To exhume the materials, machinery, blocks and

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“As the creative director of a brand that had become focused on cowboys, my job was to turn that around.

I came to Texas with a mission: to redefine the thing I loved, and to figure out how to pass on that passion to everyone else”

yet subtly elegant look of America’s hat. I willed into being and negotiated the return of the iconic Manhattan neon Stetson sign that had always been, and now again is, above JJ Hat Center on Fifth Avenue, New York.

Exotic locations led to extraordinary situations; one day I was discussing the toquila palm crop with the Ecuadorian consulate while driving to work, the next I was in Manhattan, being tracked down by an Italian man wanting to sweep me up in his SUV, just so I could explain the fall lineup.

Video conferences with Germany at 2am, allnighters to clean up my Japanese business etiquette because the clients were arriving early. I’ve made new friends here, I’ve had great adventures, and Big Tex Under the shade of his Cowboy hat has always looked down at me and smiled. I went to the rodeos, to the barn dances and I got to know the kings and queens of the outlaw country scene.

My mission to redefine and pass on my passion for Stetson to everyone was completed. I’ve been happy to see the hat go from anachronism and once again become a worthwhile fashion item in our casual world. Even though what I focused on bringing back is often looked at as nostalgic for the past, I’m glad to see these lost attributes being relearned by others, as the world of hatting once again grows. n

lineup, and I was proud that the factory could visibly see a change happening. After many years of the floor being covered in racks and racks of cowboy hats, day in, day out, this turned into a sea of red as Marvel’s Agent Carter, played by Hayley Atwell, hit the silver screen, atop her head a Stetson. Dozens of hats were made for Hollywood again, which you can see today in series like Hollywood on Netflix, which show that Stetson being forgotten is now a forgotten thought.

For the 150th anniversary of the company, I designed a roundtable of the finest quality pieces that could be produced, knowing that these were the very same steps that over a century of Stetson master hatters had used to make the pronounced

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COMMUNITY CLOTHING Liam Jefferies on the company founded by Savile Row tailor Patrick Grant making quality affordable clothes in Britain’s underused factories and, in turn, creating jobs in some of the UK’s most deprived areas

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n what is hopefully the start of a return to what could be considered normality, people are once more emerging from their elasticwaisted cocoons and dressing like proper grown-up human beings again, and not like a nation of Arthur Dents. It is highly likely that your pre-isolation garments have now fallen a little on the snug side and you may be in need of some new wardrobe staples. Enter Community Clothing, the brainchild of Patrick Grant, the Savile Row tailor behind E. Tautz and Norton & Sons.

Launched 2016, Community Clothing offers a slick line of men’s and women’s basics to see you through the year, from chunky knits to Harrington jackets and Bermuda shorts, and even a line of selvedge pantaloons de Nîmes for those who like that sort of thing.

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“A Chap favourite is the Khaki suit, an unlined three-button jacket and chinos in 9.5oz 100% cotton twill. A good all-year-round casual piece of tailoring also available in Navy, the two-piece has a slouchy feel with a chore-style cut and high-waisted trousers that taper slightly towards the ankle”

Every item in CC’s wares are manufactured in Blackburn, Lancashire, as is proudly declared on their otherwise understated branding. While for some brands the term ‘Made in Britain’ may simply be the phrase du-jour, for Grant, it is the driving force behind the entirety of Community Clothing.

The brand began as an initiative that sought to breathe new life into the waning British textile industry, much the same as Yarmouth Oilskins (Chap #101) or the Hebden Trouser Co. (Chap #86).

In the United Kingdom, many factories, particularly in the garment sector, have a tendency to operate far below capacity, as each year more labels opt for cheaper overseas production. Not only does UK-based manufacturing miss out to outsourcing to cheaper labour markets, but also another dilemma facing the industry is the intrinsic

seasonality of the fashion world. Factories in the UK often fluctuate between inundation and stagnation. This results in factories being nowhere near as full as one might believe, which in turn can lead to zero hours contracts or full closures, having a devastating impact on local communities.

In an act of admittedly “ill-advised and sentimental philanthropy”, Grant purchased the Cookson & Clegg factory in Blackburn, which was threatened with imminent closure, despite operating since 1860, originally making leather overalls for coal delivery men, then becoming a chief supplier to E. Tautz. The next step in this endeavour was to devise a business model which sold directly to consumers, took advantage of offpeak seasonal factory downtime and presented an iterative approach to design, all the while avoiding

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heavily marked up prices and focusing on quality and affordability.

In designing timeless, classic garments made with simple manufacturing techniques, the products can be produced to the same quality as their high-end counterparts, at a fraction of the price.

These design-based solutions put the supply chain first, enabling pared-back classics engineered with great quality fabrics, such as British Millerain of Rochdale, well known throughout the industry as waxed cotton experts. The local supply chain is ever expanding; jumpers are made in Hawick, scarves in Ayrshire, fabrics are spun in Dukinfield, knitted in Leicester, sewn in Blackburn, printed in Blackpool and finished in Burnley. This policy of 100% local garment production means maximum traceability, minimum retail cost and carbon footprint and zero customs duty.

No stranger to the world of design, Grant has been recipient of the British Fashion Council’s Menswear Designer of the Year, and has featured on BBC Two’s The Great British Sewing Bee. With this and the legacy of Savile Row in his veins, the pieces produced by Grant at Community Clothing are a welcome tonic to the humdrum fast fashion flooding the market. By opting for non-seasonal clothing, made to last, it is easy to assemble a capsule wardrobe from these functional and practical wares.

These are not glad rags, to be worn once in a blue

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“As a nation we can sartorially benefit, and aid the sustenance of British jobs, by purchasing wares that don’t carry the ‘Made in England’ moniker simply as a marketing tool, but as a strident stand against the catch-22 of inaccessible designer goods and the cheap, disposable vortex of fast fashion” moon, but everyday staples which coordinate with each other in a veritable symphony of unpretentious elegance. One could get dressed in the dark with nary a fear of anything other than a sartorially complete, modest and unassuming ensemble.

After a successful launch on Kickstarter, raising over £80,000 in 20 days, the brand headlined Selfridges’ ‘Material World’ campaign, exploring the use of sustainable materials in fashion and, since then, Community Clothing’s emphasis has been on making it easier and more affordable for people to shop sustainably. With prices starting

A Chap favourite at is the Khaki suit, comprised of an unlined three-button jacket and relaxed-cut chinos in a 9.5oz 100% cotton twill. A good all-year-round casual piece of tailoring that is also available in Navy, the twopiece has a slouchy feel with a chore-style cut and high-waisted trousers that taper slightly towards the ankle.

The brand made the decision to stop washing certain items during manufacture; this helps to keep the final retail cost as low as possible, while being more environmentally friendly. It also means that one receives the garment in its purest form.

This, in turn, will sustain the life of the garment and enables the customer to wash and wear in as they wish. Couple this with the painstakingly stripped back design, and the whole thing harks to the times of functionality, when such an item would be purchased, worn into the ground, and repaired as such, with no thought of pre-washing or worse still, pre-fraying, the latter which should be outlawed. It also harks back, not only in the re-appropriation of the CC41 logo, but also to the Utility Clothing produced during WWII (see overleaf).

at £2.50 for a pair of socks produced from yarn waste, to £185 for a Peacoat made from Merino wool sourced from the British heritage mill A. W. Hainsworth & Sons (est.1783), the CC brand perfectly demonstrates the pairing of quality and conscience.

Profits are invested in programmes in the same communities where the factories are located, in partnership with the Bootstrap Company, an organisation which helps people back into employment. Today Community Clothing works with 25 factories and suppliers in the UK, and has created thousands of hours of skilled work, all paid at the National Living Wage. As a nation we can sartorially benefit, and aid the sustenance of British jobs, by purchasing wares that don’t carry the ‘Made in England’ moniker simply as a marketing tool, but as a strident stand against the catch-22 of inaccessible designer goods and the cheap, disposable vortex of fast fashion.

In plugging this gap, and delivering a capsule collection that is stylish without being trendy, of high quality without the markup, and in support of the British textile industry, here is one label that has earned its appellation of Community Clothing. n

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CC41: FASHION WITH FORTITUDE Peter Gosbee on how Utility Clothing was initially seen as frugal and unstylish during the Second World War, but went on to form the defining silhouette of 1940s Britain

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ith its striking Art Deco lines and bold monochrome tone, the CC41 logo has long stood for upheld values and resilience in the face of the great pressures upon wartime Britain.

It is 1941 and the war with the Axis rages, grinding the United Kingdom and testing every part of its resolve. Raw materials are becoming scarce. The hunger for components, essential for the continuation of the war effort, becomes insatiable. U-boats sink the daring convoys which bravely attempt to deliver goods across the Atlantic.

On the home front, the need for everyday products

“After the war and rationing, there was no desire to relive those memories; people wanted to look forwards from austerity, and the CC41 stamp had become a strong reminder of those difficult, dangerous and painful times�

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remains very much essential to the beleaguered citizens. Austerity and rationing grasp the nation in their frugal grip by the end of the year.

All garments henceforth are to be subject to strict guidelines, which in turn will signal a historic change in the world of British fashion. Clothing manufacturers, prompted by the introduction of enhanced production quotas (and therefore enhanced profit) begin using government-approved rationed fabrics marked ‘CC41’.

It was not just the cloth which was dictated, but also the very way in which the garments were cut and manufactured. Gone were extravagant trouser turn-ups, French cuffs, double-breasted suits and wide lapels, while Oxford bags suffered an outright ban. The excess cloth these fripperies required was considered unnecessary, and anything that could be clawed back bolstered the efforts against Hitler’s mob. An estimated four million square yards of cotton per year was saved by these frugal measures.

This austerity had a profound effect on the fashion of the period. Things became a little more

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“The product ranges were wide, from ladies’ underwear to cotton picnic blankets, two-tone brogues to woollen swimming trunks (which should still be rationed, according to popular opinion). Almost anything that could be stitched would be produced from the range of these specifically branded CC41 fabrics” nipped and sleeker cuts began to appear, as the shears of frugality targeted the previous plethoras of pleats and extravagant hems. The product ranges were broad, from ladies’ underwear to

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cotton picnic blankets, two-tone brogues to woollen swimming trunks (which should still be rationed, according to popular opinion). Almost anything that could be stitched would be produced from the range of these specifically branded fabrics.

The population was initially dubious of this new ‘utility’ concept and it was fiercely rejected by some. In time, however, the public came to accept it and labels still recognisable today (St Michael, Jaeger, Kangol) began to stamp or stitch CC41 into the pieces made from this cloth. CC41 also found its way into other markets as varied as furniture to pencils, following the same noble principles of practicality, functionality, reliability and economy.

British civilians were also encouraged by both the clothing’s tax-free status and the patriotic ideal of ‘doing our bit’, and began to buy into the new CC41 garments, nicknamed everything from ‘Civilian Commodity’ to ‘Controlled commodity’ to ‘Cheddar Cheese’. A posse of renowned designers, including Norman Hartnell, Hardy Amies, Bianca Mosca and Edward Molyneux formed the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers, each submitting four designs to

The Board of Trade for garments to be included in the CC41 Utility wardrobe. Each designer’s collection contained four basic items – a coat, suit, afternoon dress and suit dresses for the office.

None of them was credited and their designs became the standards of Utility Clothing from 1942-1945.

Although there were teething issues regarding quality in the founding period of production, eventually the rising standards of the items and their manufacture secured the CC41 mark in the minds of the populace as a benchmark for quality, durability and style during these austere times.

This new era of clothing provided people with what they really needed. Government rationing worked on a stamp-book token system. Each family was allotted 66 tokens a week to cover consumables, including food and clothing. You could not access the resources simply to replace an item if it became worn or broken; those seven coupons for a new blazer could keep you in butter for a week! As a result, the longevity of CC41 clothing was an incredibly important factor when people considered the household budget. n

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BUYING AND COLLECTING CC41 clothing and its historical significance to fashion have made it very desirable, not only to individuals interested in vintage fashion but also to re-enactors wanting an authentic period piece to complete an outfit. Museums wanting to document this important revolution into their collections are often very interested in acquiring rare or pristine examples.

These items are still out there. I have found that if I am lucky enough to find 1940s dead stock (unworn/unissued clothing in original packaging), there is a good chance that it is CC41 marked.

This is because after the war and rationing, there was no desire to relive those memories; people wanted to look forwards from austerity, and the CC41 stamp was a strong reminder of those difficult, dangerous and painful times.

There was a vast and varied selection of items produced under the CC41 umbrella, so look and look again at those pieces in the market, charity shop, auction and clothing emporium which have a 1940s feel. With smaller items like gloves, turn them inside out, as some leather accessories were stamped pre-construction and the logo can really be hidden away and only revealed to the intrepid treasure hunter.

WHERE TO LOOK There was no government stipulation as to where the logo should be placed on CC41 garments, so here are a few tips to aid your search. • Frequently

the logo is incorporated in the actual label of the garment itself, most likely on a branded piece.

• If

not, it is sewn into the garment on a separate tag of fabric.

• It

can sometimes be found stamped on to the very cloth itself.

On rare occasions, a simple paper label with the logo was stapled to the garment; this is the true holy grail of Utility Clothing, as it has never been worn or interfered with.

Some individuals decided to cut out the label during or after the war, in the belief that it displayed a symbol of poverty, and sometimes the label simply fell off due to regularly being washed and worn. If you find a 1940s piece, occasionally you will be able to see, with a little examination, the remaining stub of normally white fabric still retained under the stitching, where the logo used to reside.

LONGER FEATURES •

Tom Simpson (p94) • Olly Smith (p102) Maestro Dobel Diamante (p106) • Fly Fishing (p110) • Tiger Bay Blues (p116)

Cycling

TOM SIMPSON Gustav Temple tells the tragic tale of the British cyclist whose promising career came to a dramatic end at the top of Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France

“Mont Ventoux was awesome; as you got closer and closer to it, you realised this is going to be something else. It’s just sheer hell; hell on wheels” Colin Lewis

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he white rocky surface of Mont Ventoux can be seen from miles away, its sun-bleached stone giving it the appearance of a moonscape during the summer, while in the winter it is covered in snow. Regardless of the season, Mont Ventoux maintains its own ghastly climate at the 1,912-metre summit, veering from one day to the next from gale-force winds and storms to searing heat. Situated 60 miles northeast from Avignon in Provence, Ventoux has many nicknames, none of them flattering: Bald Mountain, The Giant of Provence, The Killer Mountain, the Hill of Death.

“The Tour de France is the most important challenge in the international calendar. Every day you are at the peak of your physical conditioning. You are always close to blowing a gasket, always close to breaking point”

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Philosopher Roland Barthes, in his 1957 essay The Epic Tour de France, described it as ‘a true mountain – an evil god to whom sacrifices must be made’.

One such sacrifice was made by a British cyclist during the 54th Tour de France on 13th July, 1967. Tom Simpson was the golden boy of British cycling in the 1960s, and is still regarded as one of the finest cyclists this country has produced. The son of a miner from County Durham, he entered professional cycling in 1959. He clocked up an impressive list of accolades in all the major European races: 1961, won the Tour de Flanders; 1962: donned the yellow jersey in the Tour de France; 1963: won Bordeaux-Paris; 1964: won Milan-San Remo; 1965: won Giro de Lombardia and the World Cycling Championship; 1967: won Paris-Niece. In 1965 he was awarded three British awards by different bodies for Sports Personality of the Year. Having secured the coveted rainbow jersey of the World Road Race Championship, and donned the yellow jersey (the first Briton ever to do so) for one day during the

1962 Tour de France, Tom Simpson had his sights set very high for 1967 – to win the Tour de France.

Despite his run of victories in one to sevenday events, he had set himself a tough challenge, although Tom Simpson was not a cyclist of modest ambitions. “He had this tremendous will to win,” says Colin Lewis, one of Simpson’s teammates on the ’67 Tour. “He would never say die, he would always take things head on.”

The Tour de France in the 1960s was much harder than it is today, lasting 4,779 km compared to today’s 3,365 km. Another of Simpson’s teammates, Barry Hoban, recalls the gruelling race: “Three weeks, day in, day out, over the Alps, over the Pyrenees, rain, wind, snow, the whole lot. If you’re an overall contender, one bad day and that’s it; the Tour’s finished for you.”

“The Tour de France is the most important challenge in the international calendar, says Lucien Aimar, Tour de France winner 1966. “It’s where all your faults and weaknesses appear on the big day.

Every day you are at the peak of your physical conditioning. You are always close to blowing a gasket, always close to breaking point.”

Simpson had moved to France in 1959, aged 21, to pursue his ambitions. He quickly adopted a persona that proved popular with the French, dressing up in quintessentially British clothing and strolling about town carrying a furled umbrella.

“He was a character,” says Colin Lewis, “He went out and bought some decent Harris Tweed clothes

“He was a character.

He went out and bought some decent Harris Tweed clothes and a bowler hat, and the French press and public loved him. They called him Monsieur Le Tom”

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© Rko/Kobal/Shutterstock

and a bowler hat, and the French press and public loved him. They called him Monsieur Le Tom.” Footage exists of Simpson cruising around Paris in an old jalopy, wearing a bowler hat, lapping up the attention. He learned French and within a year was conducting all his post-race interviews on television in the language, further endearing him to the public.

But this jovial character, partly a shrewd move to gain popular support, was only on the surface.

Deep down, Tom Simpson was a ruthless operator with his sights set on nothing short of overall victory in the 1967 Tour de France. His skills behind the handlebars were already the stuff of legend among French sports journalists such as Jean Bobet, who had observed Simpson’s single-mindedness from the start of his career: “He saw everything so well, in front and behind, to one side and the other. He was like a bird of prey.”

Simpson’s previous two attempts at the Tour de France, in 1965 and 1966, had ended ignominiously.

Injuries forced him to abandon both races, though in 1965 it was only the insistence of doctors that forced him off the road. He would have continued riding with an infected hand, bronchitis and an infected kidney if he’d had his own way. Hit by a car on a descent in ’66, it was only the inability to hold on to the handlebars that shunted him out of the race. But the effects on Simpson of having to abandon the Tour were more devastating than for others.

“To lose and give in, for an ordinary rider,” says Jean Bobet, “is a minor setback. But for a

champion, someone special, it’s unbearable. “He’d got the famous rainbow jersey. That was without doubt the pinnacle of his career. He’d joined the club of the best-paid riders. He was in the top ten.”

Another factor in Simpson’s disappointment at abandoning the Tour de France was the loss of major contracts. The size of a promised contract with an Italian trade team would depend on how he performed in this tour. He was already thinking about a financially secure retirement after the Tour.

With so much riding on his victory in the 1967 Tour de France, it was no surprise that Simpson turned to stimulants. Doping had been a part of professional cycling since the 1950s, with the use of amphetamines among riders being common knowledge, even though the authorities turned a blind eye.

Amphetamines were seen as nothing more than an asset; something to help you over the top when the heat and exhaustion were against you. Simpson’s British teammates hadn’t been inducted into this French doping fraternity, for they had only just arrived. That year, the Tour de France had reverted

to the older tradition of fielding national teams, as opposed to pelotons grouped by sponsors. Team sponsors were held responsible for the riders’ strike in 1966 and so Tour director Félix Lévitan insisted on national teams entering in ’67. The Tour started with 130 cyclists, divided into 13 teams of 10 cyclists.

Therefore Simpson’s team was a hastily assembled group of professional cyclists from Britain with much less local knowledge than him. Consequently, the habits he had taken up previously as part of the Peugeot team were alien to his new British counterparts.

“Just train hard, eat well and sleep well,” they told him, but he had already got into the habit.

“Of course he took drugs, but not more than anybody else,” says French journalist Philippe Brunel.

“Doping was kind of a social bond. Those who didn’t take them were marginalised by the others. It was practically impossible not to take drugs if you wanted to be part of the razzamataz of the Tour de France.”

Simpson had made a good start on the first stage of the Tour; placed sixth overall after the first week, he was in a position to challenge the leaders

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when he came down with stomach pains and diarrhoea while passing through the Alps. Back at his hotel, his teammates tried to give him some soup but he was immediately sick. He dropped to 16th place in the 10th stage and down to seventh overall. But ignoring the illness, he got back on his bike for the next stage to Marseilles. During this 12th stage he recovered enough to move up from 16th to 7th, within striking distance of the Tour’s leaders. On the morning of the 13th stage, Simpson was seen swigging from a water bottle that some suspected also contained brandy.

By the time Tom Simpson approached the forbidding slopes of Mont Ventoux, at 2pm on 13th July, his body had already been pushed to the limit. It was the hottest part of the day, and as soon as the cyclists had cleared the first part of the climb among dense forest, there was no protection from the 107-degree heat. Philippe Brunel: “It’s a kind of nightmare, a lunar landscape. The stones reflect the sun, the heat is crushing; it’s the heat of a crematorium.”

Simpson had slipped down to the second group, struggling to keep sight of the leaders of the 13th stage, Raymond Poulidor of France and Julio Jimenez of Spain. The heat, combined with the altitude, had terrible effects on all the competitors, but Simpson was now facing his own private battle to survive the mountain. He refused all offers of water and his body had ceased to produce perspiration, added to the effects

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When news reached Simpson’s teammates that evening, the restaurant where they were dining went completely silent. At the start of the following day’s 14th Stage, all the riders assembled in silence, reluctant to continue the race. Simpson’s peloton forced themselves to get back on their bikes. It was seen as a tribute to the deceased cyclist when a British rider, Barry Hoban, won the 14th Stage.

Debate as to whether Simpson pushed himself too hard on that day, running on empty and suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration, or whether it was the amphetamines that killed him, rages on to this day. Simpson’s entire career is tainted with the doping stigma, exacerbated by more recent scandals, most notably Lance Armstrong being stripped of all seven of his Tour de France wins in October 2012.

Simpson is still viewed by many only as the cyclist who died from doping, but cycling author Jeremy Whittle, who wrote the book Ventoux, doesn’t think it is that simple. “This wasn’t a time of corporate doping or massively-funded, laboratised doping of Lance Armstrong and others of that particular generation, who had carefully constructed programmes. That is completely different to Tom Simpson being told ‘take one of these, it’ll make you feel good’ which is pretty much what it was.”

Simpson’s daughter Joanne, in an attempt to clear his name, requested a copy of her father’s autopsy from Avignon Hospital. But she was told that all autopsy records are destroyed 25 years after death, and Simpson’s had been destroyed between 1992 and 1997. There is a monument to Tom Simpson on Mont Ventoux on the spot where he collapsed, always covered with tokens and tributes from other cyclists, and Joanne often visits it on 13th July, the day her father died. A keen cyclist herself, it took a lot of training before she could make the attempt to ride up the mountain, but she cycled up Ventoux in 1997, on the 30th anniversary of her father’s death.

“I was riding up Ventoux thinking, ‘Bloody hell, Dad, this isn’t easy,’ but then as I got higher up, I thought, you did choose a beautiful place to die. What a view!”

Joanne still has a Garmin racing cap, which cyclist David Millar tossed towards the monument as he passed it during the 2012 Tour de France. Millar was convicted of doping charges and suspended from professional cycling in 2004, but has since become a well-known anti-doping campaigner.

Joanne was watching the race as he whizzed by and incredibly caught the cap he had thrown. Upon the cap Millar had written ‘To Tommy, RIP’. n

Mourners' cycles at Tom Simpson's funeral

of the amphetamines he had taken, which completely override the body’s safeguards. Tom had now entered what cyclists call ‘the Red Zone’ and was fast heading for ‘the Twilight Zone’.

“On the Ventoux you are on your own,” says Lucien Aimar, who was riding alongside Simpson.

“You are not there to chat. But I turned to Tom and said, ‘Don’t be an idiot. Stay on my wheel as I gather speed for the climb.’ I was fond of Tom so I wanted to protect him. A second time he attacked and I said, ‘Stay calm and limit the damage.’ But he didn’t respond. He was like a zombie.”

Just below the Col des Tempêtes, a little over a kilometre away from the summit of Mont Ventoux, Simpson began to reel across the road. He collapsed by the side of the road and demanded to be put back on his bike. He staggered on for another 500 yards before collapsing again and falling off his bike. This time he was unconscious. Before he passed out, his final words were, “Put me back on my bike.” The medical team tried to revive him with cardiac massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but Simpson was fighting for his life in the blazing heat on the hot stones. The race continued while pandemonium reigned on the slopes. While the other cyclists began the descent of the mountain, a helicopter arrived to whisk Simpson to hospital. Three hours later he was pronounced dead.

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Drink

Great British Beer Olly Smith celebrates the height of summer by cracking open some tins and bottles of his all-time favourite beers

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he line crackled as I bellowed into the field telephone connecting with a direct though partially derelict line to the bunker (also known as ‘The Bar’) at Chap HQ. “How about the breaking wave of British beer? The sort you have to hear about and seek out rather than pumped from the tubes of commercialism into our empty faceholes? Excellent! Will do.”

With his trademark ‘hanging-up-as-soon-he-hearsmy-voice ploy’, Gustav instantly approved my scribbling frenzy for this edition.

“Whenever Burning Sky’s liquid passes my lips, it feels like I’m floating in space with David Bowie’s cosmic laughter gently pushing me towards an altogether finer dimension” 102

Whenever the weather of inspiration requires gentle cajoling, John Prine’s music summons a soaring breeze for me. Bravely hoisting the mainsail and aiming the prow of my thirst for the shores of Coolbeer Island, I caught wind of British brewing to the strains of I Remember Everything, released posthumously as John Prine’s final recording. First to bob from the depths of deliciousness, I recollected one of my favourite breweries in the world, let alone Great Britain: Burning Sky.

Mark Tranter and his merry band are behind some of the greatest beers – in my opinion – ever brewed. I’ve tasted ale all over the world, filming breweries as far afield as Hill Farmstead in Vermont, USA, whose brews blew my mind; Schlenkerla in Bamburg, Germany whose smoked Rauchbier sent me giddy with glee; but Burning Sky in Firle, East Sussexs take my garland as the greatest brewery on the planet at this time. Whenever their liquid passes my lips, it feels like I’m floating

in space with David Bowie’s cosmic laughter gently pushing me towards an altogether finer dimension.

You can choose from their pristine canned pale ales such as Arise (buy every can you ever see and glug it good and cold) or their more funky bottled brews, which age beautifully.

Somewhere I have a signed bottle of their very first

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run of Saison Provision, which feels like a lamp containing a genie that one day shall grant all my wishes, by allowing me to find it and share it with the brewing team who created it, perhaps fifty years to the day since it was bottled, if we’re all still propping up the mortal bar.

This week alone

“Bad Co. Brewing and Distilling have some peaches in their line-up, such as their Off Tempo Tropical IPA, which, in a single sip, finds you at the helm of an imaginary Ferrari sporting the ghost of Magnum PI’s moustache” I’ve ordered their Tail Crush table beer, a proper quencher at just 3% booze; Shake Some Action (7%) so full of flavour it may expand your very mind; Arise (4.4% and still ruddy excellent) and two filthy bottles of Saison Provision Batch 1 (6.7%) and 2019 Vintage Imperial Stout (9%),

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which if I was patient I would lay down like a fine wine. I’m not and I shan’t – it is simply too tasty not to drink at once. So there you have it, Burning Sky who make the beer I buy the most of. Zoom to burningskybeer.com and dive in as deep as you dare.

There are other great British breweries. I recently ordered a heroic amount of Fierce Pilsner from Scotland (fiercebeer.com); I love Anspach & Hobday and cannot wait to visit their new realm in Croydon (anspachandhobday.com) and sip their fabulous Porter until my toes wriggle like electric eels; Bad Co. Brewing and Distilling have some peaches in their line-up, such as their Off Tempo Tropical IPA, which, in a single sip, finds you at the helm of an imaginary Ferrari sporting the ghost of Magnum PI’s moustache. And for lager, drop anchor at braybrookebeer.co for some of the most inspiring waves of golden glory. But Burning Sky for me is the lighthouse shining sheer inspiration across the beer frontier. If only they had the

power to bring John Prine back to life in an everlasting gig, they’d be beyond perfect.

For now, I’m happy to sip their beers and listen to John singing That’s How Every Empire Falls on loop and reflect on the luck of having the world’s best brewery right here, down the road from where I happen to make port (more on which later), here in Great Britain. n

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Drink

MAESTRO DOBEL DIAMANTE Jonathan Sargent samples a relatively new tequila that lays to rest the drink’s association with sombrero-wearing roustabouts

“Hey, Rosita, come quick; down at the cantina they’re giving green stamps with tequila!”

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or some, the song Speedy Gonzalez by Pat Boone (1962) may have been one’s first introduction to Tequila; for others another song by The Champs released in 1958, Tequila!, may have rattled from the speakers at some student shindig where 17 Tequila slammers seemed like a good idea at the time; it may even be that the very scent of this Mexican beverage still sends a

Pavlovian shudder through the system.

This is a pity, because the word Tequila has much grander origins, meaning ‘volcanic rock’ in the ancient Nahuatl language of Jalisco, the region of Mexico where the town of Tequila is situated, overlooked by a dormant volcano. When the Spanish conquistadores arrived in 1519, they found that the natives were already guzzling a local brew made

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from the agave plant. The locals worshipped agave so much that the plant was personified through a 400-breasted female deity named Mayahuel.

The Spanish held no truck with such hocuspocus and neither did they favour the local brew, so they developed their own version of agave (also known as mezcal) wine, calling it Vino de Mezcal.

The first large-scale distillery for vino de mezcal was built in the early 17th century in Tequila.

By the mid 18th century, the dominant name in the production of this agave wine was the Cuervo family. 100 years later they faced stiff competition from the Sauza family, who had identified blue agave as the best variety for producing tequila.

In 1902 tequila was formally identified as a drink made from agave originating from the Tequila region, while it wasn’t until 2005 that mezcal was granted similar status as denominating an agavebased drink from the Oaxaca region. However, even by then, across the Atlantic tequila had still not fully shaken off its reputation as a tipple served

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from the rifle belt of the waiter in a Mexican restaurant, often to the tune of the Champs.

Enter Maestro Dobel, a distillery founded in 2008 by Juan Domingo Beckmann Legorreta, an 11th generation scion of the Jose Cuervo dynasty.

He developed a new type of premium white tequila, Maestro Dobel Diamante.

This blend of reposado, añejo, and extra-añejo tequilas, all of which are usually golden in colour through being aged in barrels, is completely clear.

A proprietary filtration selectively removes all of the colour, but retaining all of the smooth, creamy, complex flavour. The result is a tequila one can sip, with buttery notes of caramel, honey and maple, with a nutty, smoky finish. Best of all, you don’t have to do the thing with the slice of lemon and the salt, as it sips elegantly straight from the glass.

Margaritas can also be made from Maestro Dobel Diamante, but it works better in a Smooth Resolution: 45ml Maestro Dobel Diamante 25ml Apricot Liqueur 25ml Lemon Juice 7ml Sugar Syrup Dash of Ginger Tincture Shake over ice in a cocktail shaker and strain into a glass.

Drink to anything but Tequila! or Speedy Gonzalez. n

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Fishing

FLY FISHING Sophia Coningsby shares her passion for the solitary pursuit of fly fishing along the rivers of England, with only a tasty cigar for company

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year or two ago I was in Oman, talking to my Mexican aunt about what it means to be British (obviously me, not her).

I said it was all about village greens, pocket handkerchiefs, morris dancers, tweeds, The Kinks and fly fishing. She guffawed and told me I was a ridiculous romantic, and that the rest of the world saw Britain as louts, football hooligans and stag and hen party drunkards. Shocked, in utter disbelief and absolute denial, I changed the subject.

For me, as a countrywoman, my outdoor pursuits are vitally important, and in the spring and summer that is fly fishing. I don’t wear bells on my legs or use a pocket handkerchief when I fish, but for me it is one of our best and most beautiful

“Of course it’s not only the British who fly fish, but I like to think that we do it in our own relaxed, inimitable and genteel manner, in the most glorious countryside in the world” pastoral pursuits, and a very British one at that. Of course it’s not only the British who flyfish, but I like to think that we do it in our own relaxed, inimitable and genteel manner in the most glorious countryside

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in the world (this of course is my own opinion).

Every time I stand in a river in England, Scotland or Wales (I haven’t fished Northern Ireland yet), I think how lucky I am, how beautiful it is, how steeped in tradition is this sport. I did hear once that fishing is actually the most dangerous of sports (I expect because it’s easier to drown than in a boxing ring) so even the adrenalin junkies could get a mild and relaxing kick from this delicious riparian pastime.

The only fishing I do is fly fishing, mostly in rivers, but occasionally in very large lakes and lochs.

As a child I would watch big, clumsy and generally ungainly men elegantly cast a fly line, and I’d always be impressed. Fly fishing looks easy, but it’s not. To get that line straight out behind you and propelled forwards with energetic but firm vigour; not to tangle the line or get it wrapped around the rod; for that line to shoot forwards, gaining more slack line, never touching the water until straight out in front of you and your line gently landing on the water, presenting the fly to the fish like an insect falling from a tree, is actually quite a skill. It’s one of those things that it’s easy when you know how but, until you do know how, it’s a bit of a tricky bugger to master.

My favourite fishing is upstream summer fishing for trout. The fly is always visible and so it’s more impressive and exciting to see the trout (salmon or seatrout) pluck the fly from the surface. You stand facing the current of the river, cast out and take up the slack of your line as the fly is coming towards you. The weather is usually clement and, standing quite still or walking with gentle steps in the river, you are no threat to the kingfishers which often fly past. The rivers are obviously a source of drinking water to mammals too, and seeing otters playing and deer, foxes and badgers drinking is very common.

The trees that so often line the rivers are home to

“There are some dreadful people who take ‘trophy’ shots with the fish they’ve caught, holding them high above the water, drying out and drowning, seriously endangering the life of the fish. Fishing is a solitary sport; if you have to show off you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”

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owls, herons, buzzards and hawks. Fishing is not just about catching fish, but also about being part of your rural environment.

As to the catching of fish, I catch and release most of the trout that I catch in the rivers and all the seatrout and salmon. I fish with barbless hooks (so they’re easier to remove from a fish’s mouth) and I think you’ll often find that fishing folk are generally very environmentally aware and careful to maintain the levels of fish we have in our rivers. Salmon numbers are most definitely declining because of ocean climates, pollution and illegal fishing, so an angler plays a very responsible part in understanding the health of our rivers. When I catch a smolt I like to think about the immense journey that it will soon take. When I catch a grilse I wonder at the journey that it has undoubtedly taken.

“The soundtrack to your sport is birdsong, deer barking, a breeze, leaping fish, a family of ducks propelling themselves from under cover of a spreading branch. As you carefully move up the river you feel a part of it”

Many people I come across question the ‘excitement’ that I feel when fishing, asking questions like, “Don’t you get bored of it?” or “How long can you do it for?” When I answer, “All day and then into the night and early morning for seatrout. At the weekend, every day,” they’re generally horrified.

But their horror is mirrored by mine when they talk about ‘binge watching Netflix’, shopping or wasting countless hours on their mobile phones. And so here’s what I find so incredibly exciting about fly fishing.

I most often fish alone but sometimes travel to a river with a friend, and then we fish different stretches and pools and tandem each other, so all we ever do is say “Any luck?” if we pass each other.

The choosing of your fly is eminently important, as obviously it has to mimic a river fly and lure a fish in. I tie most of my own flies and it’s always far more satisfactory to land a fish with a fly that you’ve tied yourself. But before you choose your fly, you sit and look at the river to see what’s on the surface. You look above you and see what’s in the air, or you shake a branch and see what insects fall from it.

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You’re generally out in the most splendid of scenery and nobody else is about. It is a beautiful (hopefully) unspoilt countryside. The soundtrack to your sport is birdsong, deer barking, a breeze, leaping fish, a family of ducks propelling themselves from under cover of a spreading branch. As you carefully move up the river you feel a part of it. You see a fish rise and target it. Most of the time, if a fish is going to take your fly it will do it as soon as it lands on the water, sometimes chasing it about a bit. Sometimes the fish just pinch the fly, give it a gentle tug without taking it in. Sometimes they greedily gulp at it and then you really have your fish. But very often they just ignore it and then you have to change your fly.

When you get the right fly it really gets very exciting: the bringing in of the fish, the playing it so as not to tire it, making it as painless as you possibly can. Often the tiny fish can be the most aggressive and ‘fighty’, whereas some big salmon sometimes behave like a log you’ve accidentally hooked from the river bed.

You bring the fish in gently, making no sound so as not to frighten it. When it’s close to you, you wet your hand so that you don’t remove any of the protective slime which is so important for its health.

You take it from the water, but keeping it as near the water as you can, and remove the fly from its mouth and then you let it rest, facing upstream to get its breath back and build up its strength. When it’s ready to bugger off, it will do just that and you see a silver flash dart from your careful hands and disappear with energy and strength, ready to remember the lesson it just learned.

There are some dreadful people who take ‘trophy’ shots with the fish they’ve caught, holding them high above the water, drying out and drowning, seriously endangering the life of the fish. Of course, when you catch a big fish it’s exciting, you can measure it up against your rod and estimate the weight, and some nets even have scales on them. But fishing is a solitary sport, if you have to show off you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

If you already fly fish you’ll know about the excitement that I’m trying to convey, and if you don’t, then why not try it? It’s worth getting a lesson or two first. And it’s not just a sport for the wealthy (although good waders and rods can be hellishly expensive) because although most rivers are syndicated and privately owned there are ‘passport schemes’ (like the Westcountry Rivers Trust here in Devon and Cornwall) where, for as little as £12, you can buy a day’s trout fishing (a bit more for salmon and seatrout).

Remember ,too, that if you are fishing in the UK you need to buy a license from the government. n

SMOKING AND FISHING My fishing days would never be complete without a cigar or two. Here are my recommended fishing cigars from both Cuban and New World ranges:

CUBAN Quintero Favoritos £14 A really persistently good quality entry level cigar. I always have a stock of these in one of my humidors.

Ramon Allones Specially Selected £20 A very fine smoke indeed, as fresh and pure as the most crystal clear river.

Montecristo Supremos (2019 ltd ed), £34 A lovely, meaty cigar for a top day’s salmon fishing

NEW WORLD Joya de Nicaragua Black Robusto £16 I’m very fond indeed of these at the moment Oliva Series V Melanio Robusto £20 Fresh and smooth as a riverside meadow.

Padrón 45th Anniversary £54 A lovely smoke after catching a seatrout at 3am.

Music

TIGER BAY BLUES Chris Sullivan revisits what was once a den of vice, pleasure, danger and high thrills in the docklands area of Cardiff, and meets the residents who recall Tiger Bay’s glory days

“Tiger Bay was, in the simplest words possible, a symbol of racial, ethnic, religious and ecumenical harmony… my mother used to say ‘The League of Nations could learn a thing or two from Tiger Bay’.”

Author and historian Neil Sinclair

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n the 19th Century, the moniker ‘Tiger Bay’ was used in popular literature and slang (especially by sailors) for any dock or seaside neighbourhood that had a notoriety for danger. But the most famous one, which spawned its most famous daughter, Shirley Bassey, is Cardiff ’s Tiger Bay. Said chanteuse was born in Bute Street to a Nigerian father and Tyneside mother, but moved to the

more salubrious Splott area when she was young.

She never returned to the rough and tumble of the docks but used its notoriety as a badge of honour, which angered many a proper resident.

Bassey’s first hit, The Banana Boat, initially performed by Edric Connor and the Caribbeans, is a traditional Jamaican mento song whose lyrics are from the point of view of dockers working the

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Calypso King - the Flamboyant Lord Melody

“Just like Notting Hill, Brixton and the East End of London, the area exploded with vitality, feeding the needs that every port full of sailors demands. Tiger Bay became known as a place where you could drink and dance all night, score drugs and meet ladies of questionable virtue”

night shift, loading bananas in Port Antonio, Jamaica. A perfectly straight line can be drawn from the Jamaican port to Tiger Bay and to Barry docks, a few miles down the road, where the bananas landed with the sailors who brought them. Even back in the 1970s, I recall a friend’s brother being stung by a scorpion hiding among the bananas.

The Caribbean mariners would hole up in Tiger Bay while their ships were being reloaded. Some caroused, drank and brawled in the area’s bars such as The Bucket of Blood, The Snakepit and The Packet Hotel (the latter named after the packet steamers, it allows free stay to sailors and is the only proper old pub left there).

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Richard Cordle’s father Steve (left) and his uncle, cricketer Tony Cordle

Multicultural frolics at a Tiger Bay shebeen

“The majority of the men who lived there were hard working members of the community, not pimps running whores. Everyone looked out for one another and nobody ever locked their door. If this were such a dreadful place, then surely we’d all have been murdered in our beds?”

Merthyr Tydfil. By 1870 Cardiff was the world’s foremost iron and coal-exporting port, and by the 20th Century one of the world’s biggest docks.

And while coal and iron went out, ships containing sugar, bananas and foreign sailors came in, bringing with them their mores, music and culture, the most infectious of which was Afro Caribbean.

“I remember when I was about 6-7 years old, reggae, mento and calypso was always playing somewhere around the area,” recalls Richard Cordle, born and bred in Tiger Bay. “There was Mr. Bowen, who had a steel pan band made up of his children and family friends. Then you had Mr. Victor Parker, who played semi-acoustic guitar and sang jazz in a Cardiff accent in the clubs and pubs of Tiger Bay in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and Calypso King, the flamboyant Lord Melody, was always playing somewhere, as were Pinkie Duval, Leigh Ahmun, reggae artists Roots & Branches and singers Lloyd Paris and Sister Netty. There’s always been a big black music scene in The Bay.”

To celebrate not only the music but, just as the Notting Hill Carnival intended, also the

Some spent their hard earned wages in the gambling dens and brothels of Bute Street, filled with girls who had left other parts of the UK and wanted anonymity and secrecy to ply their trade.

Many mariners moved into the area after Lord Bute opened the Cardiff docks in 1839, to cope with the iron flowing out of my hometown of

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Š Rko/Kobal/Shutterstock

Trinidadian Calypsonian Aldwyn Roberts, AKA Lord Kitchener

Butetown Carnival in 1993

multicultural melting pot of Tiger Bay, the Butetown Carnival was born.

“My parents told me it began in the early sixties and was called Mardi Gras and then became the Butetown carnival,” says Cordle. “It was like Notting Hill, with traditional floats and carnival dress parade. It’s been resurrected, not on the scale of its peak in the 1980s, when they brought blues legend Bo Diddley to headline, but many great bands played at Butetown carnival. It is now operated and run by a local company, who work hard to keep the carnival going and remain in Butetown, where it’s part of our history.”

But the history of the area hasn’t always been so harmonious. By 1911 Cardiff ’s black and Asian population was second only in proportion to London’s, but was confined only to the dock areas.

Rapacious businessmen, just as they have done recently with Eastern European workers, employed foreign men at a lower rate, leading to the Cardiff Seamen’s Strike of June 1911, which was focused on Chinese sailors who were undercutting the locals. After WWI, African, Arab and Asian soldiers

and sailors moved into the docks and, even though preference was given to white men, a housing shortage raised animosity, compounded by resentment against non-whites who had bought houses and filled them with lodgers.

On June 11th, 1919, white WWI veterans from all over Cardiff and South Wales attacked Tiger Bay. “They wanted to lynch and burn everyone from the docks, no matter what their colour,” says Cordle. “So everyone from Tiger Bay barricaded Bute Road at the top and told the police, if they come for us we will defend ourselves. Many were ex-servicemen, mainly Somali, Yemeni, Afro Caribbean, and they had guns so held the veterans off for three days.”

With three men dead, the destruction cost the city council £3,000 (over £158,000 in 2020 value) to rectify, while the vast majority of people arrested were of ethnic minority. Nine black men from Cardiff were charged with murder and brought to trial, but the charge was reduced to ‘shooting with intent to murder’ and they were found not guilty. And so the community, a constant thorn in the Cardiff

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council’s side and the rest of south Wales, grew to become one of the UKs toughest neighbourhoods.

“It was instilled in you, like pledging allegiance to your neighbourhood,” explains Cordle. “People had respect for Bay Boys because our mothers taught us that, outside this mile, people look down on us but we should always fight back to earn respect.”

“Yes, if you wanted trouble you could find trouble,” says author and historian Neil Sinclair.

“But that stigma obscures the fact that the majority of the men who lived there were hard working

“Ever since, my regret at not parting with my fiver and allowing that beauty to take my cherry still keeps me awake at night, her large brown eyes, crimson lips and white teeth whispering into my ear still echoing in my dreams”

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The Casablanca Club © Richard Cordle

The Custom House Pub © Richard Cordle

“Tiger Bay, AKA Butetown, wasn’t like any place I’d ever visited. A few years after my first visit I became a regular at clubs such as The Casablanca, where Aretha Franklin and Jimmy Ruffin played, and I helped promote Spandau Ballet in 1980, and Mel’s, both predominantly black music clubs, where I met locals whose ancestors had left the West Indies hundreds of years before”

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members of the community, not pimps running whores. Far from it. Everyone looked out for one another and nobody ever locked their door. If this were such a dreadful place, then surely we’d all have been murdered in our beds? It was stigmatised. Good old-fashioned racism.”

By the 1940s, the community had grown to such an extent that Caribbeans had their own bar/club/restaurant, the Caribbean Café on Bute Street. During World War II, Cardiff suffered its own Blitz directed at the docks and Tiger Bay took a battering. Social housing sprang up to accommodate those who had lost their homes while, after the government called for workers to come to the UK from the colonies to fill the employment gap left by the War, West Indian immigrants on ships such as SS Empire Windrush rushed to Cardiff. And, just like Notting Hill, Brixton and the East End of London, the area exploded with vitality, feeding the

needs that every port full of itinerant sailors demands. Thus, Tiger Bay became known throughout Wales as a place where you could drink and dance all night, score drugs and meet ladies of questionable virtue.

“There were parties all the time, house parties and shebeens, and illegal drinking joints full of people having fun letting off steam,” laughs Cordle. “This included lots of black GI’s who had never seen black and white people mixing like this.

The authorities tried to ban them from the pubs, but the locals and landlords refused and welcomed the soldiers with open arms. And they brought the jazz and the dancing, until Tiger Bay was the hottest spot in Wales, very similar to London’s Soho, though not without a certain notoriety and many a raised Welsh Presbyterian eyebrow.”

Every time my grandfather heard I was going to Cardiff for a night out, he would grin broadly,

his eyes glazing over with fondness while telling of calypso singers and sultry maidens in Tiger Bay’s bars and brothels in the forties and fifties. It seems that the highlight of my dad’s life, meanwhile, was getting so drunk in Tiger Bay that he passed out and was helped to his feet by a dusky working girl.

Tiger Bay is 25 miles south of Merthyr and easily accessible by train. Cardiff was a great place to buy ska, rock steady, reggae and soul records, so I’d go there in the early 1970s with a few quid in hand to source the vinyl. But if you wandered down St Mary’s Street and into Bute Street, you entered a completely different and entirely alien world that was like a scene from a foreign movie.

Suddenly, even on a Saturday afternoon, you’d see pubs full of drunken, brawling, tattooed sailors in woollen hats and pea coats shouting in foreign tongue, while girls in extremely revealing mini skirts and halter tops with big earrings, platforms and

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wigs hung on street corners. The area was no-go for a Valleys chap, as the docks boys were a rum bunch who didn’t take kindly to us mountain men, and so I rarely ventured down there until much later.

I recall, on my first trip to the area aged just 14 (with a pocketful of birthday money) being propositioned by a tall, beautiful, coffee-coloured lady, who offered to “take my Cherry for only £5”. I was so flummoxed that I dived into The Custom House pub (they’d serve anyone over 14), where I saw a 20-stone African lady jacking off a teenager right opposite the bar, shouting “Shoot the spunk, boy!”

I believe I ran all the way back to Merthyr.

Ever since, however, my regret at not parting with my fiver and allowing that beauty to take my cherry still keeps me awake at night, her large brown eyes, crimson lips and white teeth whispering into my ear still echoing in my dreams.

escaped justice by returning home to Cardiff, bringing their black wives and comrades, who settled in the fledgling port. No place was more egalitarian in the 18th century; whether black, white, or green with yellow spots, each member of the international crew received his share of booty, divided according to rank, and insurance if he’d lost body parts in battle.

Many settled in Cardiff, alongside runaways from the slave ports of nearby Bristol and Liverpool.

Many had sailed for months and were glad of a place to hole up, surrounded by other likeminded sailors of every nationality, and let rip. Tiger Bay was a safe haven and, as such, its name (even though it was virtually demolished in the sixties and became known by locals as Butetown or the Docks) became synonymous with vice in Wales right up until the late eighties.

“I remember the working girls down Bute Street at a young age,” recalls Richard Cordle.

“They were very glamorous, with beehive hairdos and pencil skirts and they were always kind to me.

My mother had a couple of houses she used to rent from an Arab slumlord, and she would let the girls use them, so as not to be out there on the streets, as a few women had been murdered.” Often such crimes went unsolved, as the perpetrators simply jumped aboard ship or melted into the myriad communities where the law never ventured.

“There were at least 57 different languagespeaking nations in this small area at one time,” says Cordle. “I was in school with kids whose parents or grandparents came from Africa, the West Indies, Latin America, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Morocco, Estonia, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, the Basque territories and Norway. Seafarers from all over the world docked here and hung out in places like the North Star, for prostitutes and seamen only and rough as a butcher’s dog. We were the first community in Wales to have a mosque, and the first in the UK to have a curry restaurant. But it was tough and the women were the toughest. They had to raise children while their husbands went to sea, some dying at sea and some never coming back.

Tiger Bay itself was demolished in the early sixties, and then became known by locals as Butetown or the Docks.”

Tiger Bay had such a raucous reputation that the Cardiff authorities tried to destroy it twice, in acts of social cleansing that used that age-old excuse that it was ‘unsafe’ and ‘uninhabitable’.

After the 45 streets that comprised Tiger Bay were demolished to create the five streets of Butetown, the decimation continued. Subsequently, they

“Many had sailed for months and were glad of a place to hole up, surrounded by other likeminded sailors of every nationality, and let rip. Tiger Bay was a safe haven and, as such, its name (even though it was virtually demolished in the sixties and became known by locals as Butetown or the Docks) became synonymous with vice in Wales right up until the late eighties”

Tiger Bay, AKA Butetown, wasn’t like any place I’d ever visited. A few years after my first visit I became a regular at clubs such as The Casablanca, where Aretha Franklin and Jimmy Ruffin played and I helped promote Spandau Ballet in 1980, and Mel’s, both predominantly black music clubs, where I met locals whose ancestors had left the West Indies hundreds of years before.

Legend has it that Welsh buccaneers who had fought in the Caribbean under Welsh pirate captains such as Henry Morgan, Hywel Davies and Black Bart in the 17th and 18th centuries often

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created Cardiff Bay on the back of the construction of the Cardiff Bay Barrage (which impounds the River Taff and the Ely, so visitors can enjoy a 500-acre freshwater lake). Completed in 1999, this was the catalyst for the £2 billion ‘regeneration’ of the former docklands areas of Tiger Bay.

In my humble opinion, said regeneration is just another homogenisation and corporatisation of a once entirely functional and thriving neighbourhood. Many of its great historic pubs with splendid Victorian interiors, such as the Paddle Steamer, The Cardigan, The Custom House and the two Hope and Anchors, have been bulldozed to make way for chain developments and luxury homes, while Butetown remains ignored.

One resident, Elbashir Idris, originally from Sudan but studied philosophy, politics and economics in London, has lived in Butetown most of his life. He mentions the wall that runs the entire length of Bute Street: “We call it the Berlin Wall.

On the other side of that wall is Atlantic Wharf. It is a much more gentrified area of the ward of Butetown, and over there is the seat of power at Cardiff

Bay. We feel segregated and marginalised by this wall from the rest of Cardiff. It has made the people of Butetown feel like a separate community.

I’m Sudanese but the Caribbean and Yemenis and Somalis are my brothers. This is our fortress that nobody can touch.”

Five minutes south of Bute Street is Cardiff Bay, with its chain coffee shops and smart restaurants, none of which employs any of the residents of Butetown.

Because Richard Cordle is pure Docks – his father is from Bridgetown, Barbados and his mother, the notorious Peggy Farrugia, was half Welsh and half Maltese – I thought he should have the last word on Tiger Bay:

“Butetown was a unique human utopia. In our square mile – whatever you want to call it, Tiger Bay or Butetown – there existed a racial harmony that was pure heaven and to this day, when a local passes away, we all come back, hundreds of us, and out comes the New Orleans jazz band and we rejoice in our heritage. I am and always will be a Docks Boy.” n

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Author interview: Alex Larman (p128) Book Reviews (p135) • Interview: Tom Carradine (p138) • Grooming (p146) • The Captain’s Lip Weasel (p152) • Peacocks & Magpies: Antiques (p157)

Photo: Rose Callahan

REVIEWS

Author Interview

ALEXANDER LARMAN It is a great pleasure when the literary editor of one’s magazine, who normally conducts interviews with authors, publishes a new book, though it also presents a conundrum – how can an author interview himself?

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“The abdication has been written about over and over again, and there is very little point doing a new book, if all one is doing is rearranging existing material. The biographer has to bring something entirely new to the table, and I hope I have managed to do that”

nstead, Gustav Temple chatted to Alexander Larman about The Crown in Crisis, a detailed chronicle of the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. The book will receive a full review (not by its author) in our next edition, but suffice it to say that it’s a rollicking read, presented almost like a detective novel about the crime of the century, which, as readers will discover, the abdication nearly became.

CHAP: You’ve previously penned biographies of eccentric figures in the distant past – Lords Rochester and Byron.

Was it daunting to be dealing with political and moral questions of a more recent past?

LARMAN: I always saw myself as essentially a literary biographer, and even had a wish-list for future figures to tackle – Wilde, of course, but also Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll, Noel Coward… the reason for moving away from these subjects was simple. A writer’s life can only have so much

material in it, whereas historical topics, especially ones pertaining to the not-too-distant past, have an endless supply of interesting stories, especially if a large number of them have been suppressed for reasons of decency and security. Was it daunting?

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Of course; the abdication has been written about over and over again, and there is very little point doing a new book if all one is doing is rearranging existing material. The biographer has to bring something entirely new to the table, but I hope that I have managed to do that.

the explicit instruction of George V, and without the need for the constitutional crisis that arose.

CHAP: “Almost the whole of London is laughing at the way he is making himself ridiculous, being so patently under this woman’s thumb and at her beck and call.”

– do you see any parallels here with Prince Harry and Meghan?

LARMAN: It has been the most wonderful serendipity that Harry and Meghan have provided so many clear historical parallels. Harry, though, is a much more decent and straightforward type than Edward ever was, if not necessarily cleverer. I have the most tremendous sympathy for him, given his loss of a mother and all that has happened since, whereas the most one can feel for Edward’s rather cold Victorian upbringing is that it was symptomatic of any upper-class childhood of the age. As for Meghan, the woke Duchess herself, I think that the major characteristic that she shares with Wallis is a sense of smug entitlement that has segued to panic, as both realised how far in over their heads they are.

CHAP: How close did you get in your research to the notorious China Dossier, about Wallis Simpson’s lost year in the sing-song houses of Shanghai?

LARMAN: I found bits and pieces of material in the Royal and National Archives, all of which have been included in the book, but there was no jaw-dropping moment of revelation about Wallis Simpson’s time in the East. Sebastian Horsley, God rest his soul, once told me of a rumour that she engaged in a public sex show with a dog out there.

I dearly wanted to include this in the book, but unfortunately I had a rule that everything had to be backed up with documentary evidence, so, alas, ‘the late Horsley said this to me in the Colony Club in 2007’ did not cut it.

CHAP: Fans of Edward’s wardrobe often cite the fact that suits bought aged 18 still fitted him perfectly aged 40. You suggest in the book that this was in fact caused by an eating disorder?

LARMAN: Neither Edward nor Wallis ever ate normally, and both were obsessed by their weight all their lives. I included a letter that he wrote while a student at Magdalen College, Oxford to his former nanny Lalla Bill, in which he suggests that he had been an ‘absolute fool’ and in the grip of melancholia, all because he had ‘overdone the exercise’. He was a manic character in many regards, not least in his obsession with Wallis, and I think that it’s sadly true of many in the grip of mania that everything in their lives has to be overdone, rather than approached rationally and calmly.

CHAP: In writing a book such as this, is there an expectancy to provide fresh material that hampers the urge simply to tell the story?

LARMAN: Ideally – and hopefully in this case – one’s new material massively enhances the story one is telling, rather than getting in the way. There were literally hundreds of unpublished letters from members of the public about the abdication crisis, which remain unpublished by me and other biographers – many are fascinating but one has to be selective. The single greatest find I had was the autobiographical document, ‘He Was My King’,

by George McMahon, the unsuccessful would-be royal assassin, which, along with the surprisingly corroborative material in the National Archives, turns the whole story of the July 16th assassination attempt on its head and, I hope, will now allow future historians to look at the entire event differently.

CHAP: In the book you state that “George V had no illusions as to his son’s fitness to be king […] there is little doubt that, if it had not occurred until a few months later, he would never have succeeded to the Throne at all.” Why not?

LARMAN: I suspect that l’affaire Wallis would have continued apace, and eventually would have led to Edward voluntarily removing himself from the line of succession in favour of his brother Bertie – in other words, exactly what did happen, but under

CHAP: Your portrayal of Wallis Simpson seems slightly more sympathetic than how she has generally been viewed. Does the process of research and writing inevitably lead the author to place their allegiance with specific members of the cast, or do you try to maintain impartiality?

LARMAN: It’s always for readers, rather than writers, to make that decision. Perhaps I’m still

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CHAP: At the height of the crisis, Edward comes across as being mentally ill, yet in later life he showed no such signs. Was he so unsuited to monarchy that it caused a temporary mental breakdown?

LARMAN: One of my favourite stories in the book – and I’m pretty sure unpublished anywhere else – is when Lord Wigram attempts to push through emergency legislation that would declare Edward mentally incapacitated if necessary, on the grounds that ‘we might have a second George III on our hands’. I think that the king, like many others involved in the abdication, definitely was not firing on all cylinders mentally, but then I think that his anorexia, obsessive character and possible autism of some kind would all have worsened this.

capable of being surprised by my own subjects. I definitely thought that Wallis was nowhere near as bad or culpable as Edward, whom I found myself loathing more and more as my research went on; but, on the other hand, she was hardly the most likeable figure.

CHAP: Duff Cooper, Cosmo Lang, Buttercup Kennedy, Chips Cannon, Sybil Colefax, Fruity Metcalfe – the cast reads like that of a PG Wodehouse novel. Did you expect this to be the case?

LARMAN: I’m very sad that I couldn’t get Fruity Metcalfe into the book more. He’s an awful man but a very entertaining one. And don’t forget Emerald Cunard, the Nazi sympathiser herself. Frivolity aside, I think it’s a fairly accurate depiction of the upperclass pre-war milieu – when many people were known as ‘Baby’. I knew quite a lot about the time anyway because of my voracious reading of writers like Waugh and Powell, so it was hardly a surprise.

CHAP: Upon Edward’s final departure from his royal residence, “Fred Smith, who had looked after him since 1908, lost his temper and shouted, ‘Your name’s mud! M! U! D!’” Do you believe that the abdicating monarch’s reputation has not improved much since then?

LARMAN: Oh, to have been there for the confrontation between Edward and Fred! I had a conversation during my research with one historian who suggested that my readers would be interested in a revisionist account, in which Edward is portrayed much more sympathetically than usual, so I did attempt to make the case for the defence. I was honestly surprised at how moved I was reading the various farewell letters that he received from his friends and former lovers, and one has to admit that he had something that endeared him to people, whether his intimates or his subjects. But I think that the taint of abdication, and his inability to recover his public standing thereafter, has meant that he will always be seen as ‘the selfish king’.

“I think that the king, like many others involved in the abdication, definitely was not firing on all cylinders mentally, but then I think that his anorexia, obsessive character and possible autism of some kind would all have worsened this” CHAP: The Ribbentrop revelations are quite something, though you steer clear of suggesting any actual Nazi sympathies on Edward’s part?

LARMAN: If I write a follow-up book, I would be considerably more explicit about this. But I wanted to get Ribbentrop and the Nazis in, because I saw that as an important counter to the self-indulgence and frivolity of various politicians and courtiers fiddling while Europe prepared to burn. As for Edward, I think ‘sympathies’ is probably the right word. He was never a card-carrying Nazi but he approved of a lot of what Hitler did and said, had a warm personal relationship with him and later on all this became very embarrassing to the British government.

CHAP: Would you be tempted to embark on a second book about Edward’s years in exile?

LARMAN: I always finish a book with a desire to write its sequel immediately, which then fades somewhat after the editing and publicity process.

But there’s a definite follow-up book to be written about what happened in 1937 and beyond. By the time this interview is published, I will have a pretty good idea as to the book’s reception, and the likelihood of my publisher being interested in a sequel of some kind, so watch this space. n

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Book Reviews

currently sold a fraction of what Ma’am Darling did; a shame, as it is every bit as good as its predecessor.

As I write this in June, there are signs of normality returning. The bookshops will begin to reopen with social distancing intact, pubs and restaurants will be partially open again and there is the possibility that unfairly neglected volumes will start to have their rightful place in shop windows.

Certainly, I haven’t read a more entertaining book this year: I devoured it with all of the greedy delight of a Beatles aficionado, mixed with the enormous pleasure that I’ve always had when it comes to Brown’s superb prose. I very much hope that it can find a second wind of success and that readers thrill to it as much as I did.

“The book is relatively light on descriptions of The Beatles’ seminal songs and albums, with Brown, presumably, trusting that his readers are already au fait with their own stories, and more interested in the scandalous or mundane details of what was happening around them”

ONE TWO THREE FOUR

By Craig Brown (Fourth Estate, £25) Reviewed by Alexander Larman

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Brown is not attempting any of his own original research here, barring a couple of hilariously observed visits to various Beatles birthplaces in Liverpool, where he gets on the wrong side of various custodians for having the temerity to record their sales patter. Those who have spent decades reading every single book about the band will already know many of the stories, but Brown’s gift is for making them come alive.

From their early days in the clubs of Hamburg, where they would be crammed into tiny beds and would perform for hours under both alcoholic and narcotic stimulants, to the final days of their existence, they encapsulated the Sixties in all of its glory and horror, and Brown sensibly concentrates

iming, when it comes to publishing, is a funny thing. After Craig Brown’s glorious and wonderfully subversive anti-biography of Princess Margaret, Ma’am Darling, he was interested in writing a book about the Thames, but his publisher, ever keen to capitalise on an opportunity, instead suggested that he write a new biography of the Beatles, to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of their split. Brown acceded, and the resulting book, One Two Three Four, was published on 2 April – with all the bookshops closed, coronavirus panic at its peak and a nation not nearly as interested in Brown’s excellent, kaleidoscopic book as they should have been. It was still a Sunday Times bestseller, but I suspect that it has

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“Paul McCartney comes out of the book very well, as a decent and ridiculously talented man who managed to keep his head while those all around him lost theirs, and Brown even remarks that, if he himself had been a Beatle, he would like to have been McCartney while he was in a relationship with Jane Asher, mixing with the beau monde of Swinging London” far more on them as representatives of the society they found themselves in than as musicians. The book is, in fact, relatively light on descriptions of their seminal songs and albums, with Brown, presumably, trusting that his readers are already au fait with their own stories, and more interested in the scandalous or mundane details of what was happening around them.

Paul McCartney comes out of the book very well, as a decent and ridiculously talented man who managed to keep his head while those all around him lost theirs, and Brown even remarks that, if he could have been a Beatle at any time in their lives, he would like to have been McCartney while he was in a relationship with Jane Asher, mixing with the beau monde of Swinging London. John Lennon emerges less well, with his undeniable genius placed in the context of his essential misanthropy and nastiness, and Brown seems to have little time for Ringo except as comic relief, though he has a certain respect for George Harrison’s musicianship and panache. The pantomime villain of the book, predictably enough, is Yoko Ono, and Brown’s careful demolition of her absurdities, lies and pretensions is magisterial. This represents a fairly damning case for the prosecution, although such is Ono’s status with revisionists that one can imagine a fair number being up in arms about her presentation here.

There are countless excellent set-pieces, such as bizarre meetings with Elvis and Bob Dylan, their (rather shoddy) spiritual awakening courtesy of the Maharishi, the various shenanigans that occurred while they made their (progressively poorer) films and, of course, the final Savile Row concert.

Brown gives proper attention to the Beatles’ tragic manager Brian Epstein, implicitly suggesting that his death meant that their fate was sealed even as they continued to keep going without him, and there is a fine assortment of fans, hangers-on and naysayers to act as a Greek chorus. Noel Coward loathed them, believing them to be scruffy and rude, but Wallis Simpson adored them, even attempting, late in life, to sing their songs.

The Beatles remain the most successful, and beloved, of all British bands. While Ma’am Darling elicited much of its enjoyment from Brown’s obvious loathing of Princess Margaret – much to her friend Lady Anne Glenconner’s later horror – he is clearly a great admirer of the Liverpudlian quartet, and this is a much warmer book in consequence. I can only hope that it receives the attention and sales that it deserves, and it might even have the happy side effect of introducing new listeners to the Beatles – even after all these years.

FOLIO SOCIETY SUMMER ROUND UP

By Various Authors (£34.95) Reviewed by Alexander Larman

‘G

o and buy a Folio Society book,’ my imaginary benefactor said, merrily throwing a pile of notes in my direction.

Dutifully returning most of the notes – because, although Folio books are expensive, they are not so ludicrously priced as to be out of the reach of the average bibliophile – I perused this summer’s catalogue and became increasingly, indeed giddily, excited by several of the titles on offer. This has not always been the case with the Society’s catalogues, I should note; I am an admirer of their books, but not an uncritical one, and occasionally I feel that their nods to more populist titles, while commercially understandable, seem an odd fit with their general ethos and level of publishing. Yet when they do their books well, they do them very, very well indeed, and any bookshelf – no matter how overstocked and groaning – should acquire them forthwith.

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enormous picture of a toad? – but the rest of it is exceptionally fine. As for the contents, any serious lover of poetry should know it all virtually off by heart (or literally, in the Chap literary editor’s case), and this will make a fine addition to the battered Faber paperback copies that festoon many a library.

The second was a more unexpected delight, being a fresh and thrilling edition of Oscar Wilde’s great book De Profundis. Like the Larkin, it is illustrated with original photographs of Wilde, Bosie and their ilk, although unlike the Larkin these are well-known images and therefore lack the novelty value. Yet where the book succeeds brilliantly is in the details. The introduction is by the singer and poet Patti Smith, written in the hotel in Paris in which Wilde finally breathed ‘Either that wallpaper goes or I do’, and is as passionate and fiery as all of Smith’s recorded or written work. The book itself has endpapers that reproduce Wilde’s original text, which consisted of a long letter that he wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas shortly after his conviction and imprisonment in 1895 for sodomy. If you haven’t read De Profundis and only know Wilde from his drama and lighter writing, it will be a revelatory experience; whether you believe that Wilde himself finally discovered the vital importance of being earnest or whether he was adopting another role – that of the wronged lover – it’s still a thrilling and vital work and the Society have done a fine job.

Finally, we all need something a little lighter for summer evening reading, and the ‘children’s classic’ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published a few years ago as an expensive and extremely quick-selling limited edition, has now been released at a considerably more wallet-friendly price. You will of course know the story already, but the real joy here is the illustrations by the Canadian artist Charles van Sandwyk. There is a good argument that van Sandwyk is the 21st century heir to the so-called ‘Golden Age’ illustrators such as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen, and his witty, colourful pictures bring Lewis Carroll’s endlessly enrapturing story to life in a suitably stylish and captivating fashion. If you don’t already own the limited edition – and virtually nobody does, without the deepest of pockets – this is a more than adequate substitute.

So, three wonderful books, three wonderful editions. What else can you possibly ask for before getting your wallet out? Answers to the usual address… n

“As for the contents, any serious lover of poetry should know Larkin virtually off by heart (or literally, in the Chap literary editor’s case), and this will make a fine addition to the battered Faber paperback copies that festoon many a library”

The first to catch my eye was a book that I have lightly lobbied Folio to publish before, without serious expectation of it happening, so its coming to print life has been a boon and a joy, namely a new edition of Philip Larkin’s collected poetry. It should be owned by any Larkin collector because of numerous distinguishing features that make it unique. Not only does it have an introduction by Larkin’s literary executor Anthony Thwaite and a foreword by his biographer Sir Andrew Motion, but also it is illustrated throughout with Larkin’s own photographs, many of which have never been published before. I’m not completely mad about the cover, designed by Richard Peacock – why not an

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TinType Photo: James Millar

Interview

MUSIC HALL MAN Gustav Temple meets pianist Tom Carradine, whose Cockney Singalong show has become an established part of the UK cabaret scene, to discuss tickling ivories, moustaches, music hall, the Second World War, Hi-De-Hi and coronavirus

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o, Tom, you’ve cornered the market in cockney singalongs. How did this come about?

It’s bizarrely something I’ve been destined to do forever. All through my university days, where I was doing a biochemistry degree, I always ended up being the person wheeled out to bang out the old tunes so everyone could sing along. I also grew up doing the Scout gang shows, and I learnt a lot of the old wartime musical tunes for that.

The actual singalong show came out of the Twinwood Festival in Bedfordshire, where I was accompanying Dusty Limits the cabaret performer.

There’s an old Nissen Hut there serving real ale,

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“There were performers called Lions Comiques, who were dapper dandy characters like George Layburn and his Champagne Charlie character, or the Great Vance. They were parodying the toffs and the working-class audiences loved it”

Photograph: Rose Callahan

with a knackered old piano, completely out of tune.

Dusty tipped me the wink when we were having a pint, saying, “Go on, play some of the old tunes; you know you want to!”

So about 30 or 40 people all sang along to Roll out The Barrell etc, and we went there again the following night after the gig, and people were waiting for another singalong. So three hours later, when we got thrown out by security, I thought, there’s something in this. When we returned the following year to play with Champagne Charlie, Dusty Limits and Tricity Vogue, people were already asking about the singalong as soon as we arrived.

Yet you have no formal musical training?

No, not at all. I learnt piano up to grade 5, but I hated the classical repertoire, so I taught myself show tunes and jazz. I fell into a scene at university, then the London improv and cabaret scene, and then I got a call offering me a job on Blood Brothers, covering for a keyboard player who was ill. And that opened doors to living out of a suitcase for seven years. Joseph, Cabaret, The Sound of Music…

You play at a lot of events marking the end of the Second World War. Do you have any feelings of ambivalence regarding the

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We’ll Meet Again seemed to resonate with them. I’m a firm believer that music doesn’t live when it’s sitting on a shelf on a piece of sheet music. These songs were meant to be sung and we need to pass them on.

You’re from Coventry, rather a long way from the chimes from Bow Bells.

I’ve always been fascinated by London, ever since poring over my dad’s 1970s A-Z of London. I knew where all the theatres were by nine or ten – I could probably have done The Knowledge. My dad also had a book of the ghost stories and spooky tales of London, and I was gripped by that as well. When I got the chance to study at Imperial College in South Kensington, I was in halls in Pimlico. I dread to think how much of my grant I spent on going to theatre shows in that first year. For my second year I lived in Bow, and my third year I did a placement at a lab in Slough – and that’s what put me off science forever.

Photograph: Claire Bilyard

“I’m a firm believer that music doesn’t live when it’s sitting on a shelf on a piece of sheet music.

These songs were meant to be sung and we need to pass them on” Did the Bow Bells call you when you lived in Bow? That interest in cockney songs came much later. It came out of my love for Victorian music hall, the penny gaff, song-and-supper clubs. The thing that fascinated me about the singalong, not necessarily the cockney one, is that it had so many guises over the years. Be that pub piano, which runs through from Victorian times through the 20s and 30s, through the War, and even the variety records like Mrs. Mills, Winnifred Atwell, Joe ‘the Piano’ Henderson, and then of course Max Bygraves, who was a Rotherhithe boy, in the 60s and 70s. And then in the 80s we had Chas & Dave.

celebration of victory in a war that took place 75 years ago?

It’s a tricky one. It’s easy to put on a rose-tinted view of the past as we move away from those times. It won’t be long before everyone involved in the Second World War is gone. But I think it is important that we do acknowledge these moments.

I don’t like the word celebration; to me it’s more a case of commemoration. These songs kept Britain’s spirits up during the war, and music is a powerful tool for memory and remembrance. I did a VE Day singalong at a primary school this year, and songs like

Was there a separate thread of songs from the early days for the posh people?

There were characters among the performers called Lions Comiques, who were the dapper dandy characters; people like George Layburn and his

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Champagne Charlie character, or the Great Vance.

They were parodying the upper class toffs and the working class audiences loved it.

created an entirely new style of your own?

My initial inspiration was the Hercule Poirot moustache, having always been a big Agatha Christie fan. Champagne Charlie’s neat, curled moustache also appealed. But I think really the moustache finds you; it took me a long time to realise how it wanted to grow, and what style suited my face. It’s changed over the last eight years, but one thing that never happened were the curls, so I let the straight tips evolve by themselves.

Would upper class folk ever have attended Victorian music hall shows?

Oh yes, they would often ‘go East’ and slum it.

Maybe not at the lower end venues.

“My initial inspiration was the Hercule Poirot moustache, having always been a big Agatha Christie fan. Champagne Charlie’s neat, curled moustache also appealed”

What is yours like sans moustache wax?

It’s like a hairy walrus! It’s very big and bushy and kind of falls forward until I wax it. I couldn’t leave the house without waxing it, to go on the school run.

Sartorially, where do you start and where do you stop – do you aspire to period authenticity and if so, what is that period?

Depending on the level of formality, I vary between late 1800s and 1940s. In the summer I go a bit more 1920s, with linen and boating blazers.

Have you ever played to old cockney types in the East End, for whom you are essentially playing their past? How does that compare to playing to hipsters in Shoreditch?

The boater is a difficult hat to pull off, but you do it very well.

When I play at Wiltons Music Hall (the oldest surviving music hall in the world) someone in their twenties or thirties might come up to me afterwards and say, ‘my mum or my nan used to sing that song’. A lot of the old cockney families are dying out, along with their barrow boy songs, because they were only passed on in that oral tradition.

One of my favourites is Barrow Boy, written over a hundred years ago, and depending on who you speak to and where in London they come from, there are different lyrics. It’s a bit Henry Higgins, in that you can work out where someone comes from by which lyrics they sing to that song.

I was doing a Christmas gig in an old people’s community group in Silvertown, near the old Tate & Lyle factory. During the gig, someone said, ‘Can Bob do a song?’ So this old boy in his 90s stood up and sang a song I’d never heard and still can’t find anywhere. It was postwar, probably from the 1950s, about a boy growing up on the bombsites. It was a great song and an example of how some of these songs are kind of brushed under the carpet because they came from working class culture.

Yes, the angle of the boater is very important. I saw two pictures of me recently, taken eight years apart, and although I’m wearing exactly the same outfit, there is a marked improvement, I think. The first one is a bit ‘Am I Chap?’ while the second seems to show that I’ve grown into myself and my outfit.

Your other duties include musical director and pianist of Champagne Charlie’s band?

Charlie and I met on the London cabaret circuit.

Originally he set up his band with his partner Michael, and when he started getting more in demand on the cabaret scene he was less available for Charlie’s gigs. So about ten years ago he tried me out at Kettners in Soho. Michael turned up and listened to me play and saw the smile on Charlie’s face. So it was just, Yep, you’re the chap for the job.

Tell us more about the London cabaret scene.

It’s not a specific vintage scene but does feature a few vintage acts. The shows are either rooted in 1920s/30s Prohibition or the Weimar Germanic style cabaret. But there’s also the American-style cabaret circuit, what you call the Great American Songbook, where performers stand and sing and

Please explain your style of moustache and what its influences are – or have you

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Photograph: Rose Callahan

tell stories; venues like The Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zedel. I was in quite a sweet spot between those two scenes, playing piano for what we call ‘straight’ musical theatre singers, but also playing at the Friday night variety shows at the Café de Paris. Sometimes I’d accompany the silent films on the piano.

I gather that you earned your ivory-tickler’s stripes by playing in the stage production of Hi-De-Hi?

the eighties, but this was a new custom version, written by Ian Gower. When we developed the show we used some of those songs from the original production. I’d grown up with Hi-De-Hi on TV repeats, along with other Croft & Perry shows like You Rang M’Lord. I always wanted to be a yellowcoat.

I had a VHS tape of the final episode, where Sue Pollard gets her yellow coat and I wore out the tape watching it so many times! So I finally got to wear a yellow coat for the production I worked on.

It was stage adaptation of the TV series. The original cast did a theatre musical version back in

Thanks for passing on coronavirus to the

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Photograph: Claire Bilyard

definitely something in the air and you could feel it. It wasn’t the environment for doing a full-blown knees-up, but it was nice to be able to share some of those songs with an intimate audience.

audience at your last show before lockdown at the Clerk’s House!

I don’t actually think I had it at all. I woke up the morning after that show with a mild fever, then I had a bit of a cough, but the next day I was absolutely fine.

Did that show differ in any way to other shows?

Let’s hope there will be the opportunity to share your songs with audiences at some point in the not too distant future.

My shows all vary. Usually we’re all crammed in together, singing in each other’s faces, so none of them would have been ideal for preventing the spread of infection. But that night there was

It doesn’t look like even the outdoor festivals will be taking place until next year. I just hope that the audience won’t have to wear masks, as that would spoil the atmosphere somewhat. n

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G r oom in g

THE GENTEEL ART OF MALE GROOMING Chris Sullivan advises the chap emerging from lockdown resembling Rubeus Hagrid on achieving the well-groomed standards of Rudolph Valentino

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fter months of lockdown, whereby a chap has been bereft of haircut, a barber’s wet shave and, for some, a manicure, many of Britain’s menfolk now resemble Rubeus Hagrid in Harry Potter rather than Terry-Thomas. As such, a touch – or a large slab – of personal grooming is in order for the Man-Who-Can-Now-Be-About-Town, while a little investigation is also in order, to remind us of the whys and wherefores of the genteel art of male grooming.

The Collins English dictionary defines ‘grooming’ as ‘to make or keep (clothes, appearance, etc) clean and tidy; to rub down, clean, and smarten (a horse, dog, etc); to train or prepare for a particular task.’ And for most men, the particular task is to meet a lady, get a job or simply to be accepted by one’s peers. And few can deny that grooming matters, because stepping out smelling fine, with a nice haircut and manicured, or at least shipshape and clean fingernails, speaks

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SHAVING It is indisputable that the first thing people see when they greet you is your face. I come from a background where men shaved for work in a factory and to be unshaven was considered not only uncouth but also lazy. How often have you thought, ‘I should shave but I can’t be bothered; I’m having a lazy day.’ Recently though, prompted by a pandemic of indolence, beards are everywhere.

A new survey by the University of New South Wales revealed that women perceive men with facial hair to be more attractive and better ‘father material’ than their clean-shaven counterparts. But while a big old beard was groovy three years ago, now football players sport them! But if you are adamantly beardy, then you must keep it clean and well tended, for a well manicured beard can work in the classic George V style: landscaped and trimmed to a point, whereas those expansive articles that look like you’ve stuck a furry shoe box on your chin do not. I will admit that a three-day growth is acceptable today but, if you want to look sharp, you cannot beat a good close wet shave and a face like a baby’s bottom.

“I’d wager that a well dressed, well groomed man would stand a better chance of getting off a charge of drunk and disorderly than a man with long scruffy greasy hair, a tatty growth of beard slovenly demeanour” volumes about you as a person and your intentions.

I’d wager that a well-dressed, well-groomed man would stand a better chance of getting off a charge of drunk and disorderly than a man with long scruffy greasy hair, a tatty growth of beard, slovenly demeanour and dirty footwear. He’d also get a taxi late at night, the job and the girl. For common or garden heartthrobs – Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable and more recently George Clooney – have one thing in common, and that is fine grooming.

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“Shaving prompted the creation of after shave.

The earliest brand of after shaves still on the market is Pinaud Clubman, created by pioneering perfumier Eduard Pinaud around 1835, and Aqua Velva, introduced in 1929

by JB Williams”

For thousands of years, man has fought a battle with the 25,000 hairs that constitute his facial hair, spending an average of more than 3,000 hours of his life shaving these whiskers that grow between 125mm and 150mm per year. The first ‘shavers’ were of course the grooming trendsetting Egyptians, who shaved both heads and beards and were so into it that they even decorated their tombs with drawings of barbers (from the Latin, ‘barba’ – beard) shops, the earliest such drawings being found on the walls of the tomb of Userhet at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna (1292 BC).

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Subsequently, the Egyptians influenced the grooming habits of both the Greeks – who took to the habit around 330BC, during the reign of Alexander the Great – and the Romans, who after 296 BC, encouraged their soldiers to shave, so that enemies could not grab their beards during battle, while a young man’s first shave (tonsura) was considered an essential part of his coming of age ceremony. Initially, men scraped their hair away with clamshells, stone and flint, in fact anything remotely sharp that came to hand, until some bright spark introduced bronze, copper and iron razors, prompting today’s billion-dollar industry.

But back then, as in recent times, a shaved face was considered a mark of respectability while, until recent times, the height of sophistication was a man who never shaved himself.

Accordingly, unshaven societies were known as ‘barbarians’– meaning the ‘unbarbered.’ Until the 10th century, beards were de rigueur in the West until Pope Gregory VII banned beards and moustaches among the clergy and clergymen. Then in the 16th century, after Francis I of France accidentally burned his hair with a torch, men began to wear short hair and grew short beards and moustaches.

As time went on, shaving became an industry, its first proper implement, the straight, or cutthroat, razor, was invented in Sheffield, England in 1680.

The item subsequently reigned supreme but its implementation required much diligent practice, trial, error and a certain degree of daily bloodletting.

Such daily debacle prompted the invention of the basic safety razor in 1847 by William S. Henson. But the man who took the idea to another level was utopian socialist King Camp Gillette (pictured left) who invented the best-selling version of the safety razor in 1901, employing the thin, inexpensive, disposable blade. By 1915 he’d secured the army contract, sold some 70 million units and changed the way men shaved forever. Since then, the safety razor has developed beyond everyone’s wildest imagination, the main two brands, Gillette and Wilkinson Sword, coming up with new improved razors that include moisture bars, five blades and electric beard trimmers. The former is the 27th most valuable brand in the world and is worth $19.1 billion.

creams remained essentially unchanged from the Romans to the Renaissance, and it wasn’t until the 18th century that men started using a badger hair brush to apply the soap. Shaving cream as we now know it first cropped up in the 1840s in England, Vroom and Fowler’s Walnut Oil Military Shaving Soap being one of the first widely available foaming tablets on the market.

Since then, the only significant change (we shall not speak of the dreaded aerosol) has been shaving oils, such as Penhaligon’s or King of Shaves; the latter saving time and being easy to carry abroad and deliver a far better shave than an aerosol foam or gel. Neither are a match for a proper wet shave however, especially if one uses a soap with a high fat content (30 to 50 per cent) such as Geo F. Trumper, Klar or Santa Maria Novella.

AFTER SHAVE Shaving and its irritation to the skin prompted the creation of after-shave. Employed since Roman times, this might contain an antiseptic agent such as denatured alcohol, witch hazel or stearate citrate

RAFFISH For the chap whose top hat overflows with billets-doux

CREAMS, COLOGNES AND AFTER SHAVES The first rudimentary form of shaving cream was documented in Sumer, Mesopotamia (now Southern Iraq), around 3000 BC, which combined wood alkali and animal fat. Further shaving

THE NEW EAU DE COLOGNE FROM THE CHAP

AVAILABLE FROM WWW.THECHAP.CO.UK

149

to prevent the infection of cuts, astringent to reduce skin irritation and menthol to numb damaged skin.

The earliest brand of after shaves still on the market is Pinaud Clubman, created by pioneering perfumier Eduard Pinaud somewhere around 1835 and Aqua Velva, introduced in 1929 by JB Williams.

Of late, however, most agree that the use of a good moisturiser or after-shave balm soothes the troubled skin much better than after shave, as alcohol undeniably dries out the skin. Often cologne and eau de toilette are mistaken for after shave, but the latter contains less perfume than either, its scent lasting just a few hours, although it should also contain soothing and cooling agents.

Eau de toilette generally contains more perfume than cologne and lasts six to eight hours. The most powerful and most expensive, however (and generally rare in men’s fragrances) is Eau de Parfum, which contains three times the perfume oil of eau de toilette, five times that of cologne and ten times that of after shave, and will last all day.

The word perfume derives from the Latin perfumare, meaning ‘to smoke through.’ It was first made in Mesopotamia and Egypt; the earliest example found was made in 2000 BC, while Arab chemist Al Kindi pioneered the form in the 9th century AD and, 200 years later, Persian chemist Ibn Sina introduced the process of extracting oils from flowers by means of distillation, a procedure still used today. In the West, it was the monks of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, in Italy who blazed the way from 1221. One practitioner, Rene the Florentine, made perfume for Catherine de Medici in the 16th Century. She took it to France, where it was used to cloak the nation’s soap dodging tradition, and started an ongoing Gallic industry. Cologne, on the other hand, was created 1709 by Giovanni Maria Farina (1685–1766), who moved to the German city of Cologne and produced his spirit-citrus concoction that became an instant hit with European royalty (at the time, a single vial of this aqua mirabilis cost half the annual salary of a civil servant) and named it after his adopted city. His trademark 4711 Cologne is today the world’s oldest selling fragrance, simply named after the number on the street where his factory was situated.

by pomade made of bear fat, which, being rather hard to come by, was superseded by petroleum jelly, beeswax and lard.

The aforementioned Pinaud Company thus invented brilliantine, comprising essential scented oils, olive oil and glycerine in 1900, while one of the first marketed pomades (basically the addition of beeswax and petrolatum to the brilliantine mixture) was Murray’s Pomade, developed by C.D. Murray in Chicago in 1922. The latter, favoured by the likes of Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and Al Capone, who greased back their hair to achieve what was nicknamed ‘Patent Leather’ hair or ‘helmet head,’ became hugely popular and other companies jumped on the bandwagon such as Brylcreem (a softer product invented in England in 1928), and Royal Crown Hair Dressing (a pomade that originated in 1936 and used by Elvis and Johnny Cash), all of which are still sold today.

FACIAL HAIR And then we come to the gentleman’s mustachio, an item that requires as much care and attention as one might lavish on one’s three-month-old child. It has to be carefully trimmed and maintained and, rather like one’s offspring, not addressed when drunk. I have trimmed my moustache when drunk, hungover and tired, in a rush, in meagre light and have always come a cropper, as my ever-changing growth will attest. I recall back in the eighties when I first sported the curled variety of whiskers, moustache wax was hard to come by. The only one on offer was Zwirble Hungarian Moustache Wax, sold in only one store in the UK on Jermyn Street.

The situation for the man who cares for the hair on his upper lip has improved enormously since then; indeed, even The Chap now purveys a superior whisker wax, Debonair, made in collaboration with Top lip stiffening emporium Captain Fawcett. n

HAIR PRODUCTS The daddy of modern hairstyling and grooming was of course Beau Brummell who, in 1800, championed the ‘natural’ look, as opposed to the powdered wigs favoured by his predecessors the Macaronis. Brummell’s new look was hair oiled

For everything a chap needs to ensure fabulous grooming: www.thechap.co.uk

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P I L S ' N I A T P A THE C sel

Wea

In association with Captain Fawcett, we present the winners and runners-up of our Captain’s Lip Weasel Competition. Captain Fawcett’s Right Hand Man explains the whys and wherefores of assessing the moustachioed victors from an astounding crop of entries

W

hen it comes to the business of cultivating one’s Lip Weasel, to whom should one turn for encouragement and advice? Why, none other than that delightfully moustachioed gentleman, the world renowned manufacturer and purveyor of simply delectable ‘First Class Gentleman’s Grooming Requisites’, Captain Peabody Fawcett, RN Rtd!

However, the intrepid Captain’s latest telegram reports indefinite detainment close to the Kamchatka border. Thus, his loyal Right Hand Man, Richie Finney, has stepped into the Captain’s well-travelled boots to judge The Chap’s Lip Weasel Competition. Huzzah! If there are two fellows more famed for ‘Keeping A Stiff Upper Lip Regardless’, the world has yet to meet them. Indeed, some say the Right Hand Man himself has yet to meet the Captain...for theirs is a curious and perplexing history.

It began with a wrong turn. While navigating his trusty Harley-Davidson from Cambodia to Kathmandu, a portly figure in biking leathers mistook his coordinates, arriving by chance at a contents sale of a decaying stately home in Norfolk. There a singular item caught his eye: a battered trunk! The locks forced, he

The winner receives a Captain Fawcett foldable moustache comb and a jar of Lavender Moustache Wax. All runners-up receive a tin of Debonair Moustache Wax

discovered therein a dressing case neatly packed with salves and unguents, their exotic ingredients meticulously listed. Good Lord! Captain Fawcett’s very own exquisite travelling essentials had at last come to light!

The Right Hand Man, for certainly it was he, pored over the faded notebooks and, with only a baked bean tin and wooden spatula, upon his kitchen stove, began to remake the Captain’s particular moustache wax formula. Never had he encountered such an extraordinary stiffener.

What staying power! It was nothing short of magnificent, and ultimately led to the creation of Captain Fawcett’s extraordinary range of upper lip stiffening unguents, as well as a whole host of equally essential male grooming components.

There is no man alive with more astounding experience in the wonderful world of whiskers, and, as such, he has been called upon to judge

the facial follicles of fine fellows in moustache contests across the world. In these turbulent times, on what can a chap rely for character, consolation and contentment? Why, we’d wager nothing tickles, titillates and tantalises like the considered cultivation of his personal Lip Weasel.

Thus it is we come to your very own simply splendid Lip Weasels. In this, Captain Fawcett’s 10th Anniversary year and The Chap’s 21st, it is our mutual honour to join forces and invite Captain Fawcett’s Right Hand Man to share his most original observations on your distinguished Weasels.

The Captain reminds us that, when one wears a moustache, one is a winner no matter what. To that end he hopes, nay indeed trusts, that each chap, and indeed the odd chapette, will carry on ‘Keeping A Stiff Upper Lip Regardless’.

And so to the Lip Weasels...

WINNER Terence Smith: A clear winner; absolutely top hole, Sir! Superb to see that, even whilst wearing a mask, this most estimable gentleman is intent on ‘Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip Regardless’. A fellow after my own heart. Give us a twirl!

RUNNERS UP

Darcy Sullivan Well, Howdy pardner! That’s a mighty fine effort you’ve undertaken! A whip smart upper lip and simply superb choice of beard oil. Clearly a man of great taste and innate style. I’ll bet this fellow always drinks upstream from the herd.

Howard Kinderman Not a chap to play cards with, I’d wager! I suspect this cove has a trick or two up his well-pressed sleeve, not to mention a nicely warmed tin of moustache wax in his jacket pocket.

Aces high!

John Carr Seen here as an Russian émigré – ‘If you must go, you must go, but do not go to Moscow’. John, if that is indeed his name, delighted by his jaunty tips, has taken his Lip Weasel a step further and cultivated a superbly soft Chin Chilla. Keep smiling, they’ll wonder what you’ve been up to...

Mark Stretton A pin sharp upper lip and rather splendid silvering beard.

An indubitably imposing chap.

Seems familiar...I’ll Chekov my list.

What a suit! That certainly didn’t come from the back of a Vanya. ‘ypá!’

Richard Moore No flies on him, for in truth he seems a pheasant cove. And a damned fine cravat to boot.

All the same I wouldn’t want to tamper with him. What on earth is he looking at?

Ah well, let’s to it. PULL!

Robin Shrubsole I shall answer to the name Henk and will be clutching a rolled-up copy of the Sporting Life… Such was the mysterious telegram received at HQ from Panama this very afternoon.

Could this be the man?

Simon Rosbottom I say! The mutineer is missing his monocle! However, his upper lip topiary appears all in order. This fellow may have his foibles yet has certainly found his forte!

En Garde!

David Polanski The subtlety of Mr. Polanski’s elegant face furniture is more than offset by his eccentric ensemble, which eschews both shirt and jacket, though the overall effect is enough to startle the constabulary.

Andy Hayes Mr. Hayes has cleverly trimmed his underlip growth in such a way that his excellent handlebar is given centre stage, with the added advantage of his looking exactly the same when upside down.

Mark Beecroft-Stretton Mr. Beecroft-Stretton apologised for his lack of tie (appreciated) though not for his knitwear (noted).

Nevertheless, when it comes to his upper lip topiary, we have no complaints.

Ashley Young Mr. Young’s attempts to use electricity to jump-start his facial topiary have been entirely successful, though we do advise readers to stick to the more traditional methods of razor, scissors and moustache wax.

All runners-up received a tin of Debonair Moustache Wax

John Minns turns his attention to the contents of his pockets, and the pockets of gentlemen going as far back as ancient Turkey

Coins

T

he oldest known coin in the world was invented by the Lydians in the area we now know as modern-day Turkey around 600 BCE. The Lydian Lion was made of electrum, a naturally occuring amalgam of gold and silver. Its original financial value is not known, nor what purpose it served. There is much speculation as to who invented what and when, as forms of currency were then appearing across the known world in many forms.

The Chinese had invented a type of currency at a period earlier than the Lydians, but not in the form of a coin as we know it. Its actual form and shape were similar to that of a cut-throat razor. It took the Chinese until around 350 BCE to create coinage of various values and denominations to be used throughout the Chinese empire for common usage, for example, paying fines, taxes and everyday commodities. The Chinese were also the first nation to invent paper currencies.

However, we are now entering a new era, as digital and cryptocurrencies insidiously pervade our much-loved system. Ironically, the Chinese, who had given us the original format, are now the biggest proponents of this new system.

Lydian Lion

Chinese coin

The Deutsche Bank is predicting that cash will completely disappear by 2030.

Now before you rush off to the bank and hand in all of your loose change from the old Bells Whisky bottle that sits by the side of your bed; before you empty your trouser pockets, saying goodbye to that reassuring and comforting clinky clunky sound of coins residing within, and exchange it all for nontactile cryptocurrency, it might just be worth checking first whether if there are any Numismatic gems hiding there. Here are a few rare coins to look out for:

The Ephraim Brasher

GOLD DOUBLOON

This came in a variety of sizes, all in 22-carat gold, once again of Spanish origin. The gold was mined from the colonies of the Spanish empire.

THE EPHRAIM BRASHER

The first American gold coin struck in the USA was made by Ephraim Brasher in 1787, based on the Spanish doubloon. Worth $16 when it was first minted, only seven of these beauties are known to exist, with one selling in 2011 for $7,400,000.

Piece of Eight

PIECES OF EIGHT

This silver coin, also known as a Spanish silver dollar, was in use from the 15th to the 19th century. Many countries, including most of South America, adopted it as its own currency. The coin would often have an ‘8’ pressed into the metal and could be cut into eight pieces like the segments of a pie, creating smaller denominations of currency.

Gold Vigo 5-Guinea Piece

THE GOLD VIGO 5-GUINEA PIECE

One of the rarest British coins, bearing Queen Anne’s head, made from gold taken from the Spanish at the Battle of Vigo Bay in 1703. In 2016 one was found in a toy box given from a father to his four-year-old son to play with.

THE 1943 AMERICAN PENNY Gold Doubloon

The US Penny was made of steel and coated with zinc to stop rusting. Later that year, a number of

THE 1937 EDWARD VIII THREE PENCE

Another rare coin that never went into full production, with only 10 known to exist. The Royal Mint made the 12-sided coin dated 1937 after King George V died, ahead of Edward’s coronation in the same year, which of course never took place.

As well as his rather unmonarchical behaviour, Edward had also bucked Royal Mint tradition by insisting on his left profile being used. Tradition dictated that each successive king’s profile faced the opposite way from his predecessor, but his father King George V had also faced to the left. One of these thrupenny bits recently sold for £30,000, while an Edward VIII gold sovereign, considered one of the rarest coins in the world, fetched over £1 million at auction this year.

1943 American Penny

copper blanks made it into the minting process by accident and it is these coins that are very rare and therefore collectable.

1933 Penny

THE 1933 ENGLISH PENNY

Only seven of these were purportedly made, having never been designed to go into the public domain, but instead only ever used to place under the foundation stone of important buildings. One of these coins was stolen from the foundation stone of a church in Leeds in the 1970s, and its whereabouts is unknown.

1937 Three Penny

THE FLUMMOXER This issue’s antiquity conundrum is posed by the item in this photograph. What is this device and what was it used for?

One lucky provider of the correct answer receives a pair of fox cufflinks.

Send your answers to chap@thechap.co.uk

Peter Johnson correctly identified last issue’s Flummoxer as a button stick or polishing guard, used to protect items of uniform or equipment when polishing brass fittings.

CROSSWORD 1

2

3

4

9

5

6

7

8

16

17

By Xeno

10 11

12

13

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15

Solutions to crossword Issue 104 Chap Summer 20

18 19

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P O P R T C U G C A L

22 23

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D A R A E M A S T I T C

F R O B O N S A S I M M I L

27

ACROSS Across

E B I S E X T N I E R E E L O M S U N X H O N D N A R E N C H S C A I E C D N N E N T D S

L I N G U I N I P A S S B Y

U T P O L L T A L O O M Y W E O N Q V V Y U P O E O L I S H T T T A T I C I O A R O N E

DOWN

1. Lennon’s beast of a moustache (6) 1. Chefs maybe have these bristles? (8) Down Lennon's of a moustache (6) 4. 1Better when notbeast in kit (8) 2. Passionately frustrated voices made left and Chefs have these bristles? (8) 9. And, I've diverted march into another region (6) right1look aroundmaybe (8) 4 Better when not in kit (8) 10. Sign of bad liver cut trip short before several die (8) 3. Regularly turned to ctrl+z (4) 2 Passionately frustrated 12. 9 Cheek is somewhere to plant this (4) into another region 5. Repellent truant fidgets on mobile (12) voices made left and And, I've diverted march right look around (8) 13. Cockney girl’s jazz singing outside for small few (10) 6. Feeling not as idiotic (9) (6) 14. Returned favour with correct IPA drunk by editor (12) 7. Dried fruit is in the wet (6) 3 Regularly turned to ctrl+z (4) 18. rocksof yetbad Slashliver buriescut piano quickly (7,5)before several 8. Lip weasel finally gets lip commitment (6) 10 RiffSign trip short 21. Have trim, the solution’s here (5-5) 11. See 5 23 Repellent truant fidgets on mobile (12) diea (8) 22. State I was removed from for long hair (4) 15. Proper flowers (9) Feeling not bottle, as idiotic (9) 12 Possibly 24.

I’d is resign to get the best (8) this (4) 16. Skin6product in simple three directions (8) Cheek somewhere toseats plant 25. Dumplings? Turn down several in recital (3,3) 17. Godiva, for one, got money for grand party piece (8) 7 Dried fruit is in the wet (6) 13 F rom Cockney girl's jazz grown singing outside for small19. A bishop 26. one’s private produce without wearing his tweed (6) few (10) human meddling (4-4) 20. An alto played not in any key (6) gets lip commitment (6) 8 Lip weasel finally 27. One who carries trim facial hair every other year (6) 23/11. Why one feels fuzzy in the early evening? (4,1,5,6)

14 Returned favour with correct IPA drunk by editor (12)

18 Riff rocks yet Slash buries piano quickly (7,5) 21 Have a trim, the solution's here (5-5)

160

22 State I was removed from for long hair (4)

11 See 23

15 Proper flowers (9) 16 Skin product in simple bottle, three directions (8) 17 Godiva, for one, got money for grand party piece (8)

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