Tatler, December 1980

[00:00:01] Trying to get into modelling? Are you wearing a counterfeit Gucci moccasin? Have you remembered

[00:00:08] to settle up with the fishmonger? Well, thank goodness you've found this podcast.

[00:00:16] Hello and welcome to Mag Hags, the podcast revealing the latest status symbols. I'm Lucy Douglas.

[00:00:23] And I'm Franki Cookney. Together we're diving into the glossy archives of women's magazines

[00:00:27] to find out what's still hot and what's definitely not.

[00:00:33] Frankie, hello. Hi Lucy. What's new with you? Have you been inspired by Women's Own to make

[00:00:40] any wicker stools this past fortnight? Alas, I have not made a stool. I did make

[00:00:46] a butternut squash risotto this week. I'm not sure if that counts. Both my children ate it,

[00:00:50] which is about as good as it gets in terms of my domestic godliness. That's definitely a win.

[00:00:55] That sounds pretty great actually, a butternut squash risotto. I would love that. Frankie,

[00:01:00] I have a quick quiz question for you. Oh, okay. What do succulents, antiques roadshow and unpeeled

[00:01:08] tomatoes have in common? I have no idea. Well, these are all things that Nicky Haslam finds common,

[00:01:19] according to the latest iteration of his Things Nicky Haslam Finds Common tea towel,

[00:01:24] which this year has been launched in collaboration with Selfridges.

[00:01:29] Has it? It has. Now, I don't know about you, Frankie, but I would say that flogging a joke

[00:01:35] until it gets a brand deal is quite common. Anyway, I bring this up because the magazine we talk about

[00:01:43] in today's episode is very concerned with what is and isn't common. And we do actually mention

[00:01:49] Nicky Haslam's tea towels as part of the conversation. So I thought it was apt to mention

[00:01:54] his new one. Yes, we do. This is perfect timing. Exactly. So yeah, so we'll be finding out what's

[00:02:02] considered high status and what might make you accidentally look common. We've got a report

[00:02:08] on a shocking new social trend. And I'm actually quite excited to talk to you about the writing in

[00:02:14] this week's mag because it's fabulous. Oh, okay. I am so excited to get into it.

[00:02:21] Frankie, it really had not occurred to me when we started this podcast how much we would be talking

[00:02:27] about the royal family. But here I am again anchoring us in time with reference to Princess Diana.

[00:02:34] So we are 18 months into a new government. But the tabloids are distracted and they are quite frankly

[00:02:41] beside themselves for it seems that the world's most eligible bachelor may be about to take himself

[00:02:48] off the market. Oh my goodness. This is the best segue that we absolutely didn't plan.

[00:02:56] I know, I know. So we have recently had a front page of The Sun, Charlie's Girl, the bubbly blonde

[00:03:04] teenager tipped to be the next Queen of England stepped regally into the limelight for the first time

[00:03:10] yesterday. And then followed a couple of months later with Lady Diana, the Queen gives her blessing.

[00:03:17] So yeah, that's where we are in time. It is December 1980. And the courtship of Prince Charles

[00:03:24] and Lady Diana Spencer is particularly poignant for the magazine that we are going to be discussing today

[00:03:31] because, Frankie, we are talking about Tatler.

[00:03:36] Oh my goodness. Yes. It's so funny that you said that about the royals because I've just been editing,

[00:03:43] you know, going over the last couple of episodes and I was thinking to myself,

[00:03:47] I did not anticipate talking about the royal family quite as much as we have. But as you pointed out

[00:03:53] in the last episode, they were the OG celebrities.

[00:03:57] Yeah. So Tatler is the, like the high society glossy mag. I guess it's slightly different from

[00:04:04] the other mags that we've talked about in this series because I wouldn't say it's necessarily

[00:04:08] a women's lifestyle as such, but I really wanted to talk about it and I really wanted to discuss an

[00:04:14] issue from the Tina Brown years, the years when Tina Brown was the editor of Tatler.

[00:04:19] Okay. Yes. Tell me about Tina Brown because I feel like this is, this is someone who's huge in

[00:04:25] magazine publishing and I don't know an awful lot about her.

[00:04:28] Tina Brown is, she's like a legendary magazine editor. I'd say there's like,

[00:04:33] there's like a handful of magazine editors ever who could legitimately claim to be like

[00:04:38] famous for being a magazine editor. Anna Wintour is probably the most well-known,

[00:04:45] maybe Helen Gurley Brown, who we've talked about before. But yeah, Tina Brown,

[00:04:49] I would say is she's a doyen of magazine publishing. She's, she's most well-known for

[00:04:55] editing Vanity Fair in the eighties and then subsequently The New Yorker. But where we find

[00:05:01] her right now, so she's been this dynamic editorial ingenue in the 1970s. She like made a name for

[00:05:09] herself writing for Oxford's literary magazine and then for Punch, which is like the big sort of

[00:05:16] satirical magazine in the middle of the 20th century and for the New Statesman and lots of

[00:05:21] other places. And off the back of that, she was invited to come and edit Tatler, which at the time

[00:05:26] was this really flailing title. It'd been going for years and years and years, but its readership had

[00:05:32] really dwindled to something like 10,000 in the late seventies. I read it being described as

[00:05:39] moribund at the time when she took it over.

[00:05:41] Anyway, and Tina Brown was, she was like friendly with all these young literary hot shots, like

[00:05:46] Orbron Waugh, who's the son of Evelyn Waugh and Martin Amis. And she kind of proved that she was like

[00:05:53] really creative and really smart and really irreverent and was also not afraid of like

[00:05:59] poking a bit of fun at people and making really bold decisions. So yeah, so she was tasked with

[00:06:06] turning Tatler around. She was really young. She was in her twenties at the time.

[00:06:10] Wow. Wow. What a responsibility with like no life experience.

[00:06:15] I know. Going back to the point about Princess Diana, this is one of the things that she says

[00:06:21] about the time that she took Tatler over. So another windfall for Tatler's editorial fortunes

[00:06:26] and business prospects. Lady Diana Spencer's emergence, rise and conquest of Prince Charles

[00:06:32] and the British public was the 20th century's biggest social story since Edward VIII traded the

[00:06:37] throne for Mrs. Simpson in 1936. Lady Di's world was Tatler's world.

[00:06:43] So that's from her 2017 memoir, The Vanity Fair Diaries, which if you are at all interested in

[00:06:51] the heyday of magazine publishing or like 20th century society or anything like that,

[00:06:56] I cannot recommend enough. And just listening to her talk about this time when she was editing

[00:07:02] Tatler, you really kind of get a sense of how creative and dynamic and sort of upstarty it was

[00:07:08] as a place to work. Amazing. And I think I would say that when we sort of first mooted doing an

[00:07:16] edition of Tatler, I definitely had a sense of like, oh God, like what the hell do I know about Tatler?

[00:07:21] Like it really feels like a world I don't, I'm not part of, you know. I've never really read Tatler.

[00:07:27] I've never written for Tatler. It doesn't feel like it's for me. But yeah, what you've just said,

[00:07:35] and you know, the way you explained it to me when we talked about it is like, it's such interesting

[00:07:41] and exciting kind of window into this particular moment in culture and British history.

[00:07:46] Yeah, yeah, for sure. So should we take a look at what's on the cover?

[00:07:52] Yeah, I'm really excited.

[00:07:53] Dashing white sergeants. Well, lieutenants actually.

[00:07:57] The beasts of Belgravia. Would you credit it?

[00:08:00] Stata symbols to blow your own trumpet. And symbols is spelt like,

[00:08:05] like the musical instrument that you clash together.

[00:08:09] A clash, a clash thereof.

[00:08:10] Yeah. And Norman Parkinson's Lady Madonna's.

[00:08:14] And then the kind of main cover line at the bottom just says winter riches, which...

[00:08:20] Is describing the readership?

[00:08:23] Possibly. It's definitely describing the sort of styling of the cover shoe is definitely meant to be a...

[00:08:32] Like the jewellery on this cover shoe is the big focus.

[00:08:37] And it's a December issue as well, isn't it? Which is our first Christmas issue.

[00:08:42] It is a December issue. So it's a festive issue.

[00:08:45] I'm going to find some sleigh bells to put in.

[00:08:48] I really enjoy how on the cover, just right below the title, it just says tinsel time.

[00:08:55] Yeah.

[00:08:55] In a sort of vaguely threatening way.

[00:08:58] Before we talk about anything else, I just want to say, none of these cover lines make any sense to me.

[00:09:06] I'm reading these and I'm just thinking, what? What is in this magazine?

[00:09:14] And I don't know if this is me sort of, you know, maybe projecting some of my own prejudice a little bit about Tatler.

[00:09:20] But I just looked at this and I had the most intense feeling of imposter syndrome.

[00:09:24] Like, oh, okay, I don't get this. This is not for the likes of me.

[00:09:29] Yeah, I agree. And like the cover line about Norman Parkinson's Lady Madonna is like,

[00:09:33] clearly we're meant to know who Norman Parkinson is.

[00:09:36] And I just didn't have a clue.

[00:09:37] Although having re-listened to the Tatler chapter of Tina Brown's Fantasy Fair Diaries,

[00:09:45] which I have on audiobook, she does talk about him.

[00:09:49] He's a photographer and she does talk about him a fair bit.

[00:09:52] Now that you say that, I obviously am kind of like, okay, yeah, that makes total sense.

[00:09:55] He's a photographer.

[00:09:56] Also, so the Dashing White Sergeants line, I thought that was like a lesser known line from

[00:10:03] The Sound of Music song, you know, the few of our favourite things.

[00:10:08] Dashing White Sergeants.

[00:10:10] I thought it was. But on a quick Google, I have just learnt that it's a Scottish country dance.

[00:10:18] Oh, that actually makes a lot of sense.

[00:10:21] Performed to a piece of similarly titled music.

[00:10:24] Yes. Also, because you're talking about the woman on the cover,

[00:10:28] she's got quite extraordinary hair, hasn't she?

[00:10:31] So she's got a very, very kind of short cropped hair, but it's also permed.

[00:10:37] It's just the most dated hair look that I personally can fathom.

[00:10:44] But do you know what, Lucy, that means it's on its way back in.

[00:10:46] Because I think if you think of any of the sort of key haircuts from the 70s and 80s and 90s,

[00:10:52] they've all come back around eventually.

[00:10:55] You know, at one point we could never have dreamed that mullets would come back into fashion.

[00:11:00] And yet here we are.

[00:11:00] Yeah.

[00:11:01] So I reckon this haircut's going to come back in.

[00:11:03] I will say, having just like hammed up how excited I was to read a Tina Brown issue of Tatler,

[00:11:12] I will say it did take me a little while to get into this.

[00:11:16] When it arrived and I had it, it was sort of every time I kind of picked it up,

[00:11:22] I'd like flick through it and nothing was sort of jumping out at me to, nothing was pulling me in.

[00:11:29] I think especially like off the back of reading New Woman and it was so everything,

[00:11:36] all the information was cut up in little chunks and there's loads of stuff.

[00:11:39] Everything was really accessible and there's loads of stuff to kind of hook you in and grab you in.

[00:11:43] This was much more like chunks of text.

[00:11:45] I mean, walls of text, I would say.

[00:11:48] It's really text heavy, this magazine, isn't it?

[00:11:50] Very copy heavy.

[00:11:52] However, all of that said, once I did actually sit down and start reading the features,

[00:11:58] I could not get enough.

[00:12:00] I loved it so much.

[00:12:02] They were so witty, like so funny.

[00:12:06] All of the tone was really like irreverent and rich and satirical and I just like wanted to devour it.

[00:12:14] I like, I couldn't get enough.

[00:12:15] Oh my God, I'm excited.

[00:12:17] Should we get into it?

[00:12:21] Status.

[00:12:22] You show me yours and I'll show you mine.

[00:12:25] Since JFK said of Jackie that she was all status and not enough quo,

[00:12:30] the whole prestige game has got a lot more complicated.

[00:12:33] Why, for example, are the world's fashion editors now trying to look like suburban shoppers from Minnesota?

[00:12:40] Georgina Howell investigates.

[00:12:42] So basically, this feature is about how, like where once the very wealthy might really kind of show off how rich they are.

[00:12:53] Now, the real status is in like not showing off how wealthy you are.

[00:12:59] And actually, like showing it off is kind of vulgar.

[00:13:04] So our way into the feature is referencing a few characters.

[00:13:11] Lady Docker sailed through London in a gold-plated Daimler with zebra upholstery.

[00:13:16] I did have to Google Lady Docker.

[00:13:19] And sure enough, she was somebody who sailed through London.

[00:13:23] That's a real thing.

[00:13:24] That's a real thing that happened.

[00:13:26] It's a real thing that happened.

[00:13:28] Yeah.

[00:13:28] Cecil Rhodes and Barney Bonato lit each other's cigars with five pound notes.

[00:13:33] And as a toddler, Christina Onassis played on board her father's yacht with dolls designed and dressed by Dior.

[00:13:39] But this was all before the advent of the vigilant taxman, alert for any sign of conspicuous consumption,

[00:13:46] before social guilt set in and before the vogue for snubbing vulgar display.

[00:13:51] There is so much to unpack in this feature.

[00:13:55] So much to unpack.

[00:13:57] Today, the really successful status symbol has to be invulnerable, which means it has to be so subtle it runs the risk of being overlooked.

[00:14:06] So part of the like, clearly like the hook for this feature, which I thought was absolutely fascinating,

[00:14:12] was the fact that at this period in history, or certainly up until very recently,

[00:14:19] certainly up until Thatcher, who had only been in power for about 18 months by this point,

[00:14:26] the wealthy were being taxed through the nose.

[00:14:32] Income tax was basically as high as 98% on some of the kind of top earners in the mid 1970s.

[00:14:39] The top rate of tax on earned income was 83%.

[00:14:43] And then there was a 15% surcharge on income from investment.

[00:14:48] So basically, if you were making what we would now know as like dividend income on stocks and shares that you owned on top of your income from your job or whatever,

[00:15:00] you would be charged like 98% of that was going on tax.

[00:15:04] So yeah, the idea is that like, if you show off your wealth, well, then the tax man is going to come and give you a massive bill.

[00:15:11] So we need to like, be a little bit discreet about it.

[00:15:17] Yeah, although I don't really understand that.

[00:15:20] Because as you say, Margaret Thatcher had been in power for about 18 months, and income tax had just been cut.

[00:15:26] In fact, at this point in 1980, income tax was lower than it's like, ever been, or certainly that it's been in the entire 70s.

[00:15:35] So what I wondered is whether the lowering of taxes has led to like a far more fervent debate around wealth and fairness,

[00:15:46] and like an increasing sense of injustice, kind of in society more broadly.

[00:15:51] And that is maybe what rich people are feeling jittery about, not necessarily that they would be taxed,

[00:15:58] but that people would see them enjoying their, you know, undertaxed assets and dividends and sort of be hostile.

[00:16:05] Because she mentions as well guilt, doesn't she?

[00:16:08] Before social guilt set in, and before the vogue for snubbing vulgar display.

[00:16:12] So I wonder, is there a sense here that suddenly the wealthy are aware that they are not paying as much tax as they might be?

[00:16:24] Some might say should be, I personally would say should be, but do you know what I mean?

[00:16:28] It's like, is that the sense?

[00:16:30] It could be.

[00:16:31] It could also be the sense that like, if everybody is paying less tax,

[00:16:36] then that means the middle classes, the upper middle classes will have more money to buy the status symbols that were previously only accessible to the upper classes.

[00:16:51] And we don't want any new money.

[00:16:54] So we need to create a new code of how to behave like a wealthy person to gatekeep.

[00:17:00] Exactly.

[00:17:01] Exactly.

[00:17:02] So one of my like favourite lines in it is,

[00:17:05] the raw brandishing of furs and jewels will get you nowhere here.

[00:17:08] The first foreigner to catch on to this and make capital out of it was that famous French exploiter of British goods, Coco Chanel.

[00:17:16] If you must wear fur, for goodness sake, keep it out of sight on the inside of a plain tweed coat.

[00:17:23] I really, really enjoyed the writing in this feature.

[00:17:26] Yeah.

[00:17:27] And throughout, actually, the sort of second par starts,

[00:17:32] watch the upper class dodge and faint.

[00:17:34] Their language for a start is full of prevarications designed to gloss over incriminating and taxable evidence of wealth and status.

[00:17:42] A small place in the country turns out to be a queen and hunting box.

[00:17:45] A few neighbours in means a bash for 60.

[00:17:48] And Charles, who turns a few bob in the city, is what used to be vulgarly known as a millionaire.

[00:17:55] Yeah.

[00:17:56] I know.

[00:17:57] I love it.

[00:17:59] I also love there's a section under the subhead life status.

[00:18:03] And I really like having a job has become rather smart among girls who don't really need one.

[00:18:10] Oh, my God.

[00:18:11] Yes.

[00:18:11] I love this section.

[00:18:12] I was going to say to you, can we talk about the jobs that are the jobs which have status and which don't?

[00:18:19] Yes.

[00:18:20] Yes.

[00:18:20] So modelling, modelling was interesting to me because when we looked at Honey 1976,

[00:18:27] one of our sort of posh shows in that feature was a model.

[00:18:32] And they had this glamorous lifestyle where they went off to their Surrey home on weekends.

[00:18:36] And now in 1980, Tatler is saying modelling is considered rather dim.

[00:18:42] So I actually, I think there's a little bit more nuance here because I think the distinction is that

[00:18:48] being invited to be a model is correct and has status, but turning down the opportunity to be a model,

[00:18:56] that is really, that's what you want to aspire to.

[00:19:00] Presumably, you definitely shouldn't be trying to be a model.

[00:19:04] No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:19:05] Chasing after modelling work.

[00:19:07] Absolutely not.

[00:19:08] No, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:19:10] It's all right to be an actress, a journalist or to work for Amnesty,

[00:19:14] but it's no good being a painter or a novelist unless you're notably successful.

[00:19:19] I mean, I kind of feel that, honestly.

[00:19:23] Status jobs now are gardening and landscape design.

[00:19:26] Decorating is too frivolous.

[00:19:28] And then writing cookery books is an acceptable sideline.

[00:19:31] Yeah.

[00:19:32] Not to cook well is to lose status drastically, which is also a nice juxtaposition with our

[00:19:39] new woman disaster-free dinner party, which told us categorically that we just shouldn't worry

[00:19:46] too much about the cooking.

[00:19:48] No.

[00:19:48] Nobody's going to mind about the cooking.

[00:19:50] Not so for Tatler readers in 1980.

[00:19:53] We are in very different generations and very different demographics.

[00:19:58] I actually, when I was reading through this the first time, I did sort of think to myself,

[00:20:04] I feel like that kind of not being massively showy about how rich you are is, I sort of felt

[00:20:12] like that was always the way that the British upper classes have been.

[00:20:17] Often like the poshest, like the real poshos, the real sort of have links to royalty, old

[00:20:24] money, aristocratic families will be traipsing around in their wellies and ancient barber

[00:20:33] jacket.

[00:20:33] I was going to say like their threadbare cashmere.

[00:20:36] Threadbare cashmere driving the rustiest, smelliest old Volvo you've ever seen in your life.

[00:20:43] Yeah.

[00:20:44] That's sort of what I think of as like the real, real old money in the UK.

[00:20:50] Yeah.

[00:20:51] See, I did also think this and then I wondered maybe that's because we were born in the 80s

[00:20:56] and so we've only ever known it this way.

[00:20:59] Like we were born after possibly this cultural shift.

[00:21:04] Maybe.

[00:21:04] I do think that when you think of wealthy people in history, there's definitely a sense

[00:21:09] that they just sort of unapologetically lived their lives.

[00:21:11] Like I do remember thinking when we were reading Honey that a few of the case studies were

[00:21:14] obviously very posh and there was no sort of apology about it.

[00:21:20] I don't know.

[00:21:21] It was just sort of like, oh, these people are extremely wealthy and these ones are not,

[00:21:25] but we're just going to present them side by side.

[00:21:28] So yeah, I guess I'm wondering like, is it possible that this was a cultural turning point?

[00:21:33] You said, is it a quintessential sort of British old money thing?

[00:21:38] By coincidence, I was listening to an episode of one of my favourite podcasts, Were You Raised

[00:21:43] by Wolves, which is an etiquette podcast hosted by two Americans.

[00:21:48] And one of the hosts, Nick Layton, was talking about this handbook called the How to Be Preppy

[00:21:54] Handbook, which was published in 1980s, so the same year as Tata.

[00:21:58] And apparently it was a sort of pamphlet, which was supposedly satirical, but also kind of

[00:22:03] not. And they were discussing it in the context of monogramming, like, you know, what things

[00:22:11] are okay to get monogrammed? What items should you never get monogrammed? And if you are monogramming,

[00:22:16] where you should put the monogram, that kind of thing.

[00:22:19] How big the monogram should be.

[00:22:21] Exactly.

[00:22:22] Who knew there was so much to say about monogramming?

[00:22:25] I know. So the preppy thing, right? So the preppy thing is a take on the American waspy

[00:22:30] style, which is the upper middle class old money of the US. So in this preppy handbook,

[00:22:38] as a complete coincidence that I happened to listen to that episode this week, there's a whole thing on

[00:22:42] how if you are going to get your shirts monogrammed, it should be in a place that is covered up when

[00:22:47] you're wearing a jacket over the top. So there's very definitely this sense that like, to be truly

[00:22:54] classy, it should also be a bit understated. And there's actually a part where it says that if

[00:23:00] you want to be truly chic, you should get the monogram on the elbow where no one will see it.

[00:23:07] So I do also feel like it seems very English, almost even tying in a bit with that good

[00:23:16] housekeeping beauty feature we discussed about how English people sort of aren't too fussed about

[00:23:23] beauty and are just very down to earth and not vain.

[00:23:27] Yeah, totally. I had the exact same thought actually, when I was reading it, it felt really

[00:23:31] similar sort of sensibility.

[00:23:34] Definitely.

[00:23:35] So I feel like there feels like there's a sort of obvious parallel between like this and the

[00:23:41] sort of current trends for like quiet luxury that we've been hearing so much about. And you know,

[00:23:48] like the rose, you know, $2,000 white shirts and things like that. Like, yeah, did this feel kind

[00:23:55] of quiet luxury to you?

[00:23:58] I think, I think it's interesting because I remember when the quiet luxury trend sort of was

[00:24:03] kicking off. And I was thinking a bit like what we were just saying, I was like, isn't that always

[00:24:10] just how you were supposed to do luxury? My understanding has always been that it was a bit

[00:24:15] tacky to flash labels and brands and kind of go around with these very obvious markers of wealth.

[00:24:21] And you know, like I didn't grow up wealthy. So, you know, I never had any labels or brands to flash

[00:24:26] anyway. But that's still what I thought that was still kind of what I aspired to, if you know what

[00:24:31] I mean?

[00:24:32] Yeah, I agree. I also sort of, it sort of occurred to me that like quiet luxury as a movement and as

[00:24:38] an idea would never have originated in the UK because of this idea of like posh people downplaying

[00:24:45] how wealthy they are.

[00:24:47] I think that probably has a lot to do with the different, the sort of class differences in the

[00:24:51] US and here. Again, I'm talking about the Good Housekeeping Beauty feature, but the way they talked

[00:24:56] about American beauty being about showing off that you were doing really well at work and can afford

[00:25:01] to get all these treatments done because you were a professional and you were very successful.

[00:25:05] And it's, and I feel like that's coming through a bit in this context as well. So the like quiet

[00:25:12] luxury makes sense as a backlash to that. It doesn't make so much sense in the UK where, you know,

[00:25:20] generational wealth has always dominated.

[00:25:23] Yeah. Speaking of generational wealth, would you like to know what some of the status symbols are

[00:25:30] at the end of this feature?

[00:25:32] I would like to know what some of the status symbols are. I'm hoping you're going to explain

[00:25:36] some of them to me.

[00:25:39] I can maybe explain some of them to you. I will confess, I spent so much time when I was reading

[00:25:49] this magazine, googling who people were that I did after a while just run out of enthusiasm for it

[00:25:56] and was just like, sure.

[00:26:00] I will take your word for it.

[00:26:01] I can make an educated guess who this person might be based on the context in which they're

[00:26:06] mentioned. So fine.

[00:26:07] Yeah. I mean, I said that the cover gave me imposter syndrome and I really wanted to love

[00:26:14] this feature. I could tell it was done in a very irreverent kind of feisty way,

[00:26:22] but it felt a little bit impenetrable to me because, as you say, I just didn't really know

[00:26:28] what they were talking about a lot of the time. There are a few that I can access though. What I

[00:26:33] particularly liked was sharing Princess Michael's gynecologist.

[00:26:37] I loved that one. Getting in free at a National Trust stately home because it used to be in your

[00:26:43] family.

[00:26:44] Oh my God.

[00:26:45] Being allowed by Princess Margaret to call her M.

[00:26:48] I know. Yeah, I liked that one as well. A dozen clean chairs, beautifully ironed,

[00:26:53] not just the collars, in one's chest of drawers.

[00:26:55] Going to Sri Lanka for eight months and not troubling to lease your flat or put your daily

[00:27:00] on half rate.

[00:27:02] Converting the 18th century ice house at the bottom of the garden into a nuclear shelter.

[00:27:07] Working for the Queen and being unable, I'm sorry, to spill the beans,

[00:27:11] though you can admit that something big is up.

[00:27:15] I'm sure, Lucy, that you are absolutely expecting me to say this, but this really

[00:27:20] reminded me of things Nikki Haslam thinks are common.

[00:27:25] Yes, yes. Things Nikki Haslam thinks are common are a series of tea towels based on things that

[00:27:35] the interior designer, Nikki Haslam, has said are common in a column that he wrote for,

[00:27:43] I actually don't know where it was.

[00:27:46] So he had written various columns, I think for the Evening Standard and also the Telegraph.

[00:27:51] And by the by, he'd referenced things he thought were common. At some point, somebody collated

[00:27:58] a list of these things and published it and put it on a tea towel. Nikki Haslam himself was just

[00:28:03] very flattered and delighted by this. And so now he sort of makes a point of releasing a new list

[00:28:08] every year or, you know, every couple, like when he can be asked.

[00:28:12] And the list is like completely unhinged. There's no apparent thread or consistency in any of these

[00:28:20] things that sometimes it's like a holiday destination. Sometimes it's objects. Sometimes it's just

[00:28:28] emotions or... He said podcasts last year.

[00:28:31] Yeah, he did say podcasts.

[00:28:33] Yeah. So this piece in Tatler just immediately called to mind that.

[00:28:38] Yeah.

[00:28:39] So I really enjoyed it on that level.

[00:28:42] Oh, Frankie, I don't know what to do. This Christmas, I have to go out in the sophisticated

[00:28:47] world and I am so far off a totally beautiful appearance.

[00:28:51] Sounds to me like that husband of yours needs to pay a visit to David Morris.

[00:28:55] He does?

[00:28:56] Certainly. Because David Morris produces a remarkably fine collection of jewellery with

[00:29:02] occasions such as Christmas very much in mind.

[00:29:05] Oh my, that does sound terribly sophisticated.

[00:29:08] And apart from his jewellery, David Morris is one of the very few who can show you the

[00:29:13] work of Baum and Mercia and Piaget, the Swiss watchmaker, who, since 1874, has been making

[00:29:19] what many regard as the world's most beautiful watches.

[00:29:23] Well, in that case, I don't know what he's waiting for.

[00:29:26] No matter where you have to go this year, with David Morris in the background, you'll

[00:29:30] never have a nicer Christmas.

[00:29:33] Wanda had a Honda.

[00:29:35] Priscilla had a Porsche.

[00:29:37] Stephanie Lee's got a PhD and drives a Colt, of course.

[00:29:41] Here's a car where head and heart can meet.

[00:29:44] Breathtaking Colt Sapporo, a full four-seater two-door coupe whose stunning visual impact is

[00:29:50] matched by exciting performance and a truly brilliant record of reliability.

[00:29:54] It has power steering as standard and an aircraft-like interior with a digital clock and swivel-mounted

[00:30:01] reading light.

[00:30:02] Plus, with a catalogue of luxurious extras that even includes a vandal-proof aerial, Sapporo

[00:30:09] is a pace setter to top any thinking woman's guide to luxury motoring.

[00:30:13] Move up to a Colt.

[00:30:16] Wow, a digital clock and swivel-mounted reading light.

[00:30:19] I know.

[00:30:20] A vandal-proof aerial.

[00:30:22] The thinking woman's guide to luxury motoring.

[00:30:27] Looking at the world through vole-coloured glasses.

[00:30:30] 1980 looked different to readerships of different magazines.

[00:30:34] Nicholas Coleridge squints through 10 sets of blinkers.

[00:30:37] So basically, this feature is just taking 10 totally different magazines and doing a little

[00:30:45] sort of pricey of some of their, of like a selection of their stories over the year.

[00:30:51] And it's absolutely fucking brilliant.

[00:30:54] It's written with a perfect amount of like irreverence and bite.

[00:30:58] And they've also picked like the most random seeming selection of titles.

[00:31:04] Shall I, shall I talk through what the titles are?

[00:31:07] Yeah, definitely.

[00:31:08] So the first one is The Stage, which does still exist today.

[00:31:13] It's, the tagline underneath it is The Weekly Newspaper for Resting Actors.

[00:31:18] The next magazine is called Sheba, the Glossy Quarterly for Arab Women, which I don't believe

[00:31:25] still exists.

[00:31:27] Then we've got The Church Times, Independent Weekly Organ of the Church of England.

[00:31:32] Vole, the Monthly Newspaper for Ecologists.

[00:31:36] The Lancet, which is a medical journal, a famous one, still exists.

[00:31:40] The Lady, the Agreeable Fortnightly for the Genteel.

[00:31:44] That's still going.

[00:31:45] So yeah, The Lady is very definitely still going.

[00:31:47] Um, Campaign Magazine is still going.

[00:31:50] It's a, um, like a B2B magazine for the advertising industry and creative industry.

[00:31:56] Financial Weekly, the new Trafalgar House financial newspaper.

[00:32:00] I don't know if that still exists.

[00:32:03] I'm going to hazard a guess that it's been folded into some other title over the years.

[00:32:07] And then you've got The NME, New Musical Express, the With It Pop paper,

[00:32:11] and The Field, the fortnightly magazine for country pursuits.

[00:32:16] So what I really loved about this feature, I felt like it sort of fell into this sort of

[00:32:21] category of feature that you can do, that you can run if you're like a plucky little

[00:32:26] independent who's able to take some risks with what you publish.

[00:32:30] What happens is when you are part of like a big stable of magazines, as Tatler is now for Condé Nast,

[00:32:38] like there's so much money and research and effort that's spent on learning who the reader is and what they want.

[00:32:45] And it's very easy to kind of fall into this trap of giving them the same thing and then it becomes quite safe,

[00:32:51] which can mean that you're dismissing things that your readers might really,

[00:32:55] really enjoy, but they're just a bit different to things that they've seen before.

[00:33:00] And I feel like this is something that probably wouldn't have got in once Tatler was sold to Condé Nast,

[00:33:08] which happened under Tina Brown as well.

[00:33:11] Basically, she kind of grew the audience of Tatler tenfold when she was in the sort of four or five years

[00:33:17] that she was in charge of it.

[00:33:19] And then the previous owner was able to sell it to Condé Nast off the back of her success.

[00:33:25] Oh, okay.

[00:33:26] Yeah.

[00:33:26] I mean, yeah, this definitely kind of comes under that category of like, let's just have a go.

[00:33:32] Yeah.

[00:33:33] I actually thought that, I think, I know you said you loved it and I feel bad now dissing it.

[00:33:41] No, no, diss it.

[00:33:42] I think it could have been either funnier or more interesting.

[00:33:47] Oh, okay.

[00:33:48] Yeah, I felt like, like I definitely got that it was supposed to be funny.

[00:33:53] So Nick Coleridge is the same writer who wrote the status, that wrote up the list of status symbols.

[00:33:59] And he actually later became editorial director of Condé Nast, managing editor, vice president,

[00:34:07] and then finally president of Condé Nast International.

[00:34:10] So we are seeing him in his formative years here, which is just kind of cool, I think.

[00:34:16] And then, you know, he's done all these little sign-offs at the end of each one.

[00:34:21] So he's, you know, they're obviously supposed to be funny and kind of piss-takey.

[00:34:24] However, I, again, it's just a lot of text and it's a lot to read, a big old list.

[00:34:34] And I did sort of, it did lose me after a while.

[00:34:37] Did you get bored?

[00:34:38] Yeah.

[00:34:39] Yeah.

[00:34:39] I got bored after a while.

[00:34:41] Okay.

[00:34:42] Yeah.

[00:34:42] Fair enough.

[00:34:54] Or even just like trends from each magazine.

[00:34:57] That would have been quite an interesting read.

[00:35:00] Or alternative, they kind of focused on the quirky stories and headlines that would have been like the more entertaining side of it.

[00:35:08] There's kind of a bit of both and you have to pick through it to find the little nuggets of comedy.

[00:35:15] So I think I'm just really telling on myself as a 2024 reader with a shitty attention span.

[00:35:22] But I do, so I do think, and similar to your previous point, I think that a lot of the humour here is in the references and like really understanding the culture of the time.

[00:35:34] So I spent a lot of, I was like, oh, that line looks a bit sassy.

[00:35:38] I'm going to Google what they're talking about.

[00:35:40] And then once I, once I Googled it and read a bit more about it, I was like, oh yeah, that's very funny.

[00:35:46] My point is like, I wouldn't have had to research it in 1980.

[00:35:50] I would have just read it and laughed.

[00:35:52] In the, in the stage section up the front, there's so many of these stories are about plays that have been really badly reviewed or like massive flops, which felt kind of sassy and, and quite funny.

[00:36:05] And then there was also, okay, so this not funny, but really interesting and something that I had, didn't know about before.

[00:36:12] So in this section from Sheba, this glossy magazine for Arab women.

[00:36:17] So in March, April, amid much criticism, Lord Carrington apologizes to the Saudi royal family over the television program, Death of a Princess.

[00:36:26] So I looked that up.

[00:36:28] It was a dramatization rather than a straight documentary about a Saudi princess and her lover who were executed in Saudi Arabia.

[00:36:38] And it sort of became like a, the airing of it became like a kind of an international incident between Saudi Arabia and various Western countries that broadcast this show.

[00:36:49] Oh, wow.

[00:36:50] Lord Carrington was the, was Margaret Thatcher's foreign secretary at the time.

[00:36:55] And he had to kind of issue an apology over the fact that it had been aired.

[00:37:00] And obviously that was really criticized because that was sort of against freedom of speech.

[00:37:05] And like, why shouldn't, you know, the Saudi Arabian government did this?

[00:37:08] Why shouldn't we talk about that?

[00:37:11] So yeah, it was, it was really like some really interesting things there as well.

[00:37:15] On a slightly lighter note, a few that I liked were, there was one from Financial Weekly.

[00:37:24] Observers notice a growing trend for cocaine sniffing in city lavatories.

[00:37:30] Who'd have thought?

[00:37:32] Yes, I also really enjoyed that one.

[00:37:35] Observers.

[00:37:36] And then from The Field magazine.

[00:37:38] Admiral Sir James Ebell, Joint Master of the Britannia Foot Beagles, is incensed by an undignified paparazzi photograph in the field of him clambering over a style.

[00:37:51] There's another really great one from The Fields.

[00:37:53] The Enfield Chase Hunt, Hertfordshire, is accused of killing domestic cats, not foxes.

[00:37:59] Joint Master retorts, we've not killed a cat for three seasons.

[00:38:04] One glaringly apparent absence from the enemy's list of stories, and that's because it wouldn't have happened by the time this magazine was being written and went to press.

[00:38:15] The death of John Lennon, 8th of December, 1980.

[00:38:18] Yes, it hadn't occurred to me that that's literally...

[00:38:22] Yeah, this is the month he died.

[00:38:23] Wow.

[00:38:24] The final one that I'd sort of written down as finding it interesting.

[00:38:29] In Campaign, the magazine for the advertising industry, September, October,

[00:38:35] Colette Dickinson Pierce's latest surrealistic ad for Benson & Hedges, a cigarette packet concealed in an electrical circuit,

[00:38:42] was voted by Campaign the most obscure advertisement yet.

[00:38:46] And I looked up that advert, and it's sort of considered quite an iconic cigarette advert.

[00:38:55] And then I sort of went down this rabbit hole because I'd noticed in other magazines that we've looked at that cigarette ads in particular are really creative and often quite surreal.

[00:39:10] And they are very light on copy.

[00:39:13] And maybe you knew this, but it's because advertising standards had just been...

[00:39:18] You know, the government had been kind of cracking down on what you could write on tobacco adverts.

[00:39:24] And it had just kind of...

[00:39:25] The list of things that you could include had just got smaller and smaller and smaller.

[00:39:29] Like, you couldn't feature people anymore.

[00:39:32] You kind of couldn't even really, like, talk about what the product was or, like, you know, say anything promotive about it.

[00:39:40] You basically could just show the product and then you had to have the great big disclaimer about this product gives you lung cancer.

[00:39:49] And so as a result, the advertising is fascinating, I think.

[00:39:56] And it's a weird one to get into because obviously, like, it is good that smoking adverts were banned.

[00:40:02] But purely from an artistic point of view, some of these adverts are wild.

[00:40:09] That is like a real sort of a thing in advertising.

[00:40:14] Generally, sort of vice products tend to have a huge amount of money pumped into their marketing.

[00:40:20] Alcohol, alcohol companies are like enormous spenders on creative services in the advertising industry.

[00:40:27] Gambling as well now.

[00:40:29] I'd say that kind of the caliber of gambling advertising isn't the same level of creativity as alcohol advertising, but they're still like massive spenders.

[00:40:41] And, you know, you wouldn't necessarily say that vast food is a vice product in the same way as like alcohol and gambling.

[00:40:47] But McDonald's.

[00:40:48] McDonald's is one of the biggest spenders on advertising.

[00:40:52] And it's also in terms of the consistency of their like creative output is one of the most creative brands in the world.

[00:41:00] And yes, because the product is shitty and bad for you and people are going to legislate against it unless, you know, governments could legislate against it unless you're so popular that they won't be able to get away with it.

[00:41:13] And I think when something's kind of obviously not very good for you, you have to work extra hard on promoting the vibes.

[00:41:21] And if you're, if, if, if I think if, if all you've got to sell is vibe, then that, that forces you to be more risk taking and bold with your creative decisions in your branding.

[00:41:36] That's why like banks, banks and insurance companies are never, they just never have good, interesting adverts because.

[00:41:43] We don't want vibes from our banks though, do we Lucy?

[00:41:45] We want reliability.

[00:41:47] Yeah.

[00:41:47] Yeah.

[00:41:48] Hello, Lucy here.

[00:41:50] Just a quick one to say, if you've not yet signed up for our newsletter, you definitely should.

[00:41:55] You can read the features that we talk about, see all the amazing adverts and get access to loads of other bonus bits.

[00:42:01] Plus, it's a really good way to support the show.

[00:42:04] Find us at maghags.substack.com.

[00:42:11] We've only got a fashion tip this week, I'm afraid, Frankie.

[00:42:14] Oh, what?

[00:42:15] I could not find a single beauty tip in Tatler.

[00:42:18] Wow.

[00:42:19] Oh my goodness.

[00:42:20] Do you know why, Lucy?

[00:42:21] It's because the upper class English people shun beauty.

[00:42:25] Yeah.

[00:42:26] So make sure you're buying a genuine Gucci moccasin.

[00:42:32] Is there a possibility I have been buying counterfeit Gucci moccasins?

[00:42:37] It's actually quite likely that you've been buying counterfeit Gucci moccasins.

[00:42:42] Roberto Gucci is the grandson of Guccio Gucci, who opened the first shop.

[00:42:46] In his quiet glass and chrome office high over Bond Street, he points to a cluttered corner,

[00:42:52] a profusion of plastic holdels and tacky webbing bags, all bearing the name Gucci in large letters

[00:42:58] and confiscated by Gucci agents all over the world as counterfeit goods.

[00:43:02] We are fighting 122 companies through the courts at the moment in Italy for forging our name.

[00:43:09] In July alone, we were able to confiscate 860 million liras worth of false Gucci invoices.

[00:43:17] At present, because Mexico is outside the Geneva Convention, we can do nothing about the large

[00:43:22] shop in Mexico City, which bears our name and sells copies of everything we make.

[00:43:26] Gucci moccasins were a kind of perfect, quiet luxury shoe for men or for women.

[00:43:34] But yeah, the fraudsters were running amok with their counterfeit Gucci moccasins all over the world.

[00:43:41] Now that I'm looking at the picture of this Gucci moccasin,

[00:43:44] now see, it's interesting they call it a moccasin because I probably would have stupidly called it a loafer.

[00:43:48] I would have called it a loafer too.

[00:43:50] But I feel like you see versions of that shoe absolutely everywhere.

[00:43:57] And I suppose if I'd really thought about it, I probably could have worked out that it was a copy of the Gucci one.

[00:44:06] But I'm now so used to seeing it in cheapo high street form that I don't even look at that and think,

[00:44:12] wow, that's really aspirational.

[00:44:14] It says cheapo high street to you.

[00:44:15] It just says granny loafer to me.

[00:44:18] Do you know what? I bet that leather is buttery soft though.

[00:44:20] Yeah, you probably know this about me, but my Saturday job between the ages of 16 and 18 was working in Russell and Bromley.

[00:44:27] I do know this about you.

[00:44:28] On Guildford High Street.

[00:44:30] And we sold a lot of similar looking loafers slash moccasins.

[00:44:37] And I think that is probably part of the reason why it just looks like a granny shoe to me.

[00:44:42] But you know what I'm realising?

[00:44:44] Actually owning a Gucci moccasin, a genuine Gucci moccasin, would be the epitome of quiet luxury.

[00:44:52] Because literally nobody would know it was Gucci because it's such a ubiquitous style.

[00:44:58] Only you walking around would know that you were wearing Gucci.

[00:45:03] The Beasts of Belgravia.

[00:45:06] Yeah. And before I dive into the stand first, I wanted to ask you at this point, Frankie, what did you think this feature would be about?

[00:45:16] Because we had that on the cover as well, The Beasts of Belgravia.

[00:45:20] Did you have any kind of notion as to what this feature would be about?

[00:45:23] Literally none.

[00:45:25] No, same.

[00:45:26] And what it is actually about is not remotely what I thought it would be.

[00:45:31] So I thought it was going to be like some sort of tale of a top shagger.

[00:45:36] Like a weird lot of women in the Belgravia area.

[00:45:41] A notorious bounder and cad.

[00:45:43] Okay, yeah, yeah.

[00:45:44] Who was like leaving a trail of heartbroken women in his wake.

[00:45:48] Anyway, they have the cash, but they'd rather dash.

[00:45:51] When the beasts pound the streets, Belgravia shopkeepers quake, reports Paul Pickering.

[00:45:57] So basically it's just about people who, posh people specifically, people in the Belgravia area,

[00:46:03] which is between sort of Chelsea and Knightsbridge.

[00:46:07] People who run up very large bills with kind of normal everyday shops,

[00:46:12] like your fishmongers, your butchers, your greengrocers, the garage.

[00:46:18] The sort of shops that everybody needs to frequent and then never pay them.

[00:46:24] And apparently this is kind of reaching a point that one or two businesses had sort of been driven

[00:46:29] out of business as a result of people not paying their bills.

[00:46:35] What did you think, Frankie?

[00:46:37] I mean, having said that, I had absolutely no inkling what this feature was going to be about.

[00:46:42] When I read the headline.

[00:46:43] But then really quickly, I had the sense of like, oh, this thing.

[00:46:49] Like I felt immediately that I was familiar with that idea of rich people putting things on account

[00:46:56] and then just never paying the bill.

[00:46:58] And I don't know why I'm familiar with that, but I feel like it's a trope.

[00:47:03] It's somehow a trope that's woven its way into culture, maybe fiction.

[00:47:09] I think so too.

[00:47:10] However.

[00:47:11] For sure.

[00:47:12] To it.

[00:47:13] Can I please just talk about the very first line of this feature?

[00:47:19] Because as with so many things in this issue of Tatler, no sooner has I started reading

[00:47:25] than I had to start Googling.

[00:47:28] Because there's just like so many obscure references.

[00:47:32] The fishmonger cringed as a large lady with many chins and vermilion lips filled the door of his shop like Carver Doon.

[00:47:40] Who is Carver Doon, pray tell?

[00:47:42] Who is Carver Doon?

[00:47:44] And this is so obscure, right?

[00:47:49] So Carver Doon is a character in the novel Lorna Doon, which is a romance published in 1869 by the author Richard Dodrish Blackmore.

[00:48:00] It's a couple of times been made into a sort of period drama for telly in the 90s and early 2000s,

[00:48:07] variously starring people like Sean Bean and Aidan Gillen.

[00:48:11] But that is not who this is referring to, I don't think.

[00:48:17] The person this is referring to is a wrestler whose real name was Jack Baltus,

[00:48:26] but who on the recommendation of his promoter, Athol Oakley, rebranded himself as Carver Doon in the 1930s.

[00:48:36] Something most people would have got?

[00:48:40] I have no idea.

[00:48:42] I mean, I could tell from your reaction that you also went down this rabbit hole and found this out.

[00:48:48] Yes, I did.

[00:48:49] I did.

[00:48:50] Who is Carver Doon?

[00:48:52] Oh, an English wrestler.

[00:48:55] How completely obscure.

[00:48:57] And from what I could gather, his career only lasted about five years.

[00:49:01] Yeah, exactly.

[00:49:02] In the 1930s.

[00:49:04] And yet here he is in the very first line of a Tatler feature in 1980.

[00:49:11] I did also sort of feel like it was, like I really loved this whole kind of setup in this feature.

[00:49:18] I thought the writing was really acerbic and vivid and created a really rich, like I really was there in the fishmongers with them watching this interaction take place.

[00:49:30] But also it did kind of feel a little bit misogynistic.

[00:49:33] The fishmonger cringed as a large lady with many chins and familiar lips filled the door of his shop like Carver Doon.

[00:49:39] Four pounds of your best salmon, please.

[00:49:42] And that small lobster.

[00:49:43] You haven't any bigger?

[00:49:45] Yes, and a couple of pounds of turbot and some of that nasty thing over there.

[00:49:49] As the waves of Madame Rocious beat down the fishy smell, the brave trader tries to catch the titan's eye.

[00:49:57] The bill has gone over 50 pounds.

[00:50:00] Will that be cash, madam, or a check?

[00:50:02] He mumbles with all the spaniel-eyed trepidation of a man playing poker with Nixon.

[00:50:08] And absolutely fatal in these circumstances, he turns to consult her account.

[00:50:13] A second is all Vermillion Lips needs.

[00:50:16] She is at the door, skirts billowing like the Ramsgate hovercraft.

[00:50:20] No, have it sent round and charge it to my account.

[00:50:23] I love it.

[00:50:24] I love it so much.

[00:50:26] Yeah, like it's so, like, yeah, I'm there.

[00:50:31] I am there at the counter watching this happen.

[00:50:35] But also, I don't know, it did feel like a little whiff of misogyny about it.

[00:50:39] I don't disagree.

[00:50:41] I just think that the whole thing I just found deliciously bitchy.

[00:50:49] And like you said, it's very sad, but it had a real sort of loviness to it.

[00:50:54] You know, I was kind of reading the whole thing in my head with this sort of slightly camp,

[00:50:57] posh accent.

[00:50:59] And I think the writing is fantastic.

[00:51:01] And the anecdotes are really interesting.

[00:51:05] And yeah, there is a little hint of misogyny or at the very least sexism.

[00:51:12] But I just, I couldn't get too angry about it.

[00:51:17] No.

[00:51:17] Because nobody, none of the rich people in this feature kind of come off very well.

[00:51:22] No.

[00:51:22] Yeah.

[00:51:23] I couldn't get too angry about it either.

[00:51:24] But because I was also like, you don't want people to write mean things about you.

[00:51:28] Don't steal stuff.

[00:51:31] And, you know, it is bad.

[00:51:33] They're talking about how some businesses have had to shut down because people are just not paying their bills.

[00:51:37] But there's a brilliant anecdote and it's talking about a butcher called John Woods who had to shut up shop.

[00:51:47] And it says,

[00:51:48] Woods, while delivering to the house of a now dead oil heiress, had the turkey snatched out of his hands and the door slammed in his face.

[00:51:54] He made his way home in the snow, cold and penniless.

[00:51:59] Perhaps it was poetic justice that this particular beast choked to death on a beef sandwich.

[00:52:07] I mean, it's Dickensian.

[00:52:09] It's fabulous.

[00:52:11] And it's not long either.

[00:52:13] It's just two pages.

[00:52:14] I reckon it's probably only a thousand words total.

[00:52:17] But yeah, it's great.

[00:52:19] It's just really fun.

[00:52:21] And I quite like the idea of, I was thinking about how, I was thinking about the process of writing this feature.

[00:52:29] And I quite like the idea of this journalist going around to all the different businesses in Belgravia and asking them,

[00:52:35] do you have trouble with some of the local residents running up massive accounts and never paying them?

[00:52:41] Because that's the sort of thing that like, it will not be hard to get people to talk to you.

[00:52:44] You'll just need to ask that one question and people will be like, well, let me tell you.

[00:52:49] And, you know, once you get people started, they'll just, they won't stop.

[00:52:55] Yeah, definitely.

[00:52:55] I quite like the way they're sort of distancing themselves from like other kinds of journalists,

[00:53:00] how other kinds of journalists might report this feature,

[00:53:03] because it references the fact that there was a story in the news of the world,

[00:53:07] which is actually sort of the hook for this feature, I think,

[00:53:11] because it says it was a recent story in the notorious Whitefriars diary in the news of the world,

[00:53:15] which brought beast hunters back to Belgravia.

[00:53:18] So it seems like, you know, they've sort of had some press again recently,

[00:53:22] and there's a kind of renewed interest and outrage over it.

[00:53:26] And then a bit later, he says, the naughty news of the world also reported

[00:53:31] how somebody else was short of the readies to pay a £50 grocer's bill.

[00:53:37] However, while the journalists of the gutter press went through the waste paper bins at the garage,

[00:53:42] trying to find the bill, the real beasts roamed free.

[00:53:45] And there's this just slight hint of, well, we at Tatler don't need to do that,

[00:53:49] because we could just walk in the front door of the shop and talk to these people.

[00:53:54] Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

[00:53:56] The big stores like Harrods and Selfridges can turn all but the most resistant beast into a babe

[00:54:01] by the use of a debt collecting agency.

[00:54:04] Booze, though, is a commodity sacred to the beast.

[00:54:07] She can owe, or just as often he can owe, a fortune to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,

[00:54:14] but the vintner is sacred.

[00:54:16] Oh, I love that line.

[00:54:17] So I feel like, and it touches on this at the end of the feature,

[00:54:21] at the end it does actually say,

[00:54:24] it's the younger title people with money who run up the bills,

[00:54:27] and it makes you think perhaps they do not have quite so much cash after all.

[00:54:31] I think there's also definitely that idea of like people who are so wealthy,

[00:54:35] they don't need to worry about anything as provincial as money,

[00:54:39] because they've got so much of it, they don't need to even think about it.

[00:54:43] This again, you know, we sort of talked about the quiet luxury and understated luxury,

[00:54:49] whether or not that's a very British thing.

[00:54:51] Do we think this is a uniquely British phenomenon?

[00:54:55] I don't know if it's uniquely British.

[00:54:57] I don't know if anything similar maybe happens in like other sort of older European societies.

[00:55:03] But I don't think it, well, just based purely on what some of the business owners say in this piece,

[00:55:09] I don't think any of the people who come from like the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman,

[00:55:15] those sorts of places who tend to come to that kind of area of London in the summer months,

[00:55:21] this is not custom for them either.

[00:55:24] No, they wouldn't dream of not paying for...

[00:55:27] Yeah, exactly.

[00:55:29] Do you know what?

[00:55:29] Once again, this is all coming back to this idea of British wealth and status

[00:55:36] being about seeming not to be too bothered.

[00:55:39] Yeah, yeah.

[00:55:40] It's like, oh, you know, I don't need to worry about such a trifling little thing as my £50 bill,

[00:55:45] which just to be clear, hang on, £50 in 1980 is worth about £270 today.

[00:55:52] So not a small amount to have on your weekly account.

[00:55:57] To drop in the fishmongers.

[00:55:58] It just all kind of ties in with like the understated status and the beauty stuff from Good Housekeeping

[00:56:05] as a very particularly British way to be wealthy.

[00:56:10] So Frankie, what's hot in December 1980?

[00:56:17] What's hot in December 1980 is sharing Princess Michael's gynecologist.

[00:56:25] Wearing fur on the inside of your coat.

[00:56:28] Of your tweed coat, no less.

[00:56:30] Of your tweed coat.

[00:56:31] And what is not?

[00:56:32] Running up unpaid bills at your local greengrocers.

[00:56:37] Yes.

[00:56:38] Extremely common.

[00:56:44] Thank you for listening.

[00:56:45] We hope you enjoyed today's show.

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[00:56:53] We hope you join us again next time on Mag Hacks when we'll be investigating why money can't buy you love.

[00:57:00] Bye.

[00:57:01] Bye.