J U L Y

2 0 1 4
Started from the bottom
Now hes here
CHARLES
SAATCHIS
SECRET
PROBLEM
STORY BY ANDREW ANTHONY
*
And its not what you think
I NV ES T I GAT I ON

A successful
mans guide to
online dating
By a woman
whos seen your
Tinder profile
S EX
WHY I HATE
CYCLISTS
STORY BY STUART McGURK
(a keen cyclist)
COMMENT
Alastair Campbell meets
Mario
Balotelli
Martin Samuel unravels
Wayne
Rooney
Robert Chalmers on
Michel
Platinis
ruthless rise
The GQ
World Cup
Special!
The best
suits, shoes
and shades
for summer
PHOTOGRAPHED FOR BRI TI SH GQ BY PEGGY SIROTA
JULY 2014 G
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Editors Letter
27
Foreword
Feel like joining the Lycra warriors on Londons
streets this summer? On your bike...
BY STUART McGURK
31 Details
We share a lock-in with Orange Is The New Blacks
Taylor Schilling; Londons highest dining; and
Daniel Sturridge is up front about his role in Brazil.
55 Tony Parsons
GQs independent thinker wonders whether
the union would be better off without the Scots.
58
Exposure
The whos who of the
Hay literary festival.
60
Pecking orders
Why one lip-smacking new way to greet
friends and acquaintances can be the
kiss of death in social situations.
BYRACHEL JOHNSON
64
Cars
Mercedes latest luxury
rides are a real class act.
70
Watches
Make the most of time abroad with Louis
Vuittons unique hand-painted wristwear.
73
Victoria Coren
Online dating has crossed the threshold of
acceptability, and GQs witty web mistress
proles ten digital Don Juans.
77
Dresser
Shoe special; Style Shrink; plus Christian Slater
reveals his past fashion missteps.
95
Grooming
Viktor & Rolfs explosive new fragrance.

126
The Lab
We hold a torch for the ve tech-top
ashlights; plus quality portable speakers.
130
Michael Wolf
Alan Rusbridger once looked to the US to shore up
the Guardian brand, but where did it all go wrong?
161
Imran Amed
Data-rich wristbands have more to offer
than watches... except in the style stakes.
162
Preview: Men Of The Year 2014
The worlds most stylish awards ceremony
is near, and you could be there.
165
Talk
Building modernity at the Venice
Architecture Biennale; why the dotcom trend
of selling less of more does not ring true in
music; Jess Walters, Viv Albertine and the GQ
Book Club; Wayne Rooney kicks his World Cup
bad habits; the PMs PR will come to his aid
at the next election; this months lms;
Hauser & Wirth takes art to Somerset.
226
Stockists
All the labels featured in this
months issue, from A to Z.
99
Travel
We check out the
check-in and artistic
accoutrements at Paris
Mandarin Oriental.
103
Taste
Cornwalls St Mawes
offers bountiful ne
dining; plus where to
nd avours of Brazil
on the shores of
Great Britain.
111
Bachelor Pad
Smoking accessories
for your home fumeur.
112
What I Wear
Adam Brown of
swimwear label Orlebar
Brown on his dry-land
dress code...
70 168
35
108
226
64
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JULY 2014 G
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Striker pose
Inside this months
World Cup special: Mario
Balotelli, Daniel Sturridge
and footballs most
fanatical followers
11
JULY 2014 G 13
Features & fashion
115 Winner! GQ Norman Mailer
StudentWriting Award 2013
This years nest long-form entry recounts
a Hollywood wannabes deadly encounter.
BY MAIA JENKINS
122 Like clockwork

London Collections: Men focuses the
fashion worlds attention on the capital.
BY ROBERT JOHNSTON
182 O brother, where are thou?
Charles and Maurice Saatchi are still the most
famous names in advertising, so why do friends
now say they barely speak? GQ investigates...
BY ANDREW ANTHONY
190 Alastair Campbell meets
Mario Balotelli
Why always him? Our arch interrogator nds out.
196 Toy story
The last name in beautiful women gives GQ a
sneak peek between the covers of his new book.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TONY KELLY
198 Footballs dark heart
How Uefa boss Michel Platini transferred from
dressing room to boardroom.
BY ROBERT CHALMERS
204 Tropical storm
Eight patterned shirts bring a bit of brightness
to LAs glamorous haze.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY GUY AROCH
215
Life
You heard it here rst: England will win the
World Cup (...in 2022). Plus a third session with
the GQ personal trainer, Sex Shrink, Fight Klub,
Sir Chris Hoys own bike brand and Ask Dr Rod.
44
Heroes:
The Ramones
The punk
pioneers frantic
pop-rock DNA
built a legacy
thats lasted
four decades.
BY DYLAN JONES
240
GQ Intel
What to expect of
the worlds wildest
football supporters
when they descend
on Brazil this month. 222
198
137
137
GQ Deluxe
Luxury looks, modern
bespoke and the new
connoisseurs: welcome
to our second annual
guide to the good life.
EDITED BY JONATHAN HEAF
174 Cover star:
The contender
Mark Wahlberg is a major
movie heavyweight. So
how did a young Boston
troublemaker redirect his
energy with such success?
BYMATTHEW SPECKTOR
OFFICIAL OUTFITTER OF THE CHAMPIONSHIPS, WIMBLEDON
NO. 1 NEW BOND STREET
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G JULY 2014
Editor
DYLAN JONES
PA TO THE EDITOR & EVENTS CO-ORDINATOR Stephanie Sleap
DEPUTY EDITOR Bill Prince CREATIVE DIRECTOR Paul Solomons CREATIVE FASHION DIRECTOR Jo Levin
MANAGING EDITOR Mark Russell FEATURES DIRECTOR Jonathan Heaf ASSOCIATE EDITOR Robert Johnston
SENIOR COMMISSIONING EDITOR Stuart McGurk COMMISSIONING EDITOR Charlie Burton HEALTH & SPORTS EDITOR Paul Henderson COMEDY EDITOR James Mullinger
ART DIRECTOR Warren Jackson DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR Phill Fields
SENIOR ART EDITOR John Hitchcox SENIOR DESIGNER Jon Snell DESIGNER James Ramsay JUNIOR DESIGNER Josh Glover
PHOTOGRAPHIC DIRECTOR Russ OConnell DEPUTY PHOTOGRAPHIC EDITOR Georgina Breitmeyer ASSISTANT PICTURE EDITOR Cai Lunn
STYLE & GROOMING EDITOR Jessica Punter FASHION PRODUCTION EDITOR Grace Gilfeather FASHION ASSISTANT Holly Roberts
CHIEF SUB-EDITOR George Chesterton
DEPUTY CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Jennifer Bradly SENIOR SUB-EDITOR Aaron Callow JUNIOR SUB-EDITOR Lee Stobbs
GQ.CO.UK EDITOR Andy Morris GQ.CO.UK FASHION EDITOR Nick Carvell
FEATURES ASSISTANT Stephanie Soh GQ.CO.UK INTERN Tom Ward
CONTRIBUTING STYLE EDITOR Sascha Lilic LUXURY EDITOR Nick Foulkes LITERARY EDITOR Olivia Cole
EROTIC AFFAIRS EDITOR Rebecca Newman FENG SHUI EDITOR Tracey Emin
TABLET PROJECT MANAGER Liam Keating SENIOR TABLET PRODUCER Charlotte Tooth TABLET PRODUCER Emma Dahlquist
Contributing Editors
Mel Agace, Andrew Anthony, Chris Ayres, Jason Barlow, Stephen Bayley, Tara Bernerd, Heston Blumenthal, Debra Bourne, Michael Bracewell, Charlie Brooks, Ed Caesar, Alastair Campbell,
Naomi Campbell, Nick Candy, Robert Chalmers, Nik Cohn, Giles Coren, Iain Dale, Matthew dAncona, Adrian Deevoy, Alan Edwards, Robert Elms, David Furnish, AA Gill, Anthony Haden-Guest,
Sophie Hastings, Mark Hix, Boris Johnson, John Kampfner, Simon Kelner, Frank Luntz, Piers Morgan, John Naughton, Ian Osborne, Tom Parker Bowles, Tony Parsons, Oliver Peyton, David Rosen,
Darius Sanai, Simon Schama, Alix Sharkey, Ed Smith, Ed Vaizey, Ed Victor, Celia Walden, Danny Wallace, Jim White, Michael Wolf, Nicky Woolf, Peter York, Toby Young
Contributing Photographers
Miles Aldridge, Guy Aroch, David Bailey, Coppi Barbieri, Matthew Beedle, Gavin Bond, Richard Burbridge, Richard Cannon, Kenneth Cappello, Matthias Clamer, Dylan Don,
Jill Greenberg, Marc Hom, Benny Horne, Norman Jean Roy, Nicholas Kay, Tony Kelly, David LaChapelle, Brigitte Lacombe, Joshua Lawrence, Peter Lindbergh, Zed Nelson,
Vincent Peters, Sudhir Pithwa, Terry Richardson, Mick Rock, Mark Seliger, Mario Sorrenti, Sren Solkr, Sam Taylor-Wood, Mario Testino, Ellen von Unwerth, Mariano Vivanco, Matthias Vriens,
Nick Wilson, Richard Young
DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION AND RIGHTS Harriet Wilson EDITORIAL BUSINESS AND RIGHTS EXECUTIVE Stephanie Chrisostomou
INTERNATIONAL PERMISSIONS MANAGER Eleanor Sharman SYNDICATION syndication@condenast.co.uk
DIRECTOR OF PRESS AND PUBLICITY Nicky Eaton
Publishing Director
JAMIE BILL
PA TO THE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Rosalie Atkinson-Willes
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Justin Barriball ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER FASHION Vanessa Kingori ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER Hannah OReilly BUSINESS MANAGER Sarah Cocks
SALES EXECUTIVE Cassie Norman RETAIL EDITOR Giorgina Waltier ACCOUNT MANAGER Marisa McGarry PROMOTIONS DIRECTOR Anne Prendergast
PROMOTIONS ART DIRECTOR James Warner PROMOTIONS ART EDITOR Nick Paterson SENIOR PROMOTIONS EXECUTIVE Alexandra Carter
PROMOTIONS PROJECT MANAGER Nicola Butler EVENTS DIRECTOR Michelle Russell SENIOR COPYWRITER Lee Gale REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Karen Allgood
REGIONAL SENIOR SALES EXECUTIVE Beth Hardie REGIONAL SALES EXECUTIVE Krystina Garnett HEAD OF THE PARIS OFFICE Helena Kawalec PARIS OFFICE Florent Garlasco
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MARKETING EXECUTIVE Katie Bowden SENIOR DATA MANAGER Tim Westcott
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Richard Kingerlee CIRCULATION AND NEWSTRADE MANAGER Elliott Spaulding SUBSCRIPTIONS DIRECTOR Patrick Foilleret
SUBSCRIPTIONS PROMOTION MANAGER Claudia Long SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Eleni Rufels DIRECT MARKETING MANAGER Lynden Breatnach
CREATIVE DESIGN MANAGER Anthea Denning SENIOR SUBSCRIPTION MARKETING DESIGNER Gareth Asheld
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Sarah Jenson PRODUCTION MANAGER Joanne Packham COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION MANAGER Xenia Antoni
PRODUCTION CONTROLLER Emily Bentley PRODUCTION CO-ORDINATOR Katie McGuinness COMMERCIAL SENIOR PRODUCTION CONTROLLER Louise Lawson
COMMERCIAL AND PAPER PRODUCTION CONTROLLER Martin Macmillan TABLET CONTROLLER Lucy Zini
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Managing Director
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DEPUTY MANAGING DIRECTOR Albert Read
DIRECTORS Jonathan Newhouse (Chairman), Nicholas Coleridge (Managing Director), Stephen Quinn,
Annie Holcroft, Pam Raynor, Jamie Bill, Jean Faulkner, Shelagh Crofts, Albert Read, Patricia Stevenson
Chairman, Cond Nast International
JONATHAN NEWHOUSE
16
JULY 2014 G
EDITORS LETTER
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GIVE THANKS
TO ITALIA 90...
FOOTBALLS
ULTIMATE
GAME-CHANGER
here the World Cup is concerned, I have some
previous. My rst was Italia 90, that magical
tournament in that magical year when football
as a cultural pastime was reintroduced in the
most seamless way possible: by watching
exquisite football.
After a decade in which the sport had been
swamped by tragedy, hooliganism, and in
Englands case the poverty of ambition, the
early Nineties were positively transformative.
Helped by the creation of the Premiership,
BSkyBs extraordinarily deep pockets, Nick
Hornbys Fever Pitch, the ongoing fanzine
publishing boom (spearheaded by When
Saturday Comes), a renewed uency on the
terraces (Cos maybe, We should have got
Liam Brady, But after all, We got Alan Ball!)
and a ood of foreign players, English football
didnt look so much like a rejuvenated sport
as a completely new one.
But 1990 was denitely Year Zero. I spent
some time in Italy during Italia 90, and there
are two images Ill never forget. The rst was
watching the awesome Dutch supporters
pouring into Milans monolithic fascist train
station, a veritable army in orange: orange
afros, orange paint on their faces, orange boiler
suits, orange felt hammers, orange DM boots.
The other was up on Lake Como, in a little
village called Varenna. We watched the Italy
vs Czechoslovakia game in the local bar, and
ten minutes before kick off were descended
upon by about 40 Paninaro scooter boys, all
wearing navy-blue MA-1 ying jackets and
Wayfarer sunglasses. And as they walked in,
they didnt order beer or grappa, but sat down
and nursed doppio espresso. They cheered,
they cried, and then they celebrated (Italy
won 2-0, with goals from Roberto Baggio and
the great Toto Schillaci). No one got drunk,
Dawning of a new era:
Italys Paolo Maldini
(above right) battles
with Ivan Hasek of
Czechoslovakia at the
Olympic Stadium in
Rome, 19 June 1990
19
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EDITORS LETTER
no one got abused and no one got hit.
Christ, I remember thinking at the time, this is
like watching football at Glyndebourne. Having
seen Italian fans in full ight at other games, I
realise they are far from saints, but it proved
to me that you dont necessarily have to be a
Neanderthal to support your national team.
F
our years later, I spent a week on
Long Island at the beginning of
USA 94, and watching the games
on American television was a reve-
lation. Because the networks knew
most of their viewers had absolutely no idea
what soccer was, let alone how to play
it, their analysis of tactics and team forma-
tions was exhaustive. In fact the TV coverage
was so good Im sure it inuenced Sky in the
way it approached its own coverage which,
eventually, transformed the way in which ITV
and the BBC did it.
The other great thing about the games in the
US obviously was the fact that there was
almost no hooliganism. Because hooliganism
just doesnt work over there. Go to a football
game (American), a baseball game, basketball,
whatever, and youll never see opposing fans
kicking the living daylights out of each other.
Why would they? Even at ice-hockey games
(which are gladiatorial in the way that TV
wrestling used to be in the days of Jackie Pallo
and Mick McManus), fans might scream at
the players (usually their own, ironically), but
rarely at each other. Why degrade yourself by
getting into a drunken brawl with a bunch of
white-trash imbeciles?
Watching England play in Japan eight years
later was almost liberating, as there was little of
the rampant xenophobia that inltrates most
England games. Yes, there were still enough
one-eyed knuckle-draggers to reinforce the
national stereotype, but there was a genuine
feeling of celebration, rather than the sort of
gladiatorial bouts you used to see at Wembley.
Football will never be as popular as golf or
baseball in Japan, but that didnt stop them
organising the most impressive World Cup
so far. However, their clinical efciency was
offset by a wonderful enthusiasm for the
event, its most basic manifestation being the
way that the Japanese sported the shirts and
scarves of rival teams.
The Japanese also handled the worst
examples of English boorishness with
considerable aplomb, essentially by being
prepared. Not with water cannons and
truncheons, but with charm and deference.
At the group-stage game between Argentina
and England in Sapporo an unsurprisingly
loaded match there was the usual collection
of overweight drunks who couldnt have cared
less that they were in one of the most beautiful
countries in the world. As I walked into the
stadium, there were hundreds of visibly drunk
England supporters, many of whom were
taking great delight in treating the Sapporo
Dome as though it were a public lavatory. As
they made their way to the turnstiles, you
could see them tensing up, anticipating the
security guards contempt and looking for
confrontation. But what they were confronted
with was something that bafed each and
every one of them. As they waddled up to
the turnstiles, waving their ags like medieval
banners, and belching for all they were worth,
they were met with smiles and bows from
Japanese students, most of whom were female.
Instead of employing burly security guards in
uniforms and helmets, the Japanese authorities
had hired a bunch of skinny, unthreatening
teenagers who looked as though they spent
their leisure time collecting butteries rather
than watching football.
As with the World Cup in South Africa four
years ago, this years tournament in Brazil has
had an avalanche of adverse pre-publicity.
Most of this has been concerned with the fact
that while the stadiums might be nished,
not much else is. Questions abound. Where is
the much-promised overhaul of the national
transportation system? Who authorised the
systematic demolition of Brazils favelas? And
which idiot designed the logo?
Nevertheless, Brazil will no doubt be a
tournament to savour, as every other World
Cup has been before it.
Brazil to win. Or Argentina. Or Germany. Or
Belgium. Or Eng...
Dylan Jones, Editor
Paper trail: The national
press, including the Sun
(above) and the Daily Mail,
were quick to follow up
Alastair Campbells
extraordinary interview
with Scotlands rst
minister Alex Salmond in
last months GQ. Like
Nigel Farage when faced
with Campbells equally
tough inquisition, Salmond
revealed among other
things his admiration
for Russias president
Vladimir Putin
Brazil has had an
avalanche of adverse
pre-publicity. Questions
abound. Who authorised
the demolition of
favelas? Which idiot
designed the logo?
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4 Piccadilly Arcade, St Jamess, London. SW1Y 6NH.
9a Lime Street, London. EC3M 7AH.
8 Bow Lane, London. EC4M 9EB.
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Made In England
Worn Around The World
Contributors
Peggy SIROTA
As one of Hollywoods most
sought-after photographers,
Peggy Sirota counts Barack
Obama, Bill Murray and Natalie
Portman among her long list of
past subjects. For this months
issue, Mark Wahlberg went in
front of her lens. I love that hes
real and has a bunch of kids,
Sirota says of the Transformers:
Age Of Extinction actor. Hes
adorable and a bit of a badass
quite a good combo. But I dont
think he likes wearing a suit
much. Renowned for her ability
to capture playfulness in her
subjects, Sirotas work can
also be found on the covers of
Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone.
Social mouth-kissing is on the rise, says
columnist Rachel Johnson, who documents
this strange phenomenon for GQ. I am now
a rampant and predatory mouth-kisser but
I pick my targets carefully. Of her most
memorable friendly mouth kiss, Johnson
recalls, A TV presenter was staying with
us in Exmoor and I was saying goodnight
to him on the landing when we accidentally
kissed on the mouth. Id never fancied him
or him me, I expect but it was kind of
hot and we both knew it.
Rachel JOHNSON
Journalist and author Andrew Anthony
charts the decade-long froideur between
brothers and sometime business partners
Charles and Maurice Saatchi. Its hard to say
whether Charles is to blame for the falling
out, reects Anthony. But you get the
sense that he doesnt worry much about
burnt bridges. Of Charles very public split
with cook and food writer Nigella Lawson,
Anthony says, This isnt the end of Charles,
image-wise. Hes still a remarkable force in
the art world and the negative post-Nigella
publicity will eventually subside.
Andrew
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Maia JENKINS
GQs Norman Mailer Student
Writing Award goes to Maia
Jenkins for her nonction
work To The Weakness Of
Others. It was born of a
strange encounter during a
strange time, with an intriguing
individual, Jenkins says of her
award-winning piece, which
sees her reect upon her brief
friendship with the late actor
Johnny K Lewis, known for
his role in the US TV series
Sons Of Anarchy. Getting
own to New York and making
a speech on the same stage as
Maya Angelou and Junot Daz
was incredible, she adds.
Its been amazing.
AA GILL
Over on GQ.co.uk, AA Gill has
some hideous, racist, sexist,
19th-century yet invaluable
words of wisdom to dispense
on nannies. In your wifes
eyes, the country your nanny
originates from is secondary to
their looks: Mothers go for
ugly nannies because theyve
just had a baby and they are
abby, grey-faced, lank-haired
and tearful, he says. They
really dont need a perky,
glowing hard-body bouncing
around the house in Juicy
Couture tracksuit bottoms
boasting six inches of peachy
arse crack every time she
unloads the washing machine.
This month writer and poker champion Victoria Coren Mitchell
lends a helping hand to single men by pointing out what theyre
doing wrong with their online dating proles. But are there any
warning signs men should look out for on a womans page? If her
prole photo looks a lot like Angelina Jolie then it probably is
Angelina Jolie, Coren Mitchell says. The photo, not the person
youre in contact with. I doubt Brad Pitts wife is spending a lot of
time on plentyofsh.com. Certainly something to bear in mind.
Victoria
COREN
MITCHELL
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JULY 2014 G
I
magine for a second the following scenario. Two months a year,
when the suns out, an offer is made to everyone without a
licence to drive. On these months only, they are all given a set
of keys to a Hummer. Or an army truck. Or a tank with dodgy
brakes. Any vehicle with the manoeuvrability of a semi-
detached house, essentially.
Theyre told, Here you are. Youll work it out. Drive this
thing home. And if you fancy, before you drive, have a drink.
Hell, have ve. Its summer after all. Anyone can drive one of
these things! Can you make a call while driving? Why, of course.
You can video-conference! Hell, boil an egg if you like, no ones
going to stop you. And theyre told, Dont fuss your weary little
drunken head with the highway code. All those silly little rules
if theyd have wanted you to read them, they wouldnt have
printed them in a font size virtually impossible to read after a
bottle and a half of malbec, would they? No. Because for you,
on these months, youre special. Rules schmules. See that curb?
Thats now part of your turning circle. Those coloured lights? Mere
suggestions. That one-way system? For you, that goes both ways
and sideways. As for pedestrians, theyre essentially now geisha
girls whose job is to scatter petals into your path while they ing
themselves, shrieking for joy, out of your way. Other vehicles, you
ask? Does the farmer try to avoid each stork of corn when hes
mowing down the eld?
And now picture them, unleashed across London, skidding circles
around Trafalgar Square, taking handy shortcuts through school
playgrounds, thinking, you know what, its just a duel carriageway,
I can do a U-ey here. And off-roading. Through Canary Wharf.
Seems a bit far-fetched, doesnt it? Well, its not. At least, not
if youre a cyclist in London. Because this
is how it feels every summer when the
hoards of non-cyclists catch sight of one
of the 10,000 Boris bikes (sorry, Barclays
Cycle Hire bikes, which I wont call them)
in 720 stations across the capital and,
work shirt rolled up to the elbows, having
broken the evening in with a few pints of
Doom Bar, think, Hmm, a nice cycle
home seems like a great idea. For a few
brief months it is anarchy; it is hell; it is
like sharing a house with orangutans and
no one, no one, apart from you realising
I once witnessed a
middle-aged man on a Boris
bike honk at the bus in
front of him. Of course, he
didnt actually have a horn...
so he did it with his voice
THE PEDALS ARE TURNING,
BUT SO ARE THE SCREWS
Its summer in the city and Boris red-light blind, reckless right-turning, one-way-street-cheat,
rollicking, frolicking rough riders are back. And GQs saddle-sore spokesman has had enough
STORY BY STUART McGURK
youre an entirely different species, that, good God man, these
beasts could do me some serious harm.
Sartre was wrong. Hell isnt other people. Its other cyclists.
Y
es, yes, I know. No doubt you drive a car and despise
my type. Bloody cyclists. Always breaking the bloody
rules. Always running red lights. Always almost getting
themselves bloody killed. The sanctimonious, smug,
insufferable, unbearable idiots. Tell me about it. You dont
have to cycle next to them.
My cycle commute, as far as it goes, is a pretty pleasant one.
From Kentish Town, in North London, down along Regents Canal,
through Regents Park, along Portland Place, down Regent Street,
and from there its a short hop to GQ headquarters at Vogue House
on Hanover Square. Twenty minutes done.
Yet in the summer barely a week goes by that I dont nearly die at
the hands of a Boris-bike cyclist. The ofcial gures on Boris-bike
deaths are, to some, remarkable in how low they are. In fact, theyre
virtually nonexistent. Between December 2010 and the end of May
2013 more than 22 million rides had been made without a fatality,
and theres only been one since. This in a world where a two-week
spell last November saw six cyclists in London lose their lives.
But I can tell you, this does not shock me one bit. The Boris
bikers are ne! Its every poor soul that cycles near them who are
in trouble. The ones who, for instance, like me, have to swerve
wildly to avoid them when they decide, Gee, Im not sure where
I am, so Ill just stop dead in the middle of the road to work it out,
while I end up attened by an oncoming bus as theyre studying
Google Maps. The ones, like me, who watch, mouth agape, as
men in suits cycle one-handed, talking
to their friends on their mobiles before
running a red light and then mounting
the pavement and taking out an OAP. I
genuinely once witnessed a middle-aged
man on a Boris bike honk at the bus in
front of him for not moving. But, of
course, he didnt actually have a horn
so he did it with his voice. He shouted
a honk while this is the best bit
doing the pretend car-horn motion on
to his handlebars. You see the people
were dealing with?
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I have lost count of the number of times someone on a Boris
bike slalomed in front of me only to then slam on the breaks. I
dont even think its accidental.
Theyre trying to kill me.
Mention to anyone that you cycle to work in London and they
will all ask the same single question: Arent you worried about
the trafc? Well, no. I am not. I know what cars are going to do,
because and you may have heard of this by and large they
follow the rules of the road. Otherwise, they get their licence
taken away. If they turn, mostly they indicate. If they stop, they
dont stop dead. Generally they dont drive on a pavement. Its
remarkably rare to see a car use a shopping centre as a shortcut.
Boris bikers? Forget about it. Theyre
like an insurgency crossed with an
obstacle course.
Plus, have you ever ridden a Boris
bike? Good luck. The beasts weigh
23kg. An average road bike, by
comparison, weighs around 8kg. I tried
to ride one once it was like trying to
cycle a train. Never mind keeping track
of the number of accidents Boris bikes
are involved in with other vehicles, the
mayors ofce should keep track of how
many other vehicles have been totalled
after running into one.
Recently, Boris bikes were painted
yellow to mark 100 days until the Tour
de France arrives in London. They may
as well paint them red so they dont
have to keep scrubbing off other
cyclists blood.
A
las, I wish I could leave it
at that. Id love to be able
to tell you that, apart from
those good-time-Charlie,
summer-month, bike-rental,
City-boy cyclists, were a good bunch.
But, sadly, I cannot.
To a man, woman and child, its Lord
Of The Flies on wheels. No licence plate,
no mercy. Every day that I cycle, Im
vastly in the minority if I dont run a
red light. In fact, now, in London, not
to do so is the social equivalent of not
drinking. Or abstaining from sex. Or
doing a Fritzl. You do... what with your
adult daughter?
Even otherwise rational, law-abiding
family men seem to go temporarily
nuts when they strap on a helmet and
settle into a saddle. A colleague who
shall remain nameless for the sake of argument, lets call him GQs
Health And Sports Editor Paul Henderson left work with your
humble correspondent one day, on our respective bikes, only for
this anonymous bearded, red-headed man to turn the wrong way
up a one-way street.
Paul! I might have shouted if his name was Paul. Paul
Henderson! Its a one-way!
To which he replied, while pedalling directly into the oncoming
trafc, a cacophony of horns beginning to blare, Grow some
balls, McGurk!
I later learnt that this is his route. He cycles that way every day.
Hes been at GQ for ten years. It boggles the mind.
If Im honest theres barely a tribe of cyclists that I dont despise
and on a daily basis wish genuine harm. The Lycra-warrior dads
making a point of cycling the 22 miles to work on a bike worth
more than your at? Death. The ditsy north London girls gaily
swerving left and right as if a bike was a sailing boat tacking
against the wind? Death. The pious Clapham berks on folding
mini-wheel Bromptons who insist on carrying them around like
oversized 12kg briefcases, splintering the shins of anyone within
a 6ft radius? Death, death, death.
Dont get me wrong. Its not that I want that east London girl
on a low-rider and wearing a vintage army helmet which, by
the way, will absolutely not do the job of an actual cycle helmet
and will most likely embed into her
head on impact like a teaspoon in an
eggshell to be caught under the
wheels of the C2 bus and die a slow
agonising death just because she was
texting at the stop light. Its just that,
well, Id get over it.
Its not that I would take any
pleasure, you have to understand, in
the sight of a xed-wheeler blithely
running a red light only to be suddenly
taken out by a Sainsburys lorry belting
along at F1-speed from an unseen
quarter bam! catapulting him into
the building across the road like a bit
of gristle after a Heimlich manoeuvre
on a fat man. Just more that Id feel
sorry for the person who has to
repoint the brickwork.
I would not, let me be absolutely
plain, take joy of any kind in
witnessing a yoof on a BMX, who has
decided to wheelie all the way home,
fail to spot an open manhole due to
his semi-vertical state and suddenly
disappear down it like a penny down
a well. Im not a sadist. Its just that,
well, if I saw someone walk over, hear
the kids cries for help and pop the
manhole cover back on, I probably
wouldnt tell anyone about it.
There is, let it be said, an
inescapable fact that there is a certain
smugness that only comes with being
a cyclist. The cyclists default state,
so often, is that of someone cruising
down the coast in a convertible with
the top down. Not so the jogger the
sex pest of the public-exercise world,
forever seen damp and dishevelled,
spraying sweat like confetti, furtively
glancing around them as they stand, bent-double, arms straight,
hands on knees, pondering their imminent heart attack. No, the
cyclist is both getting t and doing it with some small style and
purpose. Were getting somewhere. How aggravating is that?
Not least when, as Transport For London has reported, between
7am and 7pm the average speed of London trafc has slowed to
8.98mph. Thats slower than a horse and cart. If its a war, were
sure as hell winning it.
But trust me, drivers truly trust me if you think youre
annoyed at us, it aint nothing to how annoyed we are. To
paraphrase Chris Rocks infamous Niggas Vs Black People
skit: I love cyclists. But I hate people on bikes.
Wheel problems: Oblivious to the dangers they create
around them, cyclists default state is smugness
Its not that I want that east
Londoner on a low-rider to
be caught under the wheels
of the C2 bus. Its just that,
well, Id get over it
28
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LONDON Summit for the weekend: ne dining at high altitude is order of the day in the capital
TREND Summers here! And so are your new reective shades SPORT Englands Daniel Sturridge
and his ultimate goal DESIGN Forget Instagram: the instant camera is photographys new focus
EDI TED BY CHARLIE BURTON
Festival bulletin!
If there were ever a summer
festival for the thinking man,
Latitude is unequivocally it.
Frommusic (the Black Keys) to
poetry (Roger McGough), its
line-up is as diverse as it is
exceptional. 17-20 July,
latitudefestival.com
High-ying fare:
Inside the Shard a
towering 35 oors up
Ting of Shangri-La
is now serving glazed
lamb with a side of
city-sweeping views
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Science bulletin! Want to know what the makers of Palcohol a cocktail in
powder form intend it for? You can snort it, they suggest. Not sure where
that leaves their assertion that it should be enjoyed in a responsible manner...
TheTrend
TIME TO
REFLECT
The mirrored lens has,
historically, been a high-
stakes gambit. Get it right,
and youll channel its cooler
exponents (jet pilots, say, or
James Franco, below); get it
wrong and youll channel
Nineties ski dad. This
season, however, designers
are helping you avoid that
pitfall with reective
sunglasses in unequivocally
stylish shapes and colours.
American cops say
mirroring is good for
higher-contrast visuals, but
youre probably just in it
for the looks. And thats
absolutely ne. CB
Jacket by
NicoleFarhi, 995.
nicolefarhi.com.
Rollneck by Gucci,
310. Sunglasses
by Hardy Amies,
240. hardy
amies.com
Sunglasses by Gucci, 285.
gucci.com
Sunglasses by Carrera, 105.
carreraworld.com
Sunglasses by Boss Orange, 115.
hugoboss.com
Sunglasses by Topman, 14.
topman.com
TheStyle
Buy an un-tracksuit! (You heard)
What to call the trousers of the moment? Tracksuit
bottoms? Sounds chavvy. Sweatpants? Too American.
Joggers? Come on, no man has ever worn a pair of joggers.
But this is exactly the point. While they are descended from
sportswear, what were talking about is a million miles away
from what youd pull on for your morning laps.
The versions shown at catwalks such as Casely-Hayford
or Emporio Armani come with slimline cuts that taper at the
ankle, metallic details and cotton-jersey fabric sometimes
even cufs. In short, they team easily with a blazer.
Treat them as you would a dress pant or a chino, says
Frank Muytjens, head of mens design at J Crew. I would
wear them with a black crew-neck sweater, a navy sport coat
and a black pair of Aldens to bring some shine to your look.
Still want a term? OK, call it an un-tracksuit. Nick Carvell
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1 Smoke Taken
from Animal
Ambition (3
June)by 50 Cent
Described by Fiddy
as representing
his untamed
desire towin.
Asimmodest
asweve come
toexpect.
2 What Color
Is Blood Taken
from Sunbathing
Animal (2 June)
byParquet Courts
The rowdy
Brooklynites rst
single was released
as sheet music; this
one is a visceral
slice of punk rock.
4 Eez-eh Taken
from 48:13 (9
June) by Kasabian
Ten years since their
debut and days
before headlining
Glastonbury,
the Leicester
loudmouths
takeaim at
Gallaghers mantle.
3 Atom To Atom
Taken from Love
Frequency (2
June)by Klaxons
New-rave at its
most danceable,
bolstered by
smartChemical
Brothers and
James Murphy
collaborations.
5 High Ball
Stepper Taken
from Lazaretto
(10 June) by
JackWhite
The most eccentric
man in music its
between blues,
hard-rock and
country on his
second solo record.
TheMusic
Five tracks that everyone
shouldlisten to this month
(fromfve new albums
thatactually matter)
3
4
2
5 1
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WHEN Joshua Ferris made Judaism an organising theme
of his new book To Rise Again At A Decent Hour about
a dentist who discovers that he belongs to an ancient
persecuted people called the Ulms he knew it was a risk.
The faiths tenets are extensive and complex, so it would be
easy to offend, and his worries were exacerbated because
he was very much an outsider. I did not register that I had
met anyone Jewish until I was a freshman at college, says
Ferris, whose rst book Then We Came To The End (2007)
established him as a major new voice in American letters.
When I was in high school I had a friend who would play
pool with me and when I would snooker him he would say,
You Jewed me. And I knew that this was wrong, but I
didnt really understand who the insult referred to or why.
In the end though, having convinced his Jewish friends
to advise on the manuscript, the novels larger existential
topics proved trickier to navigate. Every day, for three-and-
a-half years, the writing went down wrong paths. What
I have now is what was sifted out from the bad, he says.
This is, of course, a typical Ferris understatement. His story
is sharply hewn, lyrical yet lucid and seriously funny. Most
existentialism lacks humour, says Ferris, which is a paradox
because comedy is one of the signicant ways in which life
is bearable. The absurd is so frequently treated with a kind
of holiness in existential tracts. I dont think that allows for
many blow-job jokes. And I think theyre pretty crucial. CB
To Rise Again At A Decent Hour is out on 5 June
(Viking,16.99).
Longevity
READ THE FIRST
TRULY FUNNY
EXISTENTIAL
NOVEL
Joshua Ferris on being and
nothingness and dentistry
TheBook
ThePolitics
Electoral svengali smack down!
Its not the party leaders who will decide the 2015 election;
its the A-list strategy gurus that theyve each signed from
abroad to invigorate their campaigns. Heres the battleeld...
CONSERVATIVE
Gun for hire:
Lynton Crosby
(AKA The Wizard
Of Oz)
Nationality:
Australian
Fee: 500,000 p/a
Style: Forthright,
hands-on bruiser
2015 pet message:
Only the Tories
have a long-term
economic plan
Controversy:
Accused of
inuencing the
governments
policies to help
histobacco-
industry clients
Greatest hit:
Helped Bo-Jo to
victory in London
in 2008 and 2012
Epic fail: Lost
former Tory leader
Michael Howards
general election
campaign in 2005
Watch out,
Cameron! The
campaign might
betoo negative
and uninspiring
Efectiveness: 3/3
LABOUR
Gun for hire:
David Axelrod
(AKA The Axe)
Nationality:
American
Fee: An undisclosed
six-gure sum
Style: Master of
digital; candidate-
over-policy method
2015 pet message:
Ed Miliband will
rescue the middle
classes from the
cost-of-living crisis
Controversy: Ran a
campaign in the US
to up the prices of
energy companies
Greatest hit: The
architect of Barack
Obamas 2008 and
2012 triumphs
Epic fail: Axelrods
then-client, former
Italian PM, Mario
Monti, was booted
out of ofce in 2013
Watch out,
Miliband! Axelrods
late hire could look
desperate. Plus he
has never fought a
UK election before
Efectiveness: 1/3
LIB DEMS
Gun for hire:
Ryan Coetzee
(AKA Mr Defy)
Nationality:
SouthAfrican
Fee: 110,000 p/a
Style: Expert
coalition-builder
2015 pet message:
Labour and the
Tories cannot be
trusted to govern
without Lib Dem
supervision
Controversy: Nick
Clegg is paying
Coetzee out of
taxpayers money
Greatest hit:
Relaunching South
Africas Democratic
Alliance party, as its
CEO, for the 2009
general election
Epic fail: Leaving
a successful career
in South Africa to
work for Nick Clegg
Watch out, Clegg!
There are rumours
that Coetzee may
return to South
African politics
prior to 2015 CB
Efectiveness: 2/3
Working On
My Novel by
Cory Arcangel,
constructed from
tweets containing
that phrase, is
out on 31 July
(Penguin,5.99).
Novels
about the
writing
process
Novels that
arent
chronically
banal
Literary
bulletin!
34
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Food bulletin! Heres the latest cuisine getting the fast-casual treatment:
Persian. Dindin Kitchen ofers innovative takes on soups, atbreads,
grillsand meze. 52 Grays Inn Road, London WC1. dindinkitchen.com
An LA resident for years,
actress Paz Vega hasnt
lost her soft Spanish
consonants or her
outsider edge. Instead
of passive girlfriend
roles, she has carved a
niche in complex female
characters. Take her latest
outing, in which she plays
opera singer Maria Callas
in Grace Of Monaco, a
biopic of Grace Kelly,
starring Nicole Kidman
and directed by La Vie En
Roses Olivier Dahan. Im
a strong woman in many
senses, says Vega, and
Maria was like that, too.
The lm sees Vega
singing Puccinis O Mio
Babbino Caro in Monte
Carlos Htel de Paris, a
feat which required her
to undertake operatic
training. Not that it was
all work in between
takes, the Casino de
Monte-Carlo beckoned.
We went in costume and
gambled. It was so funny.
Paz became a star in
her native country thanks
to 2001s Sex And Lucia.
When she moved to the
US for a role in 2004s
Spanglish, she couldnt
speak a word of English,
which must have taken
some cojones. Eye-
catching cameos followed,
and next, shes taking on
a largely male cast that
includes Jeremy Renner
in Kill The Messenger. Did
she keep them in line?
You have to, she laughs.
Peace or war, I have a
little bit of both sides.
And shes not afraid to
show them. What I like
the most is to jump from
drama to comedy, from
comedy to thriller, she
says. I like to change and
push my limits. Thats
what I want to do, until
the end. You wouldnt
bet against her. Matt Glasby
Grace Of Monaco is
outon6 June.
TheGirl
Paz Vega is
raising her
game (and
hervoice)
The Spaniard hits
all the right notes as
operas Maria Callas
in Grace Of Monaco
Viva la Vega:
Starring alongside
Nicole Kidman in
this months Grace
Kelly biopic, Paz
Vega takes to
thestage in her
biggestrole yet
35
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Did you expect to have this many
goals going into a World Cup?
I wouldnt say that I was expectant
of scoring this many, but Ive always
thought that given the opportunity,
I would be able to.
Youre expected to play with
Wayne Rooney up front. Whats the
diference between playing with
him and Luis Surez at Liverpool?
Wayne likes to drop deep a little bit
more while Luis likes to dribble more
often. We both move around and like
to create space for each other.
Do you and Wayne get on?
Yeah. We have a lot of banter. We
play each other at [computer game]
Fifa and at darts, though hes not very
good at darts Im the best at that.
Whos better at Fifa then?
Im better than him at Fifa as well!
[Laughs.] But its more pairs, so hes
with Ashley Cole and Im with Alex
Oxlade-Chamberlain me and the Ox
have got them on toast at the minute.
Do you pick yourself when playing
the game as England?
We rarely play internationals. If we
play club level, the better players will
be at Real Madrid, Barcelona or
Bayern Munich.
How are the England defenders
going to stop Surez in Brazil?
Well, hes not going to have any boots
or shin pads to travel with, so I dont
know if hes going to be able to play!
Im going to do everything to get in
his head. Weve been bantering the
last couple of weeks, because its
getting closer. Hell say, Keep your
legs closed, Im going to nutmeg you.
But you cant really tell someone,
You have to stop them like this,
because theres always something
new. You adapt to the opposition.
Are England fearful of Uruguay?
Theres no fear of anybody. If you fear
ENGLANDS
ARTILLERY
Title race? Done. Now the
Three Lions newest sharp-
shooter and brightest ray
of hope, Daniel Sturridge,
targets the World Cup
TheSport
Near and far:
Englands away
shirt sported here
by Daniel Sturridge
looks plain red
from adistance but
features a pinstripe
St George-style
cross from up close
36
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TheJokes
Ed and Justine Miliband and David
and Samantha Cameron are about
to catch a train. At the station, the
Camerons watch as the Milibands
buy just one ticket between them.
How are you both going to travel
with that? asks David. Watch and
learn, says Ed.
They all board the train. David
and Samantha take their seats but
Ed and Justine cram into a toilet
together. After the train departs,
the conductor comes around
collecting tickets. He knocks on
the lavatory door and says, Ticket
please. The door opens just a
crack and a single arm emerges
with one ticket in hand... The
conductor checks it and moves on.
The Camerons agree it was quite
clever, so come up with a similar
plan for the return train trip.
At the station, the Milibands
again buy their single ticket
but, to their astonishment, the
Camerons dont buy any tickets
at all. Arentyou taking a terrible
chance? Justine asks. Live and
learn, Samantha replies.
When they board the train, the
Camerons cram themselves into
a toilet while the Milibands cram
into another loo just down the way.
Shortly after the train leaves, David
leaves his toilet and walks over
to the Milibands, knocks on their
door and says, Ticket please.
Some words from Steven Wright:
I was once walking through the
forest, alone, and a tree fell right
infront of me, and I didnt hear it.
There was a power outage at
a department store yesterday.
Twenty people were trapped on
the escalators.
I stayed up all night playing poker
with tarot cards. I got a full house
and four people died.
Yesterday I saw a chicken crossing
the road. I asked it why. It told me
it was none of my business.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for
awhile I was a suspect.
I had no shoes, until I met a man
who had no feet. So I said, Got
anyshoes youre not using?
From the circuit this month:
In terms of instant relief, cancelling
plans is like heroin. John Mulaney
My grandad died at 93 making
love to my grandma on a Sunday
morning. My grandma said he did
it on Sunday morning so he could
keep time to the church bells. Hed
be alive today if that ice-cream van
hadnt driven past. Dave Spikey
LIVE FROM THE GQ COMEDY CELLAR!
GQs Comedy Editor James Mullinger presents a haul of gags for
whenever theres a lull in the conversation...
people, you dont have success. Im
not fearful of anyone or anything,
and its the same with my teammates.
How good are England?
There are so many skilful players;
I dont think they get the credit they
deserve. People always say, There
are not enough technical players,
but there are, you know, and I think
players dont really get the respect
they should in terms of the technique
that they do bring to the table.
Could you see Brendan Rodgers
managing England one day?
Hes a great manager. Hes improved
the boys mentally at Liverpool. He
gets the best out of all the players.
But you cant disrespect the fact that
Roy Hodgson is doing a great job for
England. If youre talking long in the
future, then Stevie Gerrards going to
be 43 in ten years, so you dont know
whos going to be doing what.
Does Gerrard want to manage?
I think he would make a good
manager. I think he could.
Southampton striker Jay Rodriguez
was recently ruled out of the World
Cup after getting a knee ligament
injury is that a big worry?
[Touches wood.] I felt gutted for him.
Its very, very, scary. It could be your
one and only opportunity to play in
the World Cup. Im gutted for him and
his family, because hes a great guy.
England arent fancied by the
bookies going into the World Cup
The favourites dont always win.
Regardless of whether were 100/1
or everyones top tip, it means
nothing. It just matters what England
as a camp feel; we work hard as a
team, so we dont worry about it.
Ive read that before Liverpool
games, you watch a compilation
video of your own goals. Do you
have the same routine when
playing for England?
Yeah, the same thing. It just gears you
up and gives you that feeling before
you go out there. You get on the bus
to go to the stadium and youre
already in that mind-set.
Your dancing celebration are you
going to do it at the World Cup?
I think so, yeah. I have to score rst,
though! Stuart McGurk
The new England home and away
kits have been created by Nike.
They are now available to buy
online at nike.com.
Last August, you couldnt
even set foot in a decent
bar without overhearing
someone order an Aperol
spritz theItalians had
really done a job on us with
their bittersweet, rootsy
liqueur. But as the mercury
rises (a touch, at least), a
homegrown recipe is ghting
back, swiftly becoming this
years summer-evening thirst
quencher: the Brits Spritz.
Created by Alex Kammerling,
its base Kamm & Sons
isa London-made aperitif
that compares with the
European masters in its
range of botanicals (45
go into thebottle, though
ginseng and grapefruit
avours dominate).
Enjoy it everywhere from
Mayfairs Little House to
the Holborn Dining Room
or mix it yourself (right)
andwonderwhy there used
to be so much fuss about
Pimms. Philip Salter
kammandsons.com
Ingredients
O 35ml Kamm & Sons
O 15ml elderower
cordial
O 50ml sparkling
English wine
O 50ml soda water
Method
Pour all ingredients
over cubed ice and stir
well. Squeeze a wedge
of grapefruit into the
drink and garnish with
a cucumber slice.
Brits Spritz
TheCocktail
Introducing
the drink of
the summer
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Drinks bulletin! A bottle of champagne can be the epitome of
impersonal gift buying. Hence champagnebyyou.com, which lets you
create your own bespoke-labelled bottles online. From 94.05.
37
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Your character, Piper Chapman,
winds up in jail because her
lesbian lover convinces her to
smuggle drug money. Was
anything about Pipers life familiar
to you? I was quite a risk-taker when
I was younger, so I really relate to
that. If Id been thinking straight,
there are things I wouldnt have done.
Like leaving school. My father was
really supportive, but a lot of people
said, What are you doing? What
happens if you dont have a degree?
At least with that you could teach.
That never even entered my mind!
Your father was a prosecutor in
Massachusetts. Did you draw on
any of the stories he told you about
jail? He would sometimes work on
prosecuting people involved in the
prison system, such as guards who
had misbehaved [as they do in the
show], so I didnt end up with a strict
view of prisoners being wrong and
law-enforcement people being right.
Its more of a grey area.
Did you visit any prisons to
research the role? I did, going into
lming the second season. It was
terrifying, sad and really moved me.
I was at the womens camp at Rikers
Island in New York and what struck
me was that so many of them were
so young, in their early twenties,
but everyone had children and they
were overwrought about what was
happening to their kids. They talked
about how, on the outside, its so
difcult to get help, and get a job and
get their kids back. It gave me even
more impetus to tell the truth in how
I play the role.
You had the real Piper on set. What
was the most signicant thing she
said to you? She really helped me
understand the sensual experience
of being in prison, the constant
When a Labour
grandee spoke at
a fundraiser for
Chuka Umunna, he
expected a thank
you. Actually its
not Chook-a, its
Chuck-a, said the
upstart MP. Ah,
like Fooka rather
than F***a,
quipped the
ex-minister.
Sadiq Khan wants
to be the next
mayor of London,
but he might have
trouble with the
residents of Poplar,
having said that
part of the capital
isnt the most
glorious looking.
There goes the
hipster vote, then.
Some say that
Ed Miliband and
Labour are
nowhere near
ready for the next
election. Actually,
theyre living on
borrowed time:
the countdown on
their website has
not been updated
since the clocks
went forward.
Former deputy
speaker Nigel
Evans was recently
sent a substance in
the post that
security feared
could be anthrax. It
turned out to be
talc. Just what is it
with Tory MPs and
dramas involving
white powder?
BY HARRY COLE
GQ INSIDER
Inside stories:
Taylor Schilling
took note of
real prisoners
experiences in
preparation for
the new series
cacophony of sound (theres nothing
soft; its all concrete) and the colour
palette (you never see colour). Plus
the light is always on so you dont get
as much sleep as you normally would.
Hypothetically, how would you
cope with a stretch inside? This
might not really make any sense, but
Id try to keep to myself, yet also try
to make friends. I think relationships
are how you really survive in prison.
Among women especially, your safety
comes from a social group. Its not as
concrete sometimes as it is with men,
where you can just get out there
physically. Wars are fought more
with words and relationships. CB
Orange Is The New Black returns
toNetix this month.
AMERICAS
MOST WANTED
As good-girl-behind-bars
drama Orange Is The New
Black makes a return, its
star, Taylor Schilling,
comes in for questioning
TheTVShow
Style bulletin! Those Eighties staples, pleated chinos, are back and
vastlyimproved. The likes of APC are making versions that slim down
towards the ankle, for a look thats more To Catch A Thief than Miami Vice.
38
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THE INSTAGRAM BACKLASH STARTS HERE
For every action, there is a reaction: how else to explain the comeback of instant
cameras during this golden age of the
#
sele? Just ahead of the souped-up
Polaroid thats due out later this year, hipster enclave Lomography has released
a photo-spitting version of its medium-format Belair model. Tan nish optional,
apping the picture in the air obligatory. CB 296. shop.lomography.com
TheDesign
Flash photography:
Belairs Instant
Camera is shot
through with
options, from
long- and multiple-
exposure settings
to hot-shoe ash
compatibility
Film bulletin!
The 12 Years A Slave
star is set to be
themost-buzzed-
about actress
of2014.
L
U
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L
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it
a
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y
o
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o
Time
L
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?
Music bulletin! The CIA have admitted to playing the
RedHotChiliPeppers as a form of torture during interrogations.
Waterboardingisone thing, but that is beyond the pale...
40
G JULY 2014
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Tech bulletin! Right: Number of generations that Amazon has
designed sofar ofitsytoyour front door delivery drones.
Seemsthat announcement last year wasnt a joke after all.
HAUTE CUISINE REACHES
NEW HEIGHTS
See-your-house-from-here dining is having
a moment, with a set of new arrivals and rebooted
rooms emerging atop the capitals skyline
TheLondonPage
Ting at the Shard
As the doors burst open on
the Shards Shangri-La hotel,
the 35th-oor restaurant
makes its long-awaited
debut. Featuring a menu
of Southeast Asian dishes
with a local twist, Ting is a
meeting of East and West,
much like the design of the
skyscraper itself. Elevation-
chasers should visit the bar
on level 52, for digestifs.
Order this: Organic Welsh
lamb glazed with oriental
dressings, served with
seasonal vegetables and
Kentish apples.
The best views at: Any
of the east-facing window
seats, for a vantage point
that takes in everything
from the nearby Tower of
London to Shooters Hill
tower on the horizon.
31 St Thomas St, SE1.
ting-shangri-la.com
Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street
Twenty Fenchurch Street, AKA the Walkie Talkie, grabbed attention
last year when light reected from its concave glass faade melted
parts of a car. Come October, however, it will be more famous for
itstwo rooftop restaurants, set in a covered sky garden.
Order this: Scottish beef carpaccio with trufes at Darwins Brasserie
The best views at: The front of Darwins upper level, looking across
the Thames and out over Southwark.
20 Fenchurch St, EC3. rhubarb.net
Paramount
at Centre
Point
Mark Kay and his
successor as head
chef, Krzysztof
Zachwieja, have
set new standards
at Paramount, the
modern European
space on level 32.
Want to extend the
evening without
touching down?
Migrate to the
31st-oor nightclub,
Zinc, after cofees.
Order this:
A trio of Aberdeen
Angus beef,
parsnip, cippollini
onion, sprouting
broccoli and
Bordelaise sauce.
The best views at:
Table 401 its the
closest to the City-
facing windows.
101-103 New
Oxford St, WC1.
paramount.uk.net
Min Jiang at the
Royal Garden Hotel
What they lack (comparatively) in altitude,
Min Jiangs tenth-oor views over Kensington
Gardens make up for in splendour. The food
is exceptional and authentic the place is
popular with travellers from the Far East
who want a taste of China in the capital.
Order this: The summer champagne supper
in the bar a deft second-date manoeuvre.
The best views at: Table ten, for up to six
people; table 28, for up to ten.
2-24 Kensington High St, W8. minjiang.co.uk
City Social at Tower 42
For his latest venture, Britains new food-
and-drink ambassador Jason Atherton has
taken things up a notch or several to
the 24th oor of the old NatWest tower.
Here, Gatbsy-esque glamour stretches from
the cocktail list to the interior, although the
menu is very much au courant.
Order this: The heritage and heirloom
tomato salad with bang-on-trend burrata.
The best views at: Table 14, a corner spot
with the largest uninterrupted panorama
in the room.
25 Old Broad St, EC2. citysociallondon.com
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Coming
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STORY BY DYLAN JONES
RAMONES
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HEROES
JULY 2014 G
Brats on the beat:
Johnny, Tommy, Joey
and Dee Dee Ramone
line up in Liverpool, 1977
45
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Its midnight and Im walking around Guy
Laliberts huge country house outside
Montreal, asking Bono what he is going to
do with the rest of his life. U2 have just
nished one of the last gigs on their extraor-
dinary 360 tour, and the bands lead singer
is strolling around the property gifted to him
temporarily by the creator of Cirque du Soleil,
wondering why he is talking to me instead of
going to his bed.
Ive been with the band on and off for two
years, attempting to write a book about their
tour the most successful tour in rock history
and the denouement is tonight: not only
one of the last dates of the two-year tour,
but one of the best. And while the whole
exercise has yet again underscored just how
important U2 are in the pantheon of rock
royalty, its success has predictably thrown
up the inevitable question: what the hell are
the band going to do next?
You know what? If U2 stand any chance
of coming back with any sense of integrity,
dignity or cool, then weve got to go back and
look at what inspired us in the rst place,
says Bono, taking a sip from a gargantuan
glass of red wine as he circles Laliberts
equally gargantuan lake. And that place
was the Ramones. They were the band that
made us want to form our own band, theyre
the band who made us want to be musicians,
made us want to connect, made us want to
try to be famous. So thats probably what
were going to have to do.
When U2 rst came to be, Bono and Adam
Clayton were 16, Edge was 15, and Larry was
14, and they were huge fans of the Ramones.
They kind of stopped the world long enough
for bands like U2 and others to get on, Bono
had said, earlier. It was suddenly the end of
progressive rock and virtuosity over melody
and the end of interminable guitar solos
and the rock-band-as-music-school. These
were all the things that prevented you from
getting on the train when you were a kid if
you hadnt been to music college.
At one of U2s rst rehearsals, they were
visited by a big-shot TV director who was
going to give them a break on the national
airwaves. They had been ghting in their
garage about how their own songs should
end, or start, or even what middles they
should have, when this TV director suddenly
appeared. So they did what any squabbling
nascent rock band would have done: they
played him two Ramones songs when he
arrived and told him they were theirs, and
he thought they was amazing. And then
when we went on the TV show, we played
them two of our own songs, and they didnt
notice, said Bono.
In 1976, punk was a stance that encouraged
rejection. And rather than the aggressive
guttersnipe persona the media encouraged
(as personied by the Sex Pistols, the Clash,
and pretty much everyone else), before
the movement became commodied, punk
literally meant punk weedy, unformed,
an outcast. Unlike most other acts of the
mid-Seventies when the Ramones evolved
the band had no interest in being either
nice or erudite (they celebrated a Mad mag-
azine world inspired by cartoons, B-movies,
bad TV, and surf culture). Commonplace now,
the Ramones were a law unto themselves:
nerdy, recalcitrant and reductive in the best
way possible. Using a methodical but instinc-
tive process, the Ramones acted as though
they were on a Cordon Bleu scholarship,
boiling the rocknroll bouillabaisse until
it thickened and intensied, allowing any
unnecessary vapours to waft away to FM
radio. The Ramones basically reinvented their
genre through evaporation.

W
hat were they like? Simple: Iggy
And The Three Stooges. Which
is why the Ramones were the
perfect punk group. They looked
like failures, sounded like Vikings.
And, even though they made ridiculously
fast (for the time) buzzsaw rock, audiences
could relate to them because of how they
looked. Although their demeanour was
initially strange to us why would you want
to paint yourself as a dweeb when our entire
adolescence was spent trying to show every-
one else how smart and sexy and cool we are?
the Ramones looked like their audience:
long hair, T-shirts, sneakers and jeans. The
only difference was the widths of their 501s.
On their 1977 British tour they were sup-
ported by Talking Heads, who were far more
alien to the crowds as they looked like the
people wed just spent ve years avoiding
at school. The Heads looked like the wrong
kind of nerds, like the kind of people who
stayed behind after class to help teacher
with his science project. The Heads rather
arch persona was helped along by leader
David Byrnes insistence in saying and
only saying The name of this song is...
between songs, leaving the audience unable
to gure out how sincere they were (which
was maybe the point).
And then the Ramones would hit the stage.
No, they didnt look like Talking Heads,

They kind of stopped the world
long enough for bands like
U2 to get on. It was the end of
virtuosity over melody BONO
July 2011:
I wanna be awarded:
Marky Ramone who
joined as the bands
drummer in 1978
with U2s Bono, after
winning an MTV
Lifetime Achievement
award in 2001
46
HEY HO,
LETS GO!
1. A New York street,
at 2nd Street and the
Bowery, named after
the late Joey Ramone.
2. Live at New York
City music club CBGB,
1976. 3. Ramones
Romance graphic
novel cover, part of
abox set released in
2005 to celebrate the
band. 4.Joey Ramone
joins Deborah Harry
at her apartment on
17th Street, New York,
for a Punk magazine
shoot. 5. A poster for
the Ramones live at
the Friars club in Vale
Hall, Aylesbury, May
1977 described by
GQs Dylan Jones as
the best tour by any
band ever. 6. Iggy
Pop (centre left) with
Seymour Stein of Sire
Records and his wife
Linda Stein, who
co-managed
the Ramones,
at CBGB in
April 1976. 7.
The Ramones
on the cover
of the NME,
January 1978.
8. The band
photographed
on Sunset
Boulevard,
LA, 1978
JULY 2014 G
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47
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Where the little things mean everything.
TM
JULY 2014 G
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but they didnt really look like rock stars
either they just looked like a bunch of
guys who had decided to pull on some jeans,
buy a job lot of leather jackets and then go
round the world playing incredibly fast,
loud, noisy pop music. Sure, the noise they
made may have advertised itself as a modern
take on pop, but what it really was was the
very essence of rock, and therefore the very
essence of punk. And punks they were: when
the bands tour manager arranged for them to
visit Stonehenge, Johnny Ramone refused to
get off the bus, wondering why he had been
taken to see a bunch of old rocks.
They were a motley crew in the rst place,
four odd teenagers from Forest Hills, New
York. One was a 6ft 6in freak whose singing
voice resembled the one belonging to Peter
Noone from Hermans Hermits (a nearly man
described by Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill
in their seminal punk book The Boy Looked
At Johnny as one of mother natures greatest
mistakes); one was a half-German son of a
soldier who claimed to have sold Nazi para-
phernalia and unexploded bombs for mor-
phine; one was a bookish obsessive; the nal
one a dropout who hurled TV sets off brown-
stone roofs.
They rst got together in January 1974,
intrigued by the idea of forming a band who
didnt sound like anything other than the
music in their heads. Their sound was dened
as much by their musical limitations as it was
by their ambitions, although a shared knowl-
edge of popular culture gave it an edge that
by the time they started gigging was impos-
sible to dene. They may have wanted to be
the Bay City Rollers but looked more like the
Velvet Underground, in their leather jackets
and Popeye T-shirts; in truth they looked and
sounded like no one else on earth. They may
have named themselves after the pseudonym
Paul McCartney used when checking into
hotels (Paul Ramon), yet they couldnt have
been more different from the Beatles: after
all, the Fab Four never wrote songs with titles
such as Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, I
Dont Wanna Walk Around With You or I
Dont Wanna Go Down To The Basement.
The Ramones took positive negativity to a
whole new level. Some said they were too
postmodern, but then at the time the world
appeared to be crying out for postmodernism,
especially in the music world.
They were a collective human logo, a band
whose name sounded more like a Puerto
Rican street gang. Much of what they
achieved was accidental, but not the way
they looked. I give Tommy [Ramone] a lot of
credit for our look, wrote Johnny Ramone in
his autobiography Commando. He explained
to me that Middle America wasnt going to
look good in glitter. Glitter is ne if youre
the perfect size for clothes like that. But if
youre even 5lb overweight, it looks ridicu-
lous, so it wouldnt be something everyone
I remember you:
A memorial outside
CBGB in New York,
inremembrance of
lead vocalist Joey
Ramone, who died
oflymphoma in
April2001, aged 49
could relate to. It was a slow process. Over
a period of six months or so. But we got the
uniform dened. We gured out it would be
jeans, T-shirts, leather jackets, and the tennis
shoes, Keds. We wanted every kid to be able
to identify with our image.
Like the very best pop art, the Ramones
were a perfect fusion of the iconic and the
ironic. The band made their brutishly brief
speaker-shredding debut at the infamous
CBGB in New Yorks Bowery on 16 August
1974, the club that would become synonymous
with the growth of the US punk movement.
The club had only been open for a year, and
while the owner expected it to become a home
for country, bluegrass and blues (hence its
name), instead it immediately became the
shop window for the likes of Patti Smith,
Television, the Heartbreakers and Blondie. It
was an oesophagus of a bar long, dark, and
perfectly matched with its new inhabitants.
I
saw the Ramones play the Aylesbury
Friars in the spring of 1977, and although
the impact on me may have been ampli-
ed by the fact that I was only 17 at the
time, I have no qualms about saying that it
remains the best concert Ive ever been to.
Bono saw the Ramones on that tour too,
and he concurs: it was the best tour by any
band ever.
My friends and I had been half-expecting
the bands own monosyllabic performance
honestly, how could this lot talk? and Joey
Ramones exchange with the audience con-
sisted entirely of repeating 1-2-3-4 before
each song, in a weird approximation of their
support groups tactics. But we had no idea
how their performance was going to affect us.
Both performances were extraordinarily
dynamic, although the Ramones blitzkrieg
bop was an exhilarating, almost frightening,
tour de force. Sure it had comic elements,
but the ferocity with which the band played
made you think theyd been saving up to
play like this since having sand kicked in
their faces at Coney Island when they were
kids. (Ive still got a copy of a free local paper
called the Buckshee, which included a huge
photo of the band on stage, where I can see
my pasty face squeezed between two mullets
in the second row.)
Their best song was the doo-wop tinged
I Remember You from Leave Home, the
Ramones second album, from January 1977,
and the record which made their critics and
fans alike understand that, far from being a
knockabout cartoon of a band, the Ramones
were here to stay (I remember lying awake
at night and thinking just of you, but things
dont last forever and somehow baby, they
never really do). Maybe not forever, but cer-
tainly long enough to kick up some dust and
possibly burn down your house. After all,
as many said at the time, the Ramones left
nothing behind them but scorched earth.

Like the very
best pop art,
the Ramones
were a perfect
fusion of the
iconic and
theironic
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I Remember You with its hallelujah
chorus and hammer-and-sizzle power chords
was the song that U2 would sidle up to
whenever they wanted to confuse their audi-
ence, the song they would retreat to when
they wanted to ll the gap between two of
their own chest-beating anthems.
The Ramones lusted after the inviolable
chord, and banished the guitar solo to the
very margins of credulity. Their songs were
unequivocal rather than confrontational,
blank to the point of sullen perversity. Laden
with insignicance, their records seemed
designed to send you into a trance, the
chainsaw thrashing going on and on and
on, an incontrovertible electried squawk.
I Remember You was one such squawk, a
gorgeous monotony that you never wanted
to end.
I
fell in love with the band in the summer
of 1976, when I rst heard the Ramones
Beat On The Brat at a house party in
High Wycombe (one of those home coun-
ties towns that wishes it was a little bit closer
to London). The next day I decided to turn
myself into Johnny Ramone, and for the next
year and a half walked around with a oppy,
pudding-bowl haircut, drainpipe jeans, plim-
solls, a matelot top and a (plastic) leather
jacket. Overnight I turned from a long-haired
neurotic boy outsider in an oversized over-
coat and a hooded brow (clutching my Bob
Dylan, Wishbone Ash and Steely Dan albums
under my arm), into the personication of a
home-counties Bowery punk.
Most of the clothes I found in various
charity shops in High Wycombe, all of them
bought for less than the cost of a Ramones
single. Its easy to forget how difcult it was
in those early days to actually dress the part,
and although punk stores were opening
up all over London, most people still had to
rely on an approximate combination of sec-
ondhand clothes in order to look like their
chosen stereotype. If you wanted to look
like a roughshod Lower East Side guttersnipe
then you couldnt just nip down to Burton
or Mr Byrite. Of course what we were really
doing was trying to look like people who
were trying to look like other people in the
rst place; the Ramones werent real and
neither were those of us who wanted to look
like them, but we all felt more real in the
process (not least the band themselves).
As for the mix-and-match quality of my
clothes, I thought their ad-hoc nature was
the whole point, as the last thing I wanted
to do was send off for a dog-collar from one
of the small ads in the back of the NME. If I
did that, then Id look like any other lemming
traipsing up and down Carnaby Street on a
Saturday afternoon. Having said that, one
of the rst things I did when I received my
rst grant cheque was take the Tube over to
Kensington Market and invest in the biggest,
baddest, blackest leather jacket the Inner
London Education Authority could afford
(85 bought you a lot of leather in 1977).
The Johnny Ramone option was certainly
less confrontational than the Johnny Rotten
option, and actually quite appealing: how
could you not fall in love with a group who
displayed such a blatant disregard for sophis-
tication as the Ramones? Whose bare-boned
playing was matched only by their idiotic
singing the lyrics to their song I Dont
Wanna Walk Around With You are four
lines long, three of which are the same. When
Joe Strummer, the lead singer of the Clash,
approached the Ramones after seeing them
play live in London in 1976, he was worried
that his bands musicianship was still too
rough for them to start recording. Are you
kidding? Johnny Ramone said. Were lousy,
we cant play. If you wait until you can play,
youll be too old to get up there. We stink,
really. But its great.
By the time I heard the band, there was
already a buzz about them. Ive still got the
Nick Kent review in the NME that convinced
me to buy their rst album. Kent was the
gangling, pencil-thin star of what 250,000
people like me at the time thought was the
worlds greatest music paper, a man who,
when not on tour with the Rolling Stones
(wasnt he always on tour with the Rolling
Stones?), would pen (pen was a very NME
word) novel-length articles about arcane,
enigmatic and often long-forgotten rock
stars who Kents sponge-like followers (me)
would then start to say we had been follow-
ing for ages. He was also a champion of US
proto-punk bands like the Ramones, and I
still have his review stuck to a piece of card-
board; Id cut it out and stuck it on my wall,
where it stayed for pretty much two years.
It started thus (thus being another popular
NME word): A week back, if youd asked
me nicely, Id have dogmatically opined that
Ramones SASD 7520 was absolutely the
most grievous hot rock sideswipe from the
Nova Heat-Zone since the halcyon grunge
of Raw Power. He then went on to say that
while the record wasnt quite the next best
thing since sliced bread, it was certainly
better than anything else around at the time.
The rst Ramones album became the Holy
Bible, says punk archivist Jon Savage. It
was obvious that soon there would be people
in Britain making that kind of noise.
Watching the Ramones on stage was
to witness a barrage of sound, and songs
played so fast, so quickly, and with such
little fanfare, that you couldnt put a ciga-
rette paper between one tune ending and the
next one beginning. The Friars gig remains
the most extraordinary concert Ive ever seen,
and one that is summed up, unwittingly, by
Graham Lewis of the punk band Wire. He
describes seeing the Ramones perform for
the rst time at Dingwalls, which was then
The Ramones
banished the
guitar solo
to the very
margins of
credulity
California son:
JohnnyRamones
statue adorns
hisgrave in the
Hollywood Forever
Cemetery, Los
Angeles. The guitarist
died of prostate
cancer in2004
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one of the coolest venues in
London. I couldnt believe it,
says Lewis. It was glorious. They
came on stage and it was semi-lit,
and they just stood there for what
seemed like an age. Joey Ramone
said, Woman, shut your mouth.
And it all started, and it didnt
f***ing stop, this delirium of noise,
you walked in and out of it, a phys-
ical environment of noise.
That was what punk was like for
me, as it was for many, a physical
environment of noise.
You were hit with this blast of
noise, you physically recoiled from
the shock of it, like a huge wind,
remembers journalist Legs McNeil.
My love affair with the Ramones lasted
exactly 18 months, and by the end of 1977
it was pretty much over. Sure, I bought every
album up until the Phil Spector-produced
End Of The Century in 1980 (the recording of
which the band compared to Chinese water
torture, while Dee Dee Ramone later claimed
that Spector had pulled a gun on the band)
and I was one of the few who bothered to
turn up in a West End cinema to see them
in Roger Cormans RockNRoll High School,
but by the end of 1977 my brat had been
well and truly beaten. As the New Yorker
put it once, the band had become more inter-
ested in being themselves than in changing
the world.
T
he turning point for me had been their
New Years Eve gig at the Rainbow in
Finsbury Park, London, as the Year
Of Punk made way for the Year Of
Power Pop. At one point in the evening I
briey disengaged from the bands blitzkrieg
bop and made my way to the upstairs toilets.
And what did I nd, in the relatively tranquil
surroundings of the gents? As I stood at one
of the urinals, I started to hear a commotion
behind me, a commotion that after a swift
look over my shoulder I realised involved
Sid Vicious exchanging punches and the occa-
sional kick with one of the Slits (Viv, Ari,
Tessa? Who knew? Not me).
They had tumbled in just as I was unzipping
myself and, after a few choice exchanges in
vintage Anglo-Saxon (which is what the pop
fraternity used before discovering Esturial
English), had set about each other with a
ferocity reserved only for the very passion-
ate or the very drunk. I couldnt tell which,
and had no intention of nding out.
Oh my God, I thought, there is Sid, in all
his feisty glory the trademark bog-brush
hairdo, the sneer, the lovingly distressed
bikers jacket, the drainpipe jeans, the intri-
cately torn Ramones T-shirt (yes!), the bloody
Watching the Ramones was to
witness a barrage of sound. You
couldnt put a cigarette paper
between one tune ending and the
next one beginning
Do you wanna dance?: Joey and Dee Dee Ramone take centre stage at the Old Waldorf club in
San Francisco, January 1978; the band is immortalised in cartoon form in the Simpsons, 1993 (inset)
Continued on page 224
52
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FIGHT OR FLIGHT

MAYBE WE WOULD BOTH BE BETTER OFF ALONE...
After Britains 300-year marriage of love and hate, perhaps its time we
went our separate ways for the sake of the children, says GQs rebel spirit.
Scotland, its time to seize your independence if youresure you really want it
T
he home page of the Yes Scotland campaign
features a party political broadcast by a foetus.
Hi, my names Kirsty, says the foetus in a
lovely warm Scottish accent, as we see a picture
of Kirsty The Foetus in her mothers womb. Im going
to be born on 18 September 2014 the very same day
as the referendum on independence for Scotland. The
question is what kind of country will I grow up in?
And Kirsty makes the choice sound stark.
Scotland could choose to remain in a United Kingdom
run by governments we didnt even vote for cue
images of David Cameron, George Osborne and, above all,
Tony Blair, cackling like Dr Evil as he sucks up to George
W Bush while in the background the tanks roll into Iraq.
On the other hand, Scotland could choose for Kirsty to
grow up in a free, fair country where she can ride her bike,
play video games with her mates and surely a clincher
in a referendum where 16-year-olds will be voting be
educated in, a place where free higher education will
always be a right for all rather than a United Kingdom
where learning costs thousands of pounds.
Who can argue with that? The propaganda works,
even though Scotland certainly voted for Tony Blair,
who was as successful north of the border as he was
south of the border. More than this, Blair was born in
Edinburgh, his grandfather was a Glasgow shipbuilder
and he was educated at Fettes, the Eton of Edinburgh.
Dont blame Blair on the English. He is almost as Scottish
as Rod Stewart.
And Kirstys message rings true because of the politician
that she doesnt mention Margaret Thatcher, who did
more to advance the case of Scottish independence than
the two-disc special edition of Braveheart.
In the rest of the UK, Thatcher is now left for the
historians and the biographers to pick over. In Scotland,
her hectoring, handbag-wielding ghost still stalks the
abandoned shipyards and rotting factories. As recently
as February, SNP health secretary Alex Neil blamed all
of Scotlands drink and drugs problem on Thatcher. Its
down to one factor and that is the total lack of work and
the failure to replace jobs in the traditional industries like
steel and coal mining with other well-paid jobs, said Neil.
The men have lost their dignity, their pride and their
respect and have turned to drugs, they have turned to
violence and they have turned to alcohol abuse because
they have lost that respect and that dignity.
You might think that cheap booze is more to blame
for Scotlands drink problem than a politician who left
ofce 24 years ago. Or you might reect that traditional
industries collapsed all over the post-industrial developed
world, not just in Scotland. How many coal miners do you
think there are in England and Wales, Kirsty? How many
men building ships on the Tyne or in Belfast?
Yet somehow Kirstys propaganda works, even though
we know that Scotland voted for Blair, and even though
we know that Thatcher cant be blamed for everything
that ails Scotland. Compare her emotional plea for
Scottish independence to David Bowies whimsical words
suggesting Scotland stays in the UK. Scotland stay with
us, said Bowie at the Brits. Not literally, of course, but
via a message delivered by Kate Moss, while she wore
a Ziggy Stardust playsuit that made Bowie look like an
androgynous alien in 1972 and made Kate Moss look like
a mother in her forties wearing a giant babygro.
Bowie is undoubtedly the most British of rock stars.
Unlike Mick Jagger, Elvis Costello and so many more,
David Bowie always sang in a lovely British accent, rather
than some embarrassing, prefabricated American drawl.
True, Bowie is an Englishman who lives in New York but
the British have always wandered this little blue planet,
and we have always taken our tea bags, ball games and
Blackadder box sets with us. And anyone of Bowies
baby-boomer generation has a real stake in Britain.
Bowie is 67, wrote Pat Kane, musician and Yes
Scotland campaigner, and thus with some connection
to a postwar generation which can feel Britishness in its
bones, via a victorious war and a welfare state.
A real plea for the union from someone of Bowies
stature now that would have been something special.
To point out that we share an island, a history, a language
and blood. To actually get on a plane and y rst class
to London that would have meant something, David.
But to tag it on at the end of a little knocked-out speech
about rabbits, the moon, Venus and Mars, all this cryptic
drivel delivered by some ageing model it made me
squirm with embarrassment, it meant as little as Kermit
The Frog coming out in favour of Scotland staying in
the UK while telling us he loves the bagpipes and we
should go to see the new Muppets movie. Next week
The Scottish
soldier has
fought for
British
freedom
forthree
centuries.
Itwould be
wrong to
say goodbye
without
astab of
deep regret
55
G JULY 2014
FIGHT OR FLIGHT
If any prime
minister
deserves
tolose
Scotland,
itis surely
Cameron
Roland Rat says Vote No because he once liked a
record by the Proclaimers.
Does it even matter to Bowie? Pat Kane wrote, I can
imagine him in his techno-lair in Manhattan, sampling
news feeds from the old country, allowing tendrils of moist
patriotism to penetrate his otherwise steely alien mind.
I dont think he cares that much.

I imagine that one day
Bowie will look up from his New York Times, say to Iman, I
see Scotland has voted for independence, and feel a pang
of distant regret as he turns the page. It will mean no more
than the death of someone you havent seen for 40 years.
Alistair Darling drab poster boy for the No campaign
said that Bowie did more for the debate than politicians.
Bowies puerile intervention certainly changed my mind.
Say yes, Scotland. Seize your independence. Throw
off your shackles. Comparing Kirsty The Foetus to David
Bowie, you feel that one of them wants it a lot more than
the other one.
Im with the foetus.
L
eang through a pile of books about the First
World War, I am struck again and again by how
many of the men living and dead, intact and
blown to bits are wearing kilts. They wore kilts
in the mud of Ypres and Verdun and Passchendaele and
the Somme, even when the mustard gas was ying.
Highland units wore their kilt throughout the war,
writes Richard Holmes, covered from 1915 with a khaki
apron to protect it and make brighter tartans less visible.
Although underwear did not, traditionally, lurk beneath
the kilt, in unforgiving climates Scottish soldiers might
either cut the legs off army-issue long johns, or avail
themselves of drawers: anti-gas because gas tended
to gravitate towards the warmer parts of the anatomy.
Since the Act of Union of 1707, the British military has
asked much of the Scottish soldier. Historian TC Smout
said, It is still not known how many Scots died in the
[Great War]. One well-argued estimate put the gure at
110,000, equivalent to about ten per cent of the Scottish
male population aged between 16 and 50 and probably
to a total of about 15 per cent of total British war dead.
The sacrice was higher in proportionate terms than for
any other country in the Empire.
The Scottish soldier has fought for British freedom for
three centuries. And if Scotland goes, it would be wrong
to say goodbye without a stab of deepest regret.
Yet the No campaign has been built on economics,
not emotion. An independent Scotland would be a
huge leap into the unknown, said Alistair Darling. An
independent Scotland would lose its place in the EU,
an independent Scotland would lose the pound all
dismissed as scare tactics by SNP leader Alex Salmond.
But although Salmond is desperate for an independent
Scotland to join the EU, the EU doesnt want them.
Extremely difcult if not impossible, sniffs European
Commission president, Jos Manuel Barroso, citing the
opposition of countries such as Spain, who are terried
of their own independence movements.
With his usual mix of bluster and sound argument,
Salmond rejects all of this. Scotland is already in the
EU and has been for 40 years, he insists.
But if Barroso says that an independent Scotland
cannot automatically join the EU, Alex Salmond cant
simply shout him down. And if the British insist an
independent Scotland cant keep the pound sterling, Alex
Salmond cant overrule them. And the UK didnt want the
straitjacket of monetary union with the rest of Europe.
Why should we want it with Scotland?
Maybe we would all be better off alone. The emotional
pull of 300 years is profoundly strong but in purely
nancial terms, it is difcult to see how the UK would
not benet from the redrawn map of British politics if
Scotland votes for independence.
There are 41 Labour MPs in Scotland and just one Tory
MP. The disappearance of those Scottish Labour MPs
from Westminster would be an historic body blow to the
Labour Party. What remains of the UK would be allowed
to prosper without constantly being dragged down by the
wealth-hating socialism of Dead Eds Miliband and Balls
and their big-spending, high-taxing kind.
But no British prime minister wants to be the one
who presides over the break-up of the UK least of
all a Tory prime minister, who leads, lest we forget, the
Conservative And Unionist Party. Yet when Cameron
delivered a speech on the Scottish referendum he did so,
unbelievably, from Londons Olympic Park. If any prime
minister deserves to lose Scotland, it is surely Cameron.
I
n Under The Skin, Scarlett Johanssons esh-hungry
alien drives around Glasgow in a black wig and white
van, tempting local males with her big eyes, red mouth
and posh English accent. Many of the Scottish men
she encounters had no idea that they were being secretly
lmed, and there is a touching warmth to their responses.
Most are friendly, helpful, never quite believing their luck
at being given a ride by this quietly irtatious English lady.
When we got to my place, I thanked her very much for
the lift and wished her luck, said Kevin McAlinden, 29, an
electrician from Glasgow. The lm conrmed my feelings
about the Scots, who are among the warmest people on
earth, even if you dont look like Scarlett Johansson.
But some of the spite in the campaign for independence
has bordered on the psychopathic. Eddie Izzard part
of the pro-UK Better Together campaign provoked a
furious backlash on Twitter when he gently suggested
Scotland vote no to independence. He can go and die in
a re now, said one Yes Scotland campaigner.
Die in a re? You dont need an independent country,
pal. You need medical help. But perhaps this level of
rancour is exactly what happens when any relationship
goes on for too long.
Alex Salmond is a slick politician with passionate
convictions. Its amazing how rarely those two qualities
go together. Yet there seems no place in Salmonds heart
to understand that there are millions of proud British
mongrels, with blood from every corner of these islands
in our veins, who have no vote on 18 September. And he
doesnt seem to realise that many of Scotlands brightest
and best live in London and Hong Kong and New York,
yet have no vote on 18 September. Or perhaps Salmond
understands all of this perfectly.
Until quite recently it was unthinkable that the union
between Scotland and England would really come to an
end. Not any more. Increasingly it appears that on 19
September, Alex Salmond will look like the cat who got
the fried Mars bar.
For what, in the end, keeps any relationship together?
It is often only habit, nostalgia and fear of the future.
And love, of course.
We shouldnt forget the love.
56
2013 EICA Media Commentator Of The Year
2013 DMA Digital Lifestyle Magazine Of The Year
2013 BSME Editor Of The Year
2013 Fashion Monitor Journalism Awards Outstanding
Contribution To London Collections: Men
2013 PPA Magazine Writer Of The Year
2012 Mark Boxer Award
2012 BSME Editor Of The Year
2012 DMA Digital Lifestyle Magazine Of The Year
2012 Help For Heroes Outstanding Contribution
2012 Px3 Prix De La Photographie Paris Gold Medal
2011 Foreign Press Association Media Awards, Sports
2011 Amnesty International Media Award
2010 Amnesty International Media Award
2010 One World Media Press Award
2010 The Maggies Magazine Cover Of The Year
2010 P&G Awards Best Styling (GQ Style)
2009 PPA Writer Of The Year
2008 BSME Editor Of The Year
2007 BSME Magazine Of The Year
2007 BSME Brand Building Initiative Of The Year
2007 MDA/MJA Press Gazette Awards Best Cover
2007 P&G Awards Best Styling (GQ Style)
2006 P&G Awards Best Grooming Editor (GQ Style)
2006 P&G Awards Best Styling (GQ Style)
2006 MDA/MJA Press Gazette Awards
Interviewer Of The Year
2006 MDA/MJA Press Gazette Awards
Best Designed Consumer Magazine
2006 MDA/MJA Press Gazette Awards
Subbing Team Of The Year
2006 PPA Writer Of The Year
2005 PPA Writer Of The Year
2005 Magazine Design Awards Best Cover
2004 Association Of Online Publishers Awards
Best Website
2004 BSME Magazine Of The Year
2003 PPA Writer Of The Year
2002 BSME Magazine Of The Year
2002 PPA Writer Of The Year
2001 BSME Magazine Of The Year
2001 PPA Designer Of The Year
2001 Printing World Award
2000 Total Design Award
2000 Jasmine Award Winner
1999 Printing World Award
1999 Jasmine Award Winner
1999 PPA Designer Of The Year
1995 Ace Press Award Circulation
1995 Ace Press Award Promotion
1995 PPA Columnist Of The Year
1994 PPA Publisher Of The Year
1991 British Press Circulation Award
Best Promotion Of A Consumer Magazine
major awards The winner of
GQ is the only magazine in Britain dedicated to bringing you the very best in style,
investigative journalism, comment, mens fashion, lifestyle and entertainment.
GQ is the magazine to beat
G JULY 2014
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J
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a
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Theres nothing like having friends in
high places, so GQ Editor Dylan Jones
and the Hay Trustees invited the literati
to celebrate the 2014 Hay Festival in
the lofty surroundings of City
Social, Jason Athertons new
24th-oor restaurant in
Londons Tower 42 and the
perfect setting for an exchange
and enjoyment
of views.
H
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F
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a
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Terredhermes.com
E A U T R S F R A C H E
F R O M T H E E A R T H S P R I N G S A N E W F R E S H N E S S
G JULY 2014
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SOCIAL KISSING
Y
ou can hear it in Mayfair, Soho and Notting Hill;
Hoxton, Hackney and Shoreditch, wherever hip-
sters and media moguls and creative meet and
drink: a sucking sound, like Velcro ripping, and
its at all the best London parties.
Its the sound the social smackers make when they pucker
up and go in for one, bang on the kisser.
The other day Kristen McMenamy planted an absolute
smacker right on my lips, said Sothebys chairman Henry
Wyndham, easily the most charming and possibly the tallest
man in London. It was like being suctioned by a Hoover. I
thought at one point I was going to lose my teeth.
Let us pass over for the moment how the 5ft 10in model
and girlfriend of art dealer Ivor Braka managed thus to
osculate Wyndham, 6ft 7in, as we need to make urgent sense
of whats going on here. For Henrys kiss from Kristen is the
tip of a large iceberg. We are currently experiencing an epi-
demic of public mouth-kissers. There are men out there. And
women. However hard you try to dodge their gobs, they
always get a direct hit, so in the end its easier and politer
to submit to their eager and sticky embraces.
Whenever a footballer scores a goal there is an image of
Gary Neville smooching Paul Scholes that makes even me
want to yell, Get a room! men pile in for a gangbang and
suck each others faces greedily.
Whenever a female pop singer meets another female pop
singer in front of a global audience need I even name-
check the Britney-Madonna clinch everyone starts chant-
ing Katy Perrys I Kissed A Girl. It has become de rigueur
for posh British models to snog their girlfriends in clubs
and taxis, pictures of which are then displayed on the Mail
Onlines sidebar of shame for days at a time, to the extent
that I feel like supplying both Misses Cara Delevingne and
Rita Ora with snorkels, so they can come up for air.
These displays on the part of celebrity mouth-kissers are
easy to deconstruct as attention-seeking antics on the part
of the publicity-addicted. What interests moi is the men
and it mainly is men who kiss women and, yes, other
men on the lips, men and women with whom they have no
sexual, romantic or contrac-
tual relationship.
For consider this. The kiss
surfaced in society in the
medieval period as an act
of betrayal and carnality,
according to Marcel Danesi,
author of The History Of The
Kiss. As a physical act it is
both meaningful and power-
ful, and it is the lip kiss that
turns ordinary people into
passionate lovers. The kiss on the lips in chanson and literature denotes
true love, as opposed to a forced or arranged relationship. Its an expression
of emotional independence in life as in art: think of Romeo and Juliet; Burt
Lancaster and Deborah Kerrs sandy embrace in From Here To Eternity; or
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the prow of the Titanic.
In his Histories, Herodotus records that in Persia a man of equal rank was
greeted with a kiss on the lips and one of lower rank with one on the cheek.
In Slavic cultures, men greet each other with mouth-kisses and in Ancient
Rome a citizens social status was determined by what portion of the emper-
ors body he was allowed to kiss the lower the part of the body, the lower
the rank of the kisser. In this country lip-kissing is or was
intertwined with romantic love.
So its forced entry into the London party scene invites
further analysis, especially as kissing another on the mouth
is an act prone to misinterpretation.
Will Smith slapped a young male reporter on the red carpet
at the Moscow premiere of Men In Black 3 after the young
pup rst hugged Smith then started kissing him. Smith struck
out, shouting, He tried to kiss me on my mouth! Lucky I
didnt try to sucker-punch him.
This went viral and Smith ended up having to explain his
reaction to Dave Letterman. Its just awkward, Dave. They
were like, thats just his schtick, and I said that was why his
ass got schtuck. This was odd because Will Smith recently
grabbed his actor son Jaden during a TV talk show, and
appeared to put his tongue in his own sons mouth.
Whatever. Phew. The novelist Henry Porter, the London
editor of Vanity Fair, shudders at the idea of another man
kissing him on the lips. When I asked him about kissing
another woman on the lips, at a party, he said, Id think
I was trespassing... I can imagine feeling close to someone
and then brushing perhaps the corner of their mouth...
Time for a confession now. I am a lip kisser. I kiss most
of my family on the lips and would kiss all my children on
the lips, if theyd let me, and bite their bottoms, too. Which
makes me rather unusual and probably disgusting (the nov-
elist Daisy Waugh gazed on in horror as I took my leave of
my brother and father from a party the other day).
Weve always had a sort of anything goes approach
in our family, as long as nobody makes squelchy noises,
explains Daisy. Men in my family tend to take fear of
squelch to extremes. They only ever shake hands.
The writer and social commentator Shane Watson agrees
that lip-kissers include all footballers, but thinks that all DJs
and old-school artists are at it, too. She points out its quite
other ranks as the upper crust would rather die than do
more than brush cheeks. She adds, I hate it when people
kiss babies on the lips.
But Ive decided that when it comes to the sexual politics
of kissing, the mouth-kissers are actually far more innocent
than they appear. Perhaps men who kiss women on the lips
with such lascivious relish might... even... bat for the other
side ie, they are the denition of all mouth and no trou-
sers. All present company excepted, of course.
For the truth is there is something unerotic about so
obvious and so public an embrace. Subtly grazing the corner
of the mouth, or lingering a second too long, or simply stand-
ing back and making eye contact, is far sexier.
I have a girlfriend who kisses her whole family on the
lips mother, father, brother, sister, reveals Jemima Khan,
when I ask for the osculatory custom and practice in the
Goldsmith/Birley households.
My family only kiss their dogs on the lips.
THE CELEBRITY
KISS LIST
Londons
mouth-kissers
Stephen Bayley
Nicky Haslam
Damien Hirst
Simon Kelner
AA Gill
David Walliams
Simon Cowell
James Corden
Oliver Claridge
Gary Neville and
Paul Scholes and all
goal scorers

Women who kiss
on mouth
Kristen McMenamy
Katie Price
Madonna (pictured
above kissing
Brahim Zaibat)
Britney Spears
Gwyneth Paltrow
Sally Bercow
Sharon Stone
Lindsay Lohan

Celebrity display
lip-kisses
Britney Spears and
Katy Perry
Jason Segel and
Russell Brand
Will Ferrell and
John Reilly
Jennifer Aniston
and Courteney Cox
Lady Gaga and
Michael Bloomberg

Families who kiss
on the mouth
The Johnsons
The Will Smiths
The Jolies
The Steve Tylers
The Olsens
Stephanie Seymour
and son
I feel like
supplying both
Misses Cara
Delevingne and
Rita Ora with
snorkels, so
they can come
up for air
Beau-monde darlings are all locking lips.
Rachel Johnson turns a cheek
PECKING
ORDERS
60
EDI TED BY PAUL HENDERSON
TOP OF THE CLASS
Mercedes schools the competition with an innovation-led reboot
of its plutocratic automatics, says Jason Barlow
Once Mercedes INVEIGLES
its way into your world,
NOTHING else willreally do
JULY 2014 G
A
t some point, someone
who should probably
have known better
lobbed the epithet
the best car in the world into
the mix. Clearly, there is no such
thing, objectively speaking at least,
and there denitely wasnt 30 years
ago when I rst became aware of
the concept.
Back then, Rolls-Royce was hanging
on by its ngertips. The grand old dame
of the British car industry had fallen on
hard times, the equivalent of an aristocrat
with a smack problem, or a stately home
with a leaky roof. Truth was, by the early
Eighties, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class
Sonderklasse or special class was
the de facto best car in the world, and Rolls
glory days were as faded as the British Raj.
Ironically, it took another German company,
BMW, to get Rolls-Royce back on track, and
both the current Ghost and Phantom can lay
unequivocal claim to greatness. Few cars are as
genuinely imperial as these. But best? Putting
semantics to one side, its difcult to argue
65
JULY 2014 G
CARS
with the latest Mercedes S-Class.
The biggest Benz has annexed best
territory since the W116 landed in
1972, co-mingling technology and
luxury to devastating effect, and
this latest version arrived with an
additional point to prove. Mercedes
attempt to reanimate Maybach as
its plutocratic statement ended as
a 1 billion (820m) failure almost
two years ago, impervious even to
the patronage of Simon Cowell. A
stretched version of the S lls that
void and meant that the new car
had to be the best, and then some.
Even against these raised stakes,
the S-Class actually over-delivers.
Mercs tend to be slow burners, but
once theyve inveigled their way into
your world nothing else will really
do. That said, the new S-Class had
me at hello. True luxury is another
subjective commodity, but even the
S350, the entry-level diesel (though
cunningly rebadged Bluetec) model,
smothers you into blissful submission,
opiated yet sharply focused at the
same time.
Re-imagining a cars interior real
estate isnt easy the Tesla Model S
does it by moving almost everything
to a dauntingly huge central touch-
screen setup and the S-Class doesnt
stint on the tech. Two 12.3in TFT
screens dominate the main display,
beaming up a bewildering range of
information (including night-vision
thermal imaging), while the central
screen handles navigation and
everything else that falls into that
increasingly nebulous world known as
multimedia 3-D maps, 10-gigabyte
storage for music, WLAN-enabled
internet, and so on. The software is
cradled by lusciously smooth leather,
while the hard bits your ngers must
still unavoidably interact with door
handles, switches are reassuringly
metallic. Even the air vents are
gorgeous, and the steering wheel
loses the traditional third spar to
tantalisingly futuristic effect. Cabin
lighting is handled by 300 LEDs,
creating an ambience that, while
unique and amusingly congurable,
hovers perilously close to one of those
Saint-Tropez nightclubs where you
need a mortgage to buy a beer.
In this context, actually driving the
car seems rather unseemly, and the
fact is that most owners will have
someone on the payroll to do that
for them. Which explains one of the
most thrilling developments in the
S-Class story: comfort takes priority
over handling. Overt sportiness is
a bogus notion at this end of the
market, although the range-topping
AMG S63 biturbo is hardly lacking
in that department. Much more
relevant is the remarkable way in
which the Mercedes hermetically
seals its occupants inside, effectively
repelling the real world and all its
unpleasantness. There are pillows
on the headrests.
Spend a few days in the S350,
and after a while you will forget that
there is even an engine in front of
you, never mind that its a diesel. On
the motorway, you simply cant hear
it, a tribute to the units peerless
renement but also the depth of the
engineering in the rest of the car. (The
S63, by contrast, is powered by one of
the worlds greatest engines, a 577bhp
twin-turbo V8, so the fact that its a
little more intrusive is very much not
a problem.)
The bigger-engined models also
feature something called Magic Body
Control, which uses a pair of cameras
to scan the road ahead, allowing the
cars sensors to adjust the suspension
accordingly before it arrives at
the inevitable pothole. This, along
with the latest iteration of Mercedes
Pre-Safe tech which primes
the cars safety systems if it
determines an accident is inevitable
gives the S-Class a decidedly
Orwellian mien, though Mercedes
is perfectly happy to drive the
philosophical debate about the
future of the car.
No surprise to hear, then, that a
fully autonomous S-Class is already
up and running, using the radar,
cameras and sensors tted to the
new car. The terms of the 1968
Vienna Convention might need to be
ameliorated in order for self-driving
cars to become a reality, but expect
to see a dedicated lane on our
motorways sooner than you think.
Personally, I hate the idea. But for
many people, the car that drives itself
really is the best one in the world.
MERCEDES S350
The diesel S350 is
100kg lighter than
its predecessor
and ofers an even
smoother ride.
ENGINE
3.0 litre V6, 258bhp
PERFORMANCE
Top speed: 155mph
(limited); 0-62mph
in 6.8 seconds
PRICE
From 62,905
CONTACT
mercedes-benz.
co.uk
NEED
TO KNOW
THE
TECH
Star turn: The
S-Class cabin
melds soft-leather
trim with hard
hi-tech kit
THE LIGHTS
No more hot
lament bulbs: the
S-Class uses 490
LEDs inside and out.
Computer control
minimises glare,
andrear lights
illuminate with
varying intensity.
MAGIC BODY
CONTROL
Cameras behind the
windscreen read the
road up to 15 metres
ahead and the cars
adaptive suspension
raises or lowers the
car depending on
the surface.
DRIVER
ASSISTANCE
Almost but not
quite autonomous
driving. Networked
cameras and radars
gure out where
the other trafc and
white lines are. The
system allows the
car to stop, brake
and steer itself.

STREAMING MUSIC
A telematics module
streams audio
without relying
on your iPod.
The occupants all
get individual
entertainment,
withtwo DVD
players, four LCD
screens and a Wi-Fi
modem giving
online access to up
to ten devices. JB
67
G JULY 2014
CARS
TWOS COMPANY
Since the Fifties, Mercedes most imperious saloon has always begat an era-dening coup. This latest version
ismore sharply clothed than its predecessors and takes full advantage of Mercs techno-superiority to inject
somedynamism into the mix. The big news here is the debut of a system called active curve tilting, which uses
theMagic Body Controls camera-scan function to register corners up to 15 metres away. The camera relays its
ndings to the cars individual suspension struts and alter their angle by up to 2.5 degrees to keep things level
between speeds of 19 and 112mph. Elsewhere, the Coups panoramic sunroof features Magic Sky Control you
can choose how much of it you want to see and if its LED headlights arent powerful enough, you can option an
additional 47 Swarovski crystals. Clearly, 46 werent quite enough. JB
MERCEDES S63
AMG COUP
The S63 AMG
will be the rst
incarnation of the
S-Class Coup.
ENGINE
5.5 litre V8, 577bhp
twin turbo
PERFORMANCE
Top speed: 155mph
(limited); 0-62mph
in 3.9 seconds
PRICE
From 119,835
CONTACT
mercedes-benz.co.uk
NEED
TO KNOW
Sterling coup: The low-riding two-door
version of the S-Class is the latest iteration
of a 60-year Mercedes tradition
68
WOLSEY.COM
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G JULY 2014
Colour
myworld
Tell the time in
24cities with Louis
Vuittons hand-painted
EscaleWorldtime
You can trust Louis Vuitton to come
up with something extraordinary,
and its latest offering, the Escale
Worldtime with a unique dial
inspired by vintage luggage tags on
a Vuitton trunk is just that.
The dial itself comprises a series
of three rings that are hand-painted
with the names of 24 cities and cor-
responding emblems in 38 different
colours. It takes more than 50 hours
to paint and re, so only 20 watches
will be produced this year.
The time is read with the yellow
arrow that points to 12 oclock,
which will always be set to local
time, while the concentric hour and
minute discs move round. To check
the time in another city, simply read
the hour next to its relevant symbol.
(Its easier than it sounds, trust us.)
Robert Johnston
Escale Worldtime
byLouis Vuitton,
41,000. louis
vuitton.co.uk
Take me home:
Escale Worldtime
is set to Auckland
in this picture, so
look directly
below the triangle
to nd the local
time in London
EDI TED BY BILL PRINCE
70
www.twsteel.com
COLLECTI ON
TW1301
45MM
JULY 2014 G
VICTORIA COREN
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So, youve signed up to a singles
site, but how do you know your
profle will entice enough like-
minded ladies and not turn off
potential partners? You need a
womans perspective: allow GQs
arbiter of dating etiquette to oblige.
(Note from Victoria: This will only
be useful if youre hoping to attract
a 40-year-old married woman. If
Im not your dream date, youll
haveto ask someone else...)
Location: London
Active: 14 hours ago
Status
VCM1hotTamAle69
Whip smart, good with numbers/
words/cards. Online posing as an
athletic brunette, here to help men
(thats you) with all online dating
foibles. Here strictly for research so
noweird direct messages.
ONLINE
DATING
GUIDE TO
The
By
Victoria
Coren
Mitchell
73
G JULY 2014
If your sense of humour
is SO OFFENSIVE that you
have to WARN PEOPLE
IN ADVANCE...
MODEL MAN
ANTONIO, 24, SOUTH WALES
Antonio is wearing Dolce &
Gabbana in his prole picture. Hes
leaning against a tree. The light is
perfect, the angle is attering
Wait a minute! Thats not Antonio.
Ive never seen a more obvious
library picture from Google in my
life. I have no need to read further.
Put no photo if you want
(although I think it would severely
limit the number of women whod
contact you), but a fake one of a
model? Why the trickery? I think
Antonio might be a murderer.
Even in my single days, I was
not looking to date a murderer.
And I really wasnt picky.
Im rather wistful that cyber-courting didnt jump the shark into
normal until after Id met my husband, so I never got the chance to
try it. I think I would have enjoyed it. I like the way it has transformed
Britain into a dating culture, like America, where girls can go out with
dozens of guys just for the fun of it no expectations, no promises, just
getting to know new people and seeing what happens.
When my editor at GQ suggested that I have a look at some of the
men available online, I was quite offended.
David and I are very happy, I huffed. Its a bit late to keep my
options open now.
No, no, crooned my well-dressed overlord. I meant for a column.
Analyse a few proles. Tell us whats wrong with them. Show the readers
what not to do when cyber-courting. Why do you insist on calling it
cyber-courting, by the way? What are you, 90?
Well, I didnt need to be asked twice. Within minutes, I was setting
myself up with a prole on a range of dating sites; you need a prole
to be allowed in to look at the men. (I think thats very unfair. The
match esfashion.com website doesnt ask for all my personal information
before Im allowed to drool over pictures of minidresses.)
I chose a random photo of a girl from the internet and started ticking
the description boxes offered by the site. This was very exciting: my
one chance to become a tall, athletic brunette.
Youve described your hair as short, said my husband over my shoul-
der. But youve chosen a photo of a long-haired girl.
Youve forgotten, I said, that Im only doing this to be allowed in.
Im not going to be communicating with anybody, so honesty doesnt
matter. Or maybe it does? Maybe youd like me to put a photo of my
actual self, so the guys can nd me when we meet in the hotel lobby?
He went back to his crossword.
So, through the door at last, I was able to browse the proles. I have
chosen ten at random to discuss here. Its my gift to you: a glimpse into
how a woman might read a dating prole. Itll be something to bear
in mind if creating your own. Ive invented names for them seemed a
bit cruel to use their real online handles and detailed what was attrac-
tive and what wasnt.
HI THERE,
SKIPPER
DANIEL, 28, THE MIDLANDS
Daniel has a great prole photo.
Hes smiling and looks handsome,
but its a badly taken and slightly
out-of-focus shot. This makes me
think its the only one he happened
to have on his laptop. Excellent. No
man should be in possession of 30
professional photographs of himself
looking fabulous. Thats just weird.
For his self-description at the top,
Daniel outlines a normal day in his
life. This is a very good idea. It gives
the reader something to respond to.
He begins: I get up late, around
ten. Skipping past the bathroom
routine, I go downstairs for a
healthy breakfast.
I think he probably means
that hell skip a description of his
bathroom routine. Unfortunately, it
sounds as if he simply skips it every
morning. I can now only imagine
Daniel as a man who never brushes
his teeth. The magic is gone.
WEAK
SILENT TYPE
PHILIP, 40, NEWCASTLE
Philip has ticked a lot of boxes to
tell me that he likes James Bond
novels, indie music, football and
France. But he chooses not to write
a proper self-description at the top,
saying only, Ask me more if you
want to know! Dont ask, dont get.
Bad decision, Philip. There are
millions of available men on the
internet, glistening out there like
delicious bunches of ripe fruit.
I dont need to hammer on your
front door. I might as well move
on to someone whos at least
left theirs ajar.
DODGY
DIVORCEE
ARTHUR, 31, DEVON
Arthur is 31 but says he is looking
for a woman aged between 21 and
30. Ugh. At least have the decency
to pretend youd consider some
old crone of 33, Arthur; you can
always delete her emails.
Hes also divorced. Fair enough
some people get unlucky early
but its suspicious in a man who
wants to date a woman ten years
younger than he is and wouldnt
look at one whos a fortnight older.
Also, under dislikes, he puts
Miranda. Thats odd. I wouldnt
necessarily expect a heterosexual
man on a dating website to name
Miranda as his favourite TV show,
but to particularly say that he hates
it? The highest-prole female-led
TV show in Britain?
I think Arthur hates women.
It might be mutual.
1
3
2
4
Have you
registered for
ONLINE DATING?
If youre single,
I BET YOU HAVE.
Ive barely met a
single man in five
years who hasnt.
74
JULY 2014 G
VICTORIA COREN
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He writes, Im looking
for a KIND and
TRUSTWORTHY person.
Alarm bells are ringing
FREEZE
FRAME
GERRY, 29, GLASGOW
Gerry begins: Apparently,
58 per cent of people dont tell
the truth when online dating
but, speaking as an astronaut
and part-time ice-cream taster,
I nd this difcult to believe.
I love this opening gambit. It may
be a well-used type of joke on these
sites (I havent been on them long
enough to know), but he phrases it
very well and genuinely made me
laugh. I also like the way he puts the
concept of online dating right on
the table; no hiding.
He is a no-hiding kind of guy.
He lists cooking and baking as
his hobbies and adds: Ive only
just started baking so might not
have the hang of it yet. Many men
might avoid putting cake-making
down as a hobby for fear that its
not very macho.
I like Gerrys condence. Hes not
cowed by life. It makes me think he
has a lot of friends and copes well
in social situations.
In a woman, says Gerry, I look
for a sense of humour, intelligence
and being able to consume a lot of
pizza. What a great line! No need
to mention good looks; hell have
photos to choose from anyway.
Every woman wants to think of
herself as funny and clever, and
Ive never met one who doesnt like
the idea of eating pizza, so its a
awless summary. He makes life
with him sound fun.
Later down the page, lightly,
in passing (not how someone
would say this if they were making
it up), Gerry tells us that hes an
NHS doctor.
My only response is: OMG. A
perfect prole. This is the man
I would contact, if I were single
and looking for a date.
And Id lie about my age.
SOCIAL
CLIMBER
TED, 42, LIVERPOOL
Ted says, I like getting lost in old
cities. This is a fabulous opener.
Its like something a clever psychic
would say: sounds specic, but
actually applies to everybody in the
world. Nobody could possibly be
put of by this. Nice move.
Unfortunately, Ted doesnt stop
there. What he actually says is:
I like getting lost in old cities,
climbing to the top of the highest
tower to get the best view.
Suddenly Im imagining me
and Ted exhausted and covered
in sweat and not in a good way.
Whats with the schlepping up
a million crumbling old stairs?
He should have gone with
drinking cappuccino in a medieval
piazza. Girls are quite lazy. Also,
in an early dating scenario, they do
not want any activities that leave
them out of breath, with make-up
running down their face. Not until
after dinner, anyway.
UH-OH, SILVER
JONNY, 30, LONDON
In his photograph, Jonny is wearing
an outt that includes cowboy boots
and a headscarf.
I move on immediately.
UNEASY
LOVER
PETER, 37, LEICESTER
Peters physical self-description
sounds great (6 foot, black, athletic
and toned) and the attached photo
bears it out though hes sitting
down, so I cant swear to his height.
His introduction sounds tender
and honest: Im a good person,
I treat men and women both well,
whether friends or lovers, and
I would never hurt anyone. Im
looking for a kind and trustworthy
person who does not keep secrets.
Unfortunately, the alarm bells
are ringing so loudly that I may
have tinnitus for a week. Oh dear.
Peter is not over his ex.
He doesnt mention his ex. Peter
is not a total idiot. However, I would
bet a lot of money (and Im good at
betting) that Peter recently split up
with a woman who cheated on him.
Look back at those introductory
words. Peter doesnt know what he
did to deserve such ill-treatment.
Hes a good guy! He never hurt
anyone! Why are women so
deceitful and secretive?
Peter will be ready to date
again in about a year.
THE
COMEDIAN
TOBY, 24, PETERBOROUGH
Toby is not the best-looking guy
on the internet, but I dont mind
a receding hairline in a 24-year-old
and I love a man in glasses.
He is an aspiring lm-maker,
which would get him ruled out
immediately if he was over 30 but,
at 24 well, good luck to him. You
never know. (I do actually know.
But he has to nd out for himself.)
Toby says, I wish I had a bit
more money so I could treat
women to ve-star dinners and
trips to Venice, but for now it might
be a round of drinks and a Nandos
which is charming and likeable.
But Toby then tells us hes
looking for a woman who enjoys
sarcastic humour and doesnt take
ofence. I immediately picture
Toby telling me Im fat.
If your sense of humour is so
sarcastic and ofensive that you
have to warn people in advance
well, lets just say that if I wanted
to date Jim Davidson, Id have got
a job as a Page Three girl in 1987.
STARRY-EYED
MICHAEL, 39, DARTFORD
Michaels opening words are:
Im a Libra. I move on.
5 6 9
8
7 10
Would like to
meet? Honesty
is (mainly) the
best policy if you
want to net your
dream date
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JULY 2014 G
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Shoes byJM Weston, 590.
jmweston.com
JM Weston
nds its sole mate
I HAVE always been a sucker for a collaboration between a designer
and a shoe company. Somehow, a fresh pair of designer eyes can often
add a tiny twist that can elevate the simply great to the sublime. Lou
Dalton has worked with Grenson to make the classic scotch-grain boot
into a fashion icon. And still one of my favourite pairs of shoes is a
collaboration between GH Bass & Co and Tommy Hilger that saw the
classic Bass weejuns transformed with blue leather and red stitching.
So when we heard that GQ favourite Charlie Casely-Hayford was
working with ultra-chic French shoe brand JM Weston, we knew the
resulting shoes were going to be special. After all, as well as being a
talented designer, Casely-Hayford is regularly named one of Britains
best-dressed men and his personal style has made him an icon in
Japan, so whatever he came up with was going to be interesting.
I loved working with Weston, he says of this, his very rst shoe
collaboration. Its a classic brand with an amazing heritage. It was
really challenging for me to step outside of my usual comfort zone but
I am very pleased with the result, which manages to feel very London
but with a French twist thanks to the JM Weston construction.
So long may this entente cordiale continue. RJ
jmweston.com
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The world at his feet
Berluti maestro Alessandro Sartori has helped turn
a bespoke bootmaker into a global lifestyle brand
WHEN THE Italian shoemaker Alessandro
Berluti opened his business in Paris in 1895,
he would scarcely have imagined that one
day his little shoe company would become
a luxury powerhouse. But today, under the
creative direction of the founders namesake
Alessandro Sartori, that is exactly what
Berluti is becoming, with ready-to-wear
collections and accessories that make it
a true mens lifestyle brand.
But Sartori has never allowed himself to
forget Berlutis roots as a bespoke shoemaker,
and has ensured that this offer is still at the
companys heart.
When I rst started designing a collection
for Berluti I began by looking at the shoes,
explains Sartori. I started at the bottom and
worked my way up, which is the opposite of
how most designers work. I took some iconic
Berluti shoes and started by establishing
what would be the perfect trousers to go
with them, which tended to be pieces with
a tapered rather than a straight leg. Then
I continued onwards and upwards to design
tops and jackets. Of course, these reected
my own style of playing with volumes and
creating oversized tops, but I always kept true
to the inspiration starting with the shoe.
The debt Sartori owed to the shoes was
acknowledged with the rst Berluti collection
he unveiled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in
Paris in January 2012, where the shoes all
sat on their own gilt chairs as if they were
the audience at a fashion show. Today, with
a further four collections under his belt,
Sartori now has time to concentrate on the
shoes once more. Designing shoes is a very
different art to designing clothes, says
Sartori. It is much more technical. It is not
just a question of creating a silhouette, you
have to think about how the design will
work with the leather you are using. And
I dont mean simply the difference between
suede and nappa Im talking about how
much even two nappas can differ. You have
to know where the leather comes from,
about the tanning process and how it
has been treated. You even have to think
about how the customer walks and how
comfortable the shoes will be to walk in
and wear all day. Its all incredibly technical.
But its not all about the appliance of
science. Berluti has always offered a unique
ready-to-wear or, should we say, ready-
to-walk collection, he says, because the
customer has always been able to change the
colour of the shoes themselves. And today
we have shoe designs delivered to the stores
The perfect t: Berluti artistic director
AlessandroSartori (above); the brands
Conduit Street agship store, London W1
Shoes by Berluti,
1,350. berluti.com
78
Shoes by Berluti,
8,650. berluti.com
in a neutral colour so that they can be dyed
on site. We offer a Berluti rainbow of 100
shades that the customer can choose from.
Every year I will introduce new colours and
remove some of the old ones to ensure that it
is always fresh and interesting. In every store
we will have at least one colourist, and in
London we have four so that you can always
be sure of being offered something special.
His predecessor, Olga Berluti, was a shoe
obsessive who created incredible patinas
thanks to exhaustive hand polishing, and
these will still be available. Olgas belief
was that, ideally, a Berluti shoe should be
polished with champagne under moonlight
not as mad as it sounds as the acidity of
the champagne is said to cut through the
polish to allow the true colour of the leather
to shine through. Berluti also offers a choice
of leathers that are made to order, as well
as different linings. You can even have
your name tattooed on either the inside
or the outside of your footwear.
Basically almost anything is possible,
insists Sartori, within the constraints of
how long it could take to achieve. This isnt
what could be called a speedy service. Once
visits to the clients home (if so required) for
the rst and second ttings are completed,
then the nal delivery can take up to six
months. But we are offering a full bespoke
service where we will make the shoe from
scratch, says Sartori. Normally the initial
inspiration will come from our collection
that is why the customer has chosen Berluti
in the rst place but this only needs to be
the starting point. The one limit would be
that everything has to be in good taste. We
wouldnt want to do anything too crazy.
That might seem like a given, but I can
remember going to a bespoke shoe atelier
in Paris a number of years ago and coming
across a freakishly long pair that were on
special order from a certain French internet
tycoon whose apparent shtick was to look
like Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons.
I cant imagine, however, that Sartori
would see the joke. RJ

berluti.com
Get your kicks: Berlutis spring/summer 2013
collections intricate detailing up close; on display
at Paris Jardin du Palais-Royal (below)
Shoes by Berluti,
1,350. berluti.com
JULY 2014 G
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Clad dogs and Englishmen
Above: Trousers by Gant
Rugger, 200. gant.co.uk.
Shoes by Giorgio Armani,
405. armani.co.uk.
Doriswears lead
byLouisVuitton, 250.
louisvuitton.com
Chinos by Gant
Rugger, 115. gant.co.
uk. Shoes by Russell
&Bromley, 175.
russellandbromley.
co.uk. Boris wears
collar, 480. Lead,
530. Both by Herms.
hermes.com
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Finding the right summer shoe can be a tough task. Forget espadrilles and Birkenstocks
with the help of a mans best friend, GQ leads the way with this seasons pedigree picks
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Jeans by Jacob Cohen, 324. At matchesfashion.com. ShoesbyPaul Smith
Jeans, 185. paulsmith.co.uk Tilly wears collar, 55. Lead, 95. Bothby
PaulSmith. paulsmith.co.uk
Chinos by Gant Rugger, 115. gantrugger.co.uk. Shoes bySalvatore Ferragamo,
509. ferragamo.com. Doris wearsleadbyLouisVuitton, 250. louisvuitton.com
Jeans by Jacob Cohen,
356. At matchesfashion.
com. Shoes by Kenzo,
150.kenzo.com
Chinos by Gant Rugger,
115. gant.co.uk. Shoes by
Alfred Sargent for J Crew,
405. jcrew.com
Chinos by Gant Rugger,
115. gant.co.uk. Shoes
byBally, 320. bally.com
Chinos by Ralph Lauren,
125. ralphlauren.com.
Shoes by Gucci,
365.gucci.com
Chinos by Gant Rugger,
115. gant.co.uk. Shoes
byDolce & Gabbana,
3,550. dolcegabbana.com
82
A SENSE OF PLACE. ROSEWOOD LONDON NOW OPEN.
+44 20 7781 8888 | london.reservations@rosewoodhotels.com | rosewoodhotels.com
SEEI NG SOMETHI NG NEW.
The Courtyard at Rosewood London, steps away from Covent Garden
G JULY 2014
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1. Herms, 455.
hermes.com
2. Givenchy by
RiccardoTisci,
465.givenchy.com
3. Ugg, 60. ugg
australia.co.uk
4. Louis Vuitton, 460.
louisvuitton.com
5. Dsquared2, 360.
dsquared2.com
6. Dan Ward, 235.
At matchesfashion.com
7. Lanvin, 525.
lanvin.com
1. Bertie, 35. At Dune.
dunelondon.co.uk
2. Dune, 35.
dunelondon.co.uk
3. KG Kurt Geiger, 50.
kurtgeiger.co.uk
4. Christian Louboutin,
295. christian
louboutin.com
5. Topman, 24.
topman.com
6. Valentino, 320.
At matchesfashion.com
1. Hunter, 85.
hunter-boot.com
2. Ralph Lauren, 285.
ralphlauren.com
3. Aigle, 95.
aigle.com
4. Dior Homme, 490.
dior.com
5. Tom Ford, 620.
tomford.com
6. Tods, 285.
tods.com
ESPADRILLES
SANDALS
DRIVING
The buttery efect
Take a fashionable ight into summer with our pick
of this seasons hottest shoe styles
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Knuckle-up-a-ding-dong!
Solange Azagury-Partridges collection of mens
jewellery gives the modern male a stylish hand
PHOTOGRAPHS SAM CHRISTMAS
STYLI NG JESSICA PUNTER
From top: Caveman ring,
4,900. Vanitas ring,
7,500. Key ring, 1,900.
Pig cufinks, 2,800. All
by Solange Azagury-
Partridge. solange.co.uk
SOLANGE AZAGURY-PARTRIDGE whose gems regularly adorn the
likes of Madonna and Sienna Miller is known for her maximal designs,
but she took a different approach to her rst dedicated mens collection,
Alpha. Men and jewellery is a conundrum, as many men are very
minimal, admits Azagury-Partridge (Solly to her friends). Its a good
watch and a ring, or possibly a bracelet or pendant. Within the collection,
each item denotes a certain type of man. So, there is a pair of Pig
cufinks, tiny bullets on a chain called Weapons Of Mass Destruction,
and the Villain, a ring with a single striking emerald.
There are personal references too. I designed the Muz ring for my
husband, Murray, and the Alpha ring for my son, Otis, says Azagury-
Partridge. At rst glance you could be forgiven for thinking these dark
metal trinkets are unassuming: far from it. Azagury-Partridge made the
entire collection in an unusual sandblasted black gold that will wear over
time to reveal a hint of the bling underneath. And with a smattering of
diamonds, emeralds and sapphires, these are precious pieces indeed. JP
5 Carlos Place, London, W1. 020 7792 0197, solange.co.uk
86
JULY 2014 G
Snake ring, 3,600. Vanitas earring, 1,800.
Both by Solange Azagury-Partridge. solange.co.uk
Shirt by Lanvin,
370. lanvin.com.
Trousers, 520.
Shoes, 850. Both
by Dior Homme.
dior.com
From top: Love
ThyNeighbour
pendant, 2,800.
Villain pendant,
9,800. Both
bySolange
Azagury-Partridge.
solange.co.uk
From top: Lionheart ring, 7,500. Alpha ring, 4,900.
Viperring,5,500. Bone ring, 2,200. Muz ring, 14,800.
AllbySolange Azagury-Partridge. solange.co.uk
Men and jewellery
is A CONUNDRUM,
as many men are
very MINIMAL
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Follow Style Shrink
on Instagram at
roberttjohnston
LETTER of the MONTH
T-shirt by Givenchy by
Riccardo Tisci, 395. At
matchesfashion.com
Shoes by Diemme,
333. At Oki-Ni.
oki-ni.com
Suit by Richard James, 765.
richardjames.co.uk. Boutonniere by
McQueens, from 7.50. mcqueens.co.uk
Cufs by Cufs & Co, 6.
cufsandco.co.uk
My wedding is being marketed (at my ances
request) as smart but informal, and she has hinted
she will be wearing something summery in a colour other
than white. This puts me in a nice position I dont have to
hire traditional garb and my inner sartorialist can run wild
(on a budget of 1,000). What should I do?
Ben, London
Ben tells me the plan (not his, Im guessing) is to throw
a cocktail-dress-and-lounge-suit affair (fancy bow ties
encouraged but optional). I am always wary of trying
too hard at your own wedding, however, so it is all
about balancing a classic look with the need to cut
a dash. This means erring on the side of caution
suit-wise then pimping it with carefully chosen
accessories and a spectacular boutonniere. I would
nix the bow-tie option, as hindsight may make it
seem try-hard, and opt for a light slate-blue, one-button
suit by Richard James, which is cut very atteringly.
Team it with a Turnbull & Asser gingham-check shirt with
contrasting white cutaway collar and a bright-pink paisley
tie by Charvet. Monk-strap shoes look great, and one of
the coolest pairs around is the Algy tasselled leather and
suede monk-strap brogue by OKeefe. I asked Kally Ellis
of top London orist McQueens for buttonhole tips (she
did my wedding owers, so I trust her with my oral life).
She suggested something dramatic such as bright-orange
protea or, if you want more traditional colours, white or
pink peonies combined with herbs such as lavender.
Informal summer suits for an unconventional wedding; on-trend
threads to wear to a theme park; the case for and against sleeve
garters; timeless classics to ensure you dress your age
To make sure his footwear
doesnt become the
equivalent of one of Jigsaws
deadly weapons, I would
recommend wearing a pair
of Diemme mens Tina Garda
hand-woven skate shoes.
Diemme is an ultra-cool
collaborative efort between
an Italian manufacturer and
Norwegian and Japanese
design companies. Add
this to the fact that skate
shoes are this summers
cool item and you have
the perfect solution to safe
roller coasting. And if you
are going hell for leather for
hipness what could be better
than to team these with a
Givenchy T-shirt? Creative
director Riccardo Tisci has
managed to turn a venerable
French couture house most
famous for dressing Audrey
Hepburn into the coolest
T-shirt brand in the world,
thanks to its prints of sharks
and rottweilers. This
summer, go for the over-
sized panelled-oral
number and I promise
that youll be the most
on-trend man to pass
through the turnstiles
at Thorpe Park.
Thanks to a number
of period productions
and Mr David Beckham
it seems as though
sleevegarters might well
be abona-de option for
the gent wishing to take
his dinner attire tothe next
level. Is this the case?
Leo, via email
I think I may be a little
deformed as I rarely nd
ashirt with asleeve that
isnt too long. This means
Ihave a tendency to have
mycufsapping around
likea dashing regency fop
(or, perhaps, Laurence
Llewelyn-Bowen). Sleeve
garters were the perfect
solution to the problem as
they made sure your cufs
werent trailing in the dirt
for this reason they are
associated with old-school
printers. They come in a
variety of styles, such as
covered in fabric or with a
metal nish. Personally, like
Beckham (above), Iwould
go for the old-school silver
nish though I have
seen ablack nish that
wouldlookrathersmart
witha dressshirt under
adinner jacket.
Being obsessed
withthe thrill that
canonly be found on roller
coasters, I nd myself at
Thorpe Park and numerous
other theme parks many
times throughout the year.
What would be your advice
on the perfect outt for
such an occasion?
James Ireland, Kent
James wants to ensure he
is on-trend every time he
ventures out to Thorpe Park
to scream his head of on
the likes of Saw The Ride,
billed as the worlds most
terrifying roller coaster.
(Always nice to name a ride
in an amusement park after
a torture-porn franchise.)
Despite being a thrill-seeker,
James is very health-and-
safety conscious, so eschews
the idea of wearing, for
example, ip-ops in case
they y of at a critical
moment and brain someone.
88
JULY 2014 G
Submit your questions to our style
guru: styleshrink@condenast.co.uk
The author of our Letter Of The
Month will receive a stylish black
andrhodium Townsend fountain pen
worth 190 from Cross. Cross is the
maker of quality writing instruments
and has a range of distinctive
lifestyle accessories. cross.com
The sharpest precision pencils
Polo shirt by Orlebar Brown,
95. orlebarbrown.com
Leading lead (clockwise from left): On the
Caran dAche production line, pigment is
turned into llings and, nally, pencils
When it comes to producing top-drawer writing implements, Swiss rm
Caran dAche has got it down to a ne art. Nick Foulkes sketches out its history
I am a 44-year-old married
father of two. As a solicitor,
I wear age-appropriate
suits to work, but what
about at home? I need to
start from scratch. I dont
wear trainers and baseball
caps are obviously a no-no.
What do I do?
Nicholas, Leicester
In these times of middle-
youth you can still dress well
without looking like you are
clinging desperately to the
past. The secret is to invest in
classic pieces. For example,
the Baracuta Harrington G9
Original has been around
since the Thirties and will
look as good on Nicholas
today as it did on Elvis in
1958s King Creole. You are
never too old to wear denim,
but avoid fussy washes and
distressing. Take a look at
Levis Vintage 1978 slim
tapered-leg jeans, which
have really stood the test of
time. Cut from a similar cloth,
so to speak, are the linen/
cotton-mix cargo pants by
Incotex, aweekend favourite
of mine.As is the Orlebar
Brown towelling polo. I love
its retro feel, and it just gets
better with wear. Finally,
footwear and, again, if you
are planning to wear trainers
stick to a classic design. For
example, Adidas Gazelles
date back to before Nicholas
was born and still look great
in a way that means he runs
no risk of mutton-dressed-
as-lamb accusations.
LIKE MANY middle-aged men, my rst
experience of luxury came not with a watch,
nor a bag, but with a Caran dAche pencil.
It is hard to convey even today the amount
of envy wrapped up in that magnicent tin box,
with its distinctive Art-Nouveau lettering and
a picture of a snow-capped mountain with the
mandatory blue sky and uttering red-and-white
Swiss ag. Of course, I could not (and still cannot)
draw, so any form of artistic material is largely
wasted on me, however the essential lesson
that Caran dAche taught me in the art
of luxury was well learned.
The thing about the Swiss is that,
when they set their minds to being the
best at something, by a mixture of
European savoir-faire and a doggedly
logical almost Vulcan approach
to production and quality control,
they usually achieve their goal. And
a visit to the Caran dAche factory
demonstrates that it is just as serious
about the appellation Swiss Made as
any watch company.
I visit plenty of factories and, even if my
knowledge of the processes is sketchy, I know a
visit is good when I gain an increased respect for
the product. And so it was when I rst stepped
into Caran dAches research laboratory. Yes, that
is right a research laboratory in a pencil factory.
Besides complying with new directives to
ensure school children dont get ill if they chew
the end of a Caran dAche, there is a ceaseless
quest for new colours. As well as the core range
of anything up to 120 hues, there are seasonal
specials (last year it was pastels, this year
uorescents). Then there is the special projects,
such as a range developed after Caran dAches
US distributor forwarded a directive from a
museum suggesting that the purchase of works in
coloured pencil should be avoided because they
had a tendency to fade when exposed to light.
Now, given that Picasso and Mir were Caran
dAche men, the Swiss crayon-maker took this
seriously and, after a dozen years and exhaustive
testing, came up with a coloured pencil of
outstanding light-fastness called Luminance 6901.
However, it was a shortage of wood that gave
rise to the other part of Caran dAches
business. Apparently, during the war,
timber was rationed and so Caran
dAche made a reusable metal pencil
into which a lead could be inserted. In
a neat design touch, it was given the
same hexagonal prole as regular
pencils so it would not roll off drawing
boards. From this grew the prestige
writing-instrument business that goes
by the name haute criture.
Perhaps the truest indicator of Caran
dAches luxury nature is the fact that it
undertakes to repair its products, no matter how
old. I was told of a woman who went into the
Geneva store with a box of coloured pencils shed
had since childhood some shortened by use,
others missing entirely. She wanted Caran dAche
to replace the lost pieces and rearrange them as if
they were new. Selling a few pencils to replenish
an ancient box may not be great business, but
it is a source of pride to Caran dAche and, one
suspects, the rest of Switzerland, that as well as
watches handed down the generations, Geneva
is also a place where they make heirloom-quality
pencils.

carandache.com
89
G JULY 2014
Polo shirt by
John Varvatos,
145. john
varvatos.com.
Chinos by Paul
Smith, 205.
paulsmith.co.uk.
Boots, Slaters own
I recently took
boxes of clothes
out of storage and,
OH MY GOD, all
the T-shirts with
sayings on them!
A Bart Simpson
one. WHAT WAS
I THINKING?
90
JULY 2014 G
CHRISTIAN SLATER is recalling
the reaction from his standout
scene in Lars von Triers lauded
sex epic Nymphomaniac, in
which he plays the dying,
bed-ridden father of Shia
LaBeouf. In Berlin, at the lm
festival, it was delightful. Just
such a great experience, people
were so thrilled and excited.
But in New York, not so much.
They screened it at the
Museum Of Contemporary Art,
says Slater. Everyone was so
quiet and sullen. Then, after it,
I had some agent come up to me
and say, Hey man, nice shitting
scene! I mean, oh my God! Such
American abrasiveness. It was
not what I was hoping people
would take away from that!
Still, it might signal a new
direction for Slater away
from the Hollywood B-movies
that have dened the 44-year-
olds career since his early
heart-throb days in Heathers
and Pump Up The Volume,
and into European art house.
Without a doubt. Its much
more about dealing with the
moments as opposed to just
getting the job done.
Next up, another change of
pace an American indie lm,
The Adderall Diaries, starring
opposite James Franco.
New start, new style. Now
living in LA with his wife,
Brittany Lopez, Slater recently
had old boxes of clothes shipped
over from New York, so over the
next few pages we asked him to
share his sartorial evolution
with GQ. Stuart McGurk
Blazer, 940.
T-shirt, 119.
Jeans, 300. All
by John Varvatos.
johnvarvatos.com
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES DIMMOCK
STYLI NG BY JO LEVIN
How to dress
the part
Hollywood bad boy turned indie
darling Christian Slater has nally
found his sartorial niche
91
G JULY 2014
Top, 185. Chinos,
185. Both by
RRL Ralph Lauren.
ralphlauren.com.
Boots, Slaters own
Now, Im much
more TAILORED.
But I used to buy
things that literally
DIDNT FIT.
I recently found
a leather jacket
twice my size
92
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JULY 2014 G
Jacket by John Varvatos,
1,895. johnvarvatos.com.
T-shirt by James Perse,
85. jamesperse.co.uk.
Jeans by 7 For All
Mankind, 200.
7forallmankind.com.
Glasses by Paul Smith,
190. paulsmith.co.uk
After I played Clarence Worley in Hawaiian shirts [in
TRUE ROMANCE], I thought, OK, this is actually a good look for
a human. He inspired me. But its not. ITS REALLY NOT
93
Galley Bay, Antigua
condenastjohansens.com
Wolvenstraat
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Huidenstraat
GROOMING
JULY 2014 G
Double Dutch:
Viktor (left)
and Rolf;
this years
menswear
collections
(below right)
Autumn/
winter
2014
Spring/
summer
2014
EDI TED BY JESSICA PUNTER
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DUTCH FASHION designers
Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren
are famously unconventional. They
have sent models down the catwalk
wearing lighting rigs, turned beds into
dresses and most controversially
created Le Parfum: a fragrance bottled
in acons with immovable lids. Today,
the well-tailored duo remain global
leaders in style, with a popular line
of unique scents in bottles that
actually open! Welcome to the
unusual world of Viktor & Rolf...
EARLY
INSPIRATION
It was seeing
lots of perfume
advertisements
as children that
inspired us to work
in fashion. Poison
by Christian Dior,
Opium by Yves
Saint Laurent:
those early ads
are so iconic. Its a
glamorous world.
VIKTOR & ROLF
MONSIEUR
We always design for ourselves,
for our lifestyle, our needs
and formen similar to us. We
think about what we want to
wear andhow we would put it
together, so its very personal:
how to look elegant and still be
contemporary, how to look cool
without looking like a clown.
Pattern is very important. JP
LITTLE
BLACK
BOOK
We live in
Amsterdam and
work in Paris. In
Amsterdam, we
go to the Nine
Streets for nice
vintage pieces
andgood jeans.
In Paris, we love
our newagship
boutique on Rue
Saint Honor.
MODERN MUSES
We consciously dont work with celebrities for our perfumes.
Acelebrity is a personality and people have to like that personality,
whereas a model can tell a story. But we love how Rufus Wainwright
(right, centre) dresses. Its great to see how he mixes things up.
British men are very well dressed. In Amsterdam men are more
casual. Here in London you have Savile Row and the tradition of
made-to-measure you notice it in the streets. Its obvious men
everywhere are more open to fashion and a bit bolder in their
choices. And its not just clothing, its the whole idea of grooming.
SCENTS OF
THE

ABSURD
THE FRAGRANCES
We dont compose
the juice ourselves,
but each fragrance
is our creation. We
start with a name,
then we visualise
how it will smell.
We liked the word
Antidote [their
rst fragrance
for men] and the
idea of something
that would make
you immune to
everyday life, like
apotion. Its subtle,
introverted and the
more classic of the
three. Spicebomb
is moreoutspoken.
Its leathery, sexy
and very sparkly
due to the bold
pepper notes.
Spicebomb Eau
Frache isimbued
with the essence of
freshness perfect
for the summer.
Spicebomb Eau
Frache by Viktor
& Rolf, 60 for
90ml. At Selfridges.
selfridges.com
The
Nine
Streets
95
2
3
DIRECTORY
Edited by Giorgina Waltier
Sole provider
When it comes to classic
footwear design, you simply
cannot go wrong with a pair
of Cheaneys. The 128-year-
old brand is world-renowned
for its luxury British hand-
crafted shoes, and these
brogues prove that its work
is a cut above the rest.
285. cheaney.co.uk
Gin galore
Move over
whisky: theres
a new Scottish
liquor in town.
Infused with ve
Celtic botanicals,
Caorunn Scottish
gin is best served
with tonic and
a wedge of red
apple yes, apple,
not lemon. Try it.
28.49. At
waitrose.com
Tell me
about it, stud
When it comes to
shoes and bags,
next season is
allabout stud
detailing, so be
ahead of the curve
and invest in a
Versace studded
shopper. 1,600.
versace.com
FASHION

EXCLUSIVE EVENTS

GROOMING

NEWS

COMPETITIONS

WATCHES
G JULY 2014 96
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Taupe tailoring
We have now well and
truly entered wedding
season, so if youre in the
market for a summer suit
that is not your traditional
black or navy then this
single-breasted taupe
number by The Kooples
will be right up your street.
Jacket, 420. Shirt, 145.
thekooples.com
Rock revival
To accompany its heavily
Nineties-inspired main spring/
summer line, French brand
Sandro has produced a
limited-edition collection
paying tribute to the kings of
Manc rock, the Stone Roses.
80. sandro.com
Floral irtation
If you are a little daunted by
the full-oral-outt trend,
then ease into the look with
this oral-printed denim shirt
by Original Penguin. It can
easily be teamed with khaki
trousers or shorts for a casual
yet masculine approach to
the oral phenomenon.
60. originalpenguin.co.uk
Dot-to-dot
Finding the right T-shirt
or sweater to pair with
patterned shorts can
oftenbe a bit tricky, but
these navy and white
polka-dot shorts from
French Connection turn
that theory on its head.
They will look good with
just about anything.
50. frenchconnection.com
JULY 2014 G 97
ERI C WHI TACRE
.
GLOBAL CI TI ZEN + GRAMMY

AWARD-WI NNI NG COMPOSER

2
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new tumi flagship | 211 regent street, london, w1b 4nf
170 piccadilly, mayfair, london, w1j 9ej
265 canary wharf shopping centre, cabot sq., london, e14 4qt
TUMI . COM
JULY 2014 G
WHERE HOTELS are concerned, its really all about the check-in. Always
has been, probably always will be. Getting in to a hotel is exactly the
same as getting out of a restaurant. You want it done quickly, efciently,
and with as little fuss as possible, and with no fannying around with
credit cards or quizzical looks about lost bookings.
Well, the Mandarin Oriental in Paris has made getting in to its hotel
something of an art. And what an art.
We arrived at Gare Du Nord, fresh from the train (actually, The
Train, the greatest train in the world: I still think that Eurostar is like a
Fifties idea of the future), jumped in a taxi and headed over to Rue St

Honor, in that part of Paris where expensive chocolate houses nestle
next to luxury clothing emporiums in a state of perfect co-dependence.

HOW TO CHECK IN
You can tell all you need to know by the way a
hotel welcomes you and, nds Dylan Jones,
the Mandarin Oriental Paris gives the masterclass
EDI TED BY BILL PRINCE
Entrance policy:
The Mandarin Oriental
Paris main lobby helps
tomake checking
inawork ofart
99
G JULY 2014
A deluxe double
room at the
Marbella Club
is available from
300 per room
per night including
breakfast, based on
two people sharing.
(marbellaclub.com).
British Airways
operates a service
from London City to
Malaga six times a
week from 151.19
(hand baggage
only) including
taxes, fees and
carrier charges. To
book or for more
information visit
ba.com/malaga or
call 0844 493 0787.

As we piled out of the cab, anticipating a 20-minute
check-in and a lot of French puff, our bags were deftly picked
up by the door staff, who handed us a ticket and promptly
disappeared. No one hung around looking put-upon and
snifng for a tip. In fact it was as though our luggage had
just been stolen.
Then we walked in, and were greeted by name before we
reached check-in, just ushered to a part of the lobby that
looked as though it was reserved for royalty or Kardashians
but was in reality reserved for anybody. Then, having been
asked to briey sit down, were then whisked upstairs to our
suite, tout de suite. I gave the lovely ladies my credit card,
they gave us glasses of champagne fair trade, I reckoned
and then they were gone... whisking themselves away as if by
magic, leaving us to the mini bar, the movies and the in-room
dining. From soup to nuts the whole process took less than
ten minutes. Great hotel.
Yes, the Mandarin Oriental is the perfect place from which
to explore the cultural, the epicurean or the top-tier retail
aspect of Paris, but it is also the perfect place to base your-
self if you want luxury and service without any of the fuss.
Im going back next month, just to see if I can get to my
room in less than ve minutes. And, you know what, I bet I
can. Seriously great hotel.
Rates at Mandarin Oriental Paris start from 842 per night
on a B&B basis. Eurostar operates a service from London St
Pancras International to Paris from 69 return. eurostar.com
Mandarin Oriental, 251 Rue Saint Honor, 75001 Paris, France. +33 1 70 98 78 88, mandarinoriental.com/paris
Crowning glory:
The sooner you
traverse the
check-in desk, the
sooner you can
enjoy the hotels
Royale suite
LA COSTA COSMOPOLITA
A few years ago, the Marbella
Club appeared to be in a funk:
the beautiful people had
pushed of to Ibiza, Tulum,
Punta Del Este and beyond,
leaving this quintessential
jet-set stopover sorely
lackingin the promised
playboys of yesteryear.
But then the Arab Spring
encouraged the regions more
committed roister-doisters to
rediscover this stretch of the
Costa Del Sol, particularly the
gold mile of highway that
abuts the northerly edge
oftheMarbella Clubs land.
Suddenly Marbella and its
fabled club was hot again.
Which is tting because the
Marbella Club, opened in 1954,
was established by a similarly
dispossessed gure: Prince
Alfonso von Hohenlohe, the
scion of a noble European
family, who, with his father,
Max, bought the land as a
hedge against the changing
mood of central European
politics. His father may have
fallen in love with the bucolic
appeal of pre-high-rise Costa
Del Sol, but it was Alfonso
whocreated the legend of
theMarbella Club as one
ofEuropes most exclusive
resorts, one that endures into
its seventh decade this year
creating both a redoubtfrom
the more earthy attractions of
nearby Puerto Banus, and
avenue as refreshingly
cosmopolitan as anything
youd nd in Saint-Tropez
orMonte Carlo.
The Clubs reputation for
high-own fun was forged in
earnest during Prince Alfonsos
tenure when guests gained
areputation for eschewing
theglorious weather by day
toenjoy the rather more
memorable moments that
came at night and its one
thats somehow survived the
lockdown of new-millennial
mores. Granted, more time is
maybe spent around the pool
these days, but a late dinner
atthe Grill remains a proper
tradition made more special
by its open-air setting.
And if the Marbella Club
created its own weather
system of international
travellers, it also reaped the
whirlwind: many stayed on,
building villas along the
coastline. In the Seventies
came the 1,000-berth marina
of Puerto Banus, the starting
point for any over-water
activity, including private
charters. Here the trick is to go
large and sail up the coast to
Nikki Beach, the pan-cultural
concoction of banging beach
party, all-day dining and
resortwear runway show.
Otherwise, the MC Beach
bar ofers much the same
surroundings without the
branded clamour. By far the
best feature of the MC is its
international bufet, served
each day at the pool, that runs
long after lunchhour, thus
segueing efortlessly into
aspot of thalassotherapy
attheseawater-fed spa, an
early evening cocktail and the
diningtable beyond.
The denizens of this part of
the Spanish coast may have
changed, but the Marbella
Club enters its 61st year with
its groove back. The new six-
bedroom beach-front villa
suggests the big guns of
global wealth are touching
down once again. Guests have
long had access to its nearby
golf course, and theres now a
ski lodge in the Sierra Nevada.
Still, the vibe remains the
same: laid-back, louche-lite
ifyou like, but everything done
with comfort and conviviality
in mind. Elegant simplicity is
how Prince Alfonso described
it, a term area general
manager Franck Sibille is
noless astute at articulating.
Checking out, I saw my fellow
guests say their farewells to
the staf as if to their own
family. Which, in a sense, isnt
so far from the truth. BP
Club class: Lounge louchely at the Marbella Clubs Villa Del Mar
100
TRAVEL
The jetty set: Villa
DelMar presides
overthe Marbella
Clubs famous
goldenbeach
Marbella and its fabled club are hot again
JULY 2014 G
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The RESTAURANT The BAR The HOTEL The CLUB The PUB The NEIGHBOURHOOD The DRINK The BOOK The BOTTLE
EDI TED BY BILL PRINCE &
PAUL HENDERSON
Back in February of this year, Cornish newspaper the West Briton described the storm damage suffered
by St Mawes as carnage. With the re brigade cordoning off the area, homes wrecked and hotels
ruined, residents were left wondering if the little harbour would ever be the same again.
Well, GQ Taste is pleased to report that not only has St Mawes recovered, it is currently the place to visit
in Cornwall. With world-class accommodation, beautiful hotels, a Michelin-starred restaurant and a couple
of unmissable traditional pubs, the issue for St Mawes is no longer: Can things get any worse? The question
now is: Does it get any better than this? PH
Rise of the fallen: Far from its
storm-torn state, StMawes has
been resurrected as Cornwalls
new hot spot. Head to the
Hidden Hut for a beach feast
(far right) or enjoy a
seaview from the
Dreamcatchers house
(bottom right)
St Mawes the merrier
103
G JULY 2014
T A S T E
St Mawes & Roseland
Train
London Paddington
to Truro, from
39.95 (one way)
Time
From four hours
18 minutes.
rstgreatwestern.co.uk
Taxi
From Truro to
St Mawes, from 40
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
A sea view from the Dreamcatchers
St Mawes retreat (above); the
entrance to Idle Rocks (below)
The Watch House
exterior (above)
and its chef and
owner Will
Gould(left)
The Driftwood restaurants llet
of red ruby beef (above); the
Nare hotel entrance (below)
The Hidden Hut
Hotel Tresantons cosy
bar-snug(top) and its
terracerestaurant (above)
St Mawes go-to breakfast spot,
Caf Chandlers (above); the exterior
of the Victory Inn (below)
S
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2
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4
5
6
7
St Mawes
9
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10
For the ultimate
in luxury, style,
sophistication and
indulgence, book yourself a long
weekend (or longer) in one of
Amanda Selbys (1) St Mawes
Retreats (0800 088 6622,
stmawesretreats.co.uk). With four
spectacular holiday homes in the
town, all with superb views of
the harbour and Falmouth bay,
once youve unpacked you wont
want to leave. Take advantage
of Amandas concierge service
(she can source a private chef,
massage therapists, picnic
hampers, restaurant bookings,
child care etc), and you wont
have to.
If Amanda cant accommodate
you, St Mawes has plenty of
options for the discerning
traveller. As well as the (2) Idle
Rocks hotel (Harbourside. 01326
270270, idlerocks.com), there
is Olga Polizzis (3) Hotel
Tresanton (27 Lower Castle
Road. 01326 270055, tresanton.
com) that remains the place to
stay for romantic relaxation.
Built from a collection of small
cottages, the rooms creep up the
steep sloping banks of the town
making it a unique and charming
location. Make sure you book
dinner on the terrace and leave
everything to the brilliantly
attentive staff.
To savour the St Mawes
atmosphere, grab a morning
croissant and cappuccino from
(4) Caf Chandlers (1 The Quay.
01326 270998, cafechandlers.
co.uk), a pint of Betty Stogs in
the cosy (5) Victory Inn (Victory
Steps. 01326 270 324, victory-
inn.co.uk), or sit outside the
(6)Rising Sun (The Square.
01326 270233, risingsun
stmawes.co.uk) and enjoy the
harbour. And denitely visit the
There are a few painfully unavoidable truths to be observed when it comes to
pickingout Cornwalls must-visit destinations. Padstow is too obvious. St Ives is
overdeveloped. Rock is too Tatler-on-Sea. And Newquay is a Club 18-30 Gulag for
Asbos. Thank Saint Piran then for the gift that is the coastal town of St Mawes and
itsrural extension the Roseland Peninsula.
(7) Watch House (1 The Square.
01326 270038, watchhouse
stmawes.co.uk). Owner and chef
Will Gould is balancing London
style with local sensitivity,
serving big avours (try the
mussel pot cooked with cream
and cider) or seaside staples (sh
and chips what else?).
Beyond St Mawes and just up
the headland is Roseland, home
to the (8) Driftwood restaurant
(Rosevine. 01872 580644,
driftwoodhotel.co.uk). Chris Eden
is the rst Cornishman to receive
a Michelin star for his seasonally
focused and inventive cooking.
Theres much to recommend, but
GQ Taste still wakes up drooling
over the crisp lamb belly.
Further up the coast at Carne
Beach is the old-school (9) Nare
Hotel and its Quarterdeck
restaurant (Veryan-in-Roseland.
01872 501111, narehotel.co.uk).
With views over Gerrans Bay, it
is a perfect spot for lunch or
dinner. Whenever you go, order
the grilled Portloe lobster.
Finally, there is the (10)
Hidden Hut (Porthcurnick Beach.
hiddenhut.co.uk). Set in an old,
rustic cabin on the cliff, go there
for coffee and home-made
cake or, better yet, book
tickets for one of their
feast nights. Take
your own alcohol,
squeeze onto
one of the huge
picnic tables,
and enjoy
owners Jemma
and Simons
steaming pots
of Goan seafood
curry, jambalaya
or bouillabaisse as
the sun sets. Like St
Mawes itself, it really
is magical. PH
104
T A S T E
JULY 2014 G
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In newly high-rise London, no self-respecting
cocktail should be served up without a
sideorder of panorama. The view from
Skylounge in Tower Hill, a now-triing 12
oors up, may not be as vertiginous as some, but
itsstill spectacular especially at sunset. Why
gazeinwards at the rather hotel bar (it sits atop
aDoubleTree by Hilton, and it shows) when you
cantake to the terrace to take in Tower Bridge, the
Gherkin and the Shard, with a cool Kraken Manhattan
to hand? After all, the Cuervos Cantina south-side
rooftop pop-up, administering Mariachi music
andMexican mouth-waterers such as burritos and
jalapeo poppers, is now in full swing... Jennifer Bradly
Skylounge
O 12th oor, DoubleTree by Hilton hotel, 7 Pepys Street,
London EC3. 020 7709 1043, doubletree3.hilton.com
THE BAR
THE BOTTLE
Chteau Marsyas Red 2009,
34. Chteau Marsyas White
2011, 23.60. Both at Wine
Story. winestory.co.uk
Move beyond the
serried ranks of
French rst growths,
Italian super
Tuscans and sundry New
World wunderkinds, and wine
lists tend to struggle; more
often than not youll be
confronted with a single
entrant on behalf of Lebanon,
and itll be its redoubtable
Chteau Musar.
Now, two relatively new
domaines are becoming a
xture on some of the more
imaginative lists: Chteau
Marsyas, from the Bekaa
Valley, and its Syrian sibling,
Domaine de Bargylus.
Both are produced by
Sandro and Karim Saad,
sonsof Syrian emigrees to
Lebanon in the Sixties, who
have used their fathers good
fortune (a business portfolio
built around real estate and
nance) to bring modern
wine-making techniques to
one of the rst places on
earth to cultivate vines.
Chteau Marsyas was rst
planted in 1998, and was
ready to produce its rst
vintage eight years later. The
2009 red is powerful (15 per
cent) with ample fruit and rm
tannins, thanks to the use of
Rhne and Bordeaux grape
varieties. The Chardonnay/
Sauvignon Blanc blend is
similarly mouth-lling, with a
welcome burst of minerality.
Over the border in Syria
isChteau Marsyas sister
property, Domaine de
Bargylus, currently the
countrys only wine export.
The Bargylus vineyard sits
900 metres up a mountain,
producing wines of similar
power but with added zest.
And despite the current
difculties in producing
andexporting Syrian wine,
these too are available
ondiscerning lists: Jol
Robuchon and Marcus
Wareing at the Berkeley
among them. BP
So its open air?
Well, the terrace is. The rest
of the place has been
designed like a Latin
American beach
party surfboards,
plantation shutters,
capoeira dancers
by serial theme-club
proprietors Charlie
Gilkes and Duncan
Stirling (the men behind
Bunga Bunga, London SW11).
Were imagining
noveltyserves.
You imagine right the Leblon
sharer, for instance, comes
in a miniature beach shack.
Why Latin America?
To chime with the World
Cup. Theyll screen games
in the bar over the course
of the competition.
Whats the music policy?
Bossa nova, and then a blend
of Brazilian electronica and
Latin house with unadulterated
pop, courtesy of resident DJ,
Ollie Twist. Charlie Burton
Cocobananas
Open 10.30pm2.30am FridaySaturday. 101 Howie Street, London SW11.
020 7590 3603, cocobananas-london.com
THE CLUB
In a country where almost every nightclub is indoors (for obvious
reasons), Londons new Brazilian beach shack Cocobananas
is a welcome summer evening option.
Carnival Beach shack Brazil World Cup Latin music Cocobananas
+ =
Club class: The science of going out...
X
Crash and burn: Sit back, soak up the view and sip
aSkylounge Caipirinha On Fire cocktail with two
ounces of Cachaa, lime, sugar and fresh chillies
Open 11am-2am
Monday-Saturday,
11am-1am Sunday.
105
G JULY 2014
But, situated on the top of the nearby Emigr Studios,
this is no outdoor afterthought rather, with rooftop
seating for more than 200 (including deckchairs and,
yes, an open-air cocktail bar) its one of the largest
outdoor restaurant spaces in London. Boasting all of
Lardos menu highlights include the Venetian lambs
kidneys, the spaghetti with sardines and chilli, and the
titular lardo on pizza the executive chef Damian
Currie will also offer a substantial barbecue selection.
Even better, if you just want to pop in for a drink then
eat at the nearby London Fields, Coppa will have a
cart down there too, serving spiedini (Italian skewers),
along with a selection of salamis and cheeses, meaning
the sun is forever on their (pigs) backs. Stuart McGurk
Ham Yard
THE HOTEL
Hoteliers Kit and
Tim Kemp are, at
heart, masterful
property developers
whove hewn some hugely
successful landmark lodgings
from otherwise unpromising
venues such as Londons
Soho Hotel, built on the site
of an old NCP car park. For
their eighth project, theyve
taken on and over Ham
Yard, on the southeast corner
of Soho, opening up a
thoroughfare closed since the
Sixties between Denman
Street and Great Windmill
Street. In doing so, they have
created a new boutique-lined
cut-through infront of whats
certain tobecome their latest
out-of-the-box hit.
Ham Yard (what else?)
features their rst
Soholistic spa, a 176-seater
theatre, an original Fifties
bowling alley (own in from
Texas) as well as the groups
renowned own-brand dining
opportunities on a usefully
epic scale. Once again, rooms
and suites have all been
designed by Kit Kemp and,
echoing the Meadow Suite
attheir New York property
onCrosby Street, theres a
rooftop garden for alfresco
fun. Consider it your next
must-check-in. BP
WHAT TO ORDER
Tailor-made Martinis
and home-made ingredients,
including syrups and even its
own tonic water, are the order
of the day at Ham Yard Bar.
Were making ours
a Ward 8.
Rooms from 310. Ham
Yard,1 Ham Yard, London
W1. 020 3642 2000,
rmdalehotels.com
Coppa
Hothouse Rooftop, Martello Street,London E8.
020 8985 2683, coppalondon.co.uk
THE RESTAURANT
The little-brother offshoot from east Londons much-loved Italian Lardo the
name comes from the highly prized back fat of a pig, which sounds horrible
but is actually great Coppa Bar & BBQ is the mayy of their operation,
opening for the summer months only.
106
T A S T E
JULY 2014 G
The setup: A waterside Spanish
spotthat unlike so many tapas
restaurants manages to resist
theurge to fryabsolutely
everythingin sight. This fact
makesit almost by default one
ofthebest in town.
Eat this: Foie gras crema catalana
with cherries, serrano ham and
brioche (10)
Drink that: Negre 2010 Garnacha
Tinta, Scala Dei (40 for a bottle).
Bravas
Saint Katharine Docks, London E1.
bravastapas.co.uk
The setup: Accessed through
oor-to-ceiling doors of the main
dining room, this St Jamess gem
shares the smallest public square
inLondon with Britains oldest wine
merchant, Berry Bros & Rudd.
Eat this: Start with chef Andrew
Woodfords signature oeuf en
gele(9) and follow by daube of
boeuf(23.50).
Drink that: One from next door
Chteau Cissac, Haut Mdoc (62.50).
Boulestin
5 St Jamess Street, London SW1.
boulestin.com
The setup: Not ofcially alfresco,
but housed in the Mediterranean
biome of the Eden Project, this is
asclose as youll get to guaranteed
warm-weather dining this side
ofSardinia.
Eat this: Chargrilled langoustines
inCornish Pastis (7.50), then
theSpanish paella made with
Cornishseafood (9).
Drink that: Korev Cornish lager
(3.90).
Eden Project,
Bodelva, Cornwall PL24.
edenproject.com
Forget the passport... Three new alfresco eating spots in England
THE ROUNDUP
COPPA BAR AND BBQ
Open: Friday from
5pm, Saturday and
Sunday from 12pm.
Seating: More than 200.
Interiors: The capannas
were each painted by
local Hackney artists.
Price: Starter, main
and dessert for around
26 per head.
Drinks cost extra.
Suitable for: Vegetarians.
Raise the roof: The
open-air southern
Italian Coppa Bar
&BBQ, now
servingcream and
pistachio cannoli
and dried chillis
(bottom left)
The Square & Compass
O The Square & Compass, Worth Matravers, Dorset BH19.
01929 439229, squareandcompasspub.co.uk
THE PUB
A walkers pub that plays well with
folkies and real-ale acionados alike
(and trust us, theyre not one and the
same), the Square & Compass, still in the
same family after more than 100 years, is the
sort of place you read about in racy period
ction and never expect to nd yourself.
Well, its easy: get yourself to
Swanage and turn right, head
out to the promontory that
holds Corfe Castle and youre
there... And you might never
leave: the beer garden looks out
from its raised bluff towards the
channel and when GQ Taste was
there the folk-als were playing
up a storm, while the queue
for the cask ales, home-made
lemonade and real cider gave the
whole place the vibe of a bucolic
nano-festival. The food offer is
limited, but its not about ne
dining; its about taking in the
Dorset air, then making your
way down to the beach. BP
Nature of the yeast: The Square
&Compass interior and garden,
analeacionados dream
107
G JULY 2014
THE BARTENDER
Simone Caporale
at the Artesian in
theLanghamhotel
O 1C Portland Place, London W1. 020 7636 1000, artesian-bar.co.uk
Describe
your bar:
Artesian is
ave-star
hotel bar that, in
thepast few years,
hasdismissed the
preconception of
whata luxury hotel
bar should be. We
areelegant but also
fun. We also strive to
continuously innovate
and push boundaries,
bringing elements of
the bizarre and
unusual.
What is the key to
making a great
cocktail? It must be
delicious, beautiful,
and look natural. It
must also evoke
apersonal feeling,
either through the
garnish, or aroma
ortaste... a drink that
canstimulate all ve
senses is a good drink.
What is your
bar-tending
philosophy? A
modern bartender
shouldnt just focus
onthe drinks, serves,
combinations of
avours and so
on.Cocktails are
essentially just the
excuse people use to
go to bars... so we also
sell feelings, emotions
and a memorable
environment. PH
Method
Pour all of the ingredients
and the shiso leaves into
a glass. Add the swizzle
stick and crushed ice
andswizzle it for ten
seconds. Add more
crushed ice to top the
glass, insert straws, and
be as playful as you wish
with garnishes (I like an
alligator head and Barbie
doll sombrero in mine).
Ingredients
O 50ml Zacapa 23 rum
O 30ml Falernum
O 20ml lime juice
O 5ml Isolabella
sambuca
O Float of Angostura
bitter
O 3 shiso leaves
Try Simones Rum Swizzle
Life cant really be said to have
begun until youve sat down at
an edge-of-town churrascaria
and eaten, nose-to-tail, from a
menu thats been scribbled on a drawing of a cow. Failing
that, this timely account of Brazilian food culture pulled
together by a young Amazonian chef and featuring a
country-wide selection of other chefs creations gives you
the next-best story of this vast, extraordinarily bio-diverse
country in more than 100 elegant, healthy and inspiring
recipes. Meat has its place, of
course, but so does cassava
(an indigenous our) corn
meal and plenty of
moquecas a
traditional stew.
With Brazil
celebrating its
other great love
this month,
what better
reason could
there be to
try out its
tuck? BP
O Brazilian
Food by Thiago
Castanho,
(Mitchell
Beazley, 30).
octopusbooks.
co.uk
THE BOOK
Brazilian Food
by Thiago Castanho
T A S T E
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Claw deal:
Brazilian-style
dressed crab, a
Thiago Castanho
(below) speciality
108
I nt er i or s Food Reci pes Out door s paces Tr avel
HOUSEANDGARDEN.CO.UK
FOLLOW US
ANDREW MONTGOMERY
I ns p i r at i o n f o r
y o ur h o me v i s i t
t h e n e w we bs i t e
JULY 2014 G
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111
G JULY 2014
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WHAT I WEAR
Chinos
Good chinos are my go-to on a summers
day; a piece you can dress down or up
with a jacket and shoes. This Slowear
Incotex pair is a great starting point.
215. slowear.com
Polo shirt
Orlebar Browns Harris is a style I wear
every single day, in different colours.
Its our core polo, and the perfect
everyday shirt for me.
115. orlebarbrown.co.uk
Glasses
Im blind as a bat, one of those people
who has to wave a menu backwards and
forwards to read it. I take these Tom Ford
optical glasses with me at all times.
205. tomford.com
Watch
The Panerai Luminor Power Reserve in
stainless steel is my only form of jewellery.
I dont like a watch thats too small.
6,000. panerai.com
Orlebar Brown founder
and better-swimwear-
for-men campaigner
Adam Brown details
hiskey wardrobe pieces
Belt
This vintage Ralph Lauren belt is a real
favourite. I bought it on Madison Avenue
20 years ago. Its a signature piece I love.
ralphlauren.com
WI SH LI ST
Trainers
I like taking fabrics and putting them into
another world, like the vulcanised cotton
in these Converse x Hancock sneakers.
170. At End. endclothing.co.uk
WI SH LI ST
Handkerchief
The Turnbull & Asser Mid-Life Crisis
handkerchief is perfectly named. I like the
idea of pulling something out of your
pocket that makes you laugh.
65. turnbullandasser.co.uk
WI SH LI ST
Bag
I travel a lot and I love the sensibility of Globe-
Trotter the name, the image it conjures up in
my head and the heritage. This Jet ight bag
ticks all the boxes. 950. globe-trotter.com
WI SH LI ST
Jacket
Suede is not a fabric I can wear without it
getting lthy in seconds, so this brown Rake
ight jacket is a real indulgence. Its very Paul
Newman and has a timeless quality, which I
buy into. 1,580. rakestyle.com
Shoes
I really like the t of Mr Hares shoes. I bought
this monk-strap pair about six weeks ago and
theyre proving to be one of the things I pick out
every morning. 420. mrhare.com
112
Available in and specially appointed salons. www.labelm.com 0870 770 8080
@ labelmUK /labelmUK /UKlabelm /labelmUK /labelm
JULY 2014 G
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E
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F
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MAILER AWARD
About one mile north of Sunset Boulevard, in the same crumbling foot-
hills as the Hollywood sign, theres a cluster of cream and mint green
bungalows surrounded by bushes and bell-shaped owers hanging
hot and wet and pink in the California haze. If you head further into
this atmosphere of fog and sun youll come across the Writers Villa,
a sprawling hacienda overlooking the grey swirls and swoops and
junctions of Los Angeles, and the snow-capped San Gabriel moun-
tains beyond them.
The Writers Villa isnt all-out Hollywood kooky but it is the sort
of place artistes come to get away from it all and indulge in some
corrosive self-examination. Johnny K Lewis was 28 when he
In 2012, bit-part actor Johnny Lewis landed
the starring role in a real-life Hollywood
murder case. Years before, Maia Jenkins
met him on the backpacker trail in Laos.
Her winning entry for the fth annual GQ
writing award vividly recalls that time and
pieces together his tragic trajectory
To The Weakness Of Others BY MAIA JENKINS
NORMAN MAILER
Student Writing Award 2013 Winner
Dead famous:
How an actor
in thehalf-light
of Hollywood
celebrity turned
out to have the
makings of a
murderer
Llooking
back,I
wasntreally
surprised
bythe way
Johnny
endedup...
115
C
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A
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JULY 2014 G
MAILER AWARD
died here. His landlady, Catherine Davis, was 81 when he killed her.
For several years she had offered out the rambling Spanish home
as a retreat for creative people. According to its website the prop-
erty has enjoyed a colourful, Bohemian history and on the morning
of 26 September 2012 Lewis beat and strangled Davis in the living
room before falling to his death from one of its many rooftop patios.
To understand how all this happened it helps to think about Johnny
K Lewis: who he was and where he came from. A native of Los
Angeles, he was brought up in the church of Scientology. His father,
Michael, worked at the Valley Life Improvement Center: a counselling
service offering hands-on help with your life! through dianetics and
Scientologist practice. As a child Lewis starred in many Scientology
training videos, one of which was co-written by the churchs founder,
L Ron Hubbard, and his father.
After this early half-fame Lewis threw himself into the fray and
ash of real acting but emerged as a faulty product of the Hollywood
machine short-circuited by its appetite for perpetual success. His
movie career faltered after bit parts in Alien vs. Predator: Requiem
and Disney tween Hilary Duffs dud Raise Your Voice but he had fared
better as a TV star. The few reports of his death said he would be best
remembered for playing Kip Half Sack Epps in the FX series Sons
Of Anarchy. However, as the grislier details of the incident started to
emerge, it became clear that Lewis, like many LA kid casualties, would
be remembered as much for the way he died as for the way he lived.
My friend sent me an email. Is this Johnny? she wrote under a
link to an E! News piece. I gave it a quick scan.
I just cant believe this, I wrote back, because youre supposed
to say things like that when someone you know kills themselves
or someone else, but looking back over the time we spent together
I wasnt really surprised by the way Johnny ended up and I read the
piece with a sort of vague but horrible faith in every word.
W
hen I rst saw Laos I was 19 and it was the evening.
I got off the slow boat from Thailand down the Mekong
at the Luang Prabang river bank and the air smelled
of red dust and something about the silence and long
shadows told me it was good to be in my skin, and that this feeling of
difference ought to be enjoyed like angst, or ennui, or rst love. Later
on at the Q Bar they would play the Beatles song that goes Well,
you know, we all want to change the world, and I would ask myself
if I did. The thing is when Id walked through Phnom Penh or Ho Chi
Minh City, past the Hilton hotels and children selling bootleg Hunter S
Thompson novels from straw baskets, I had to remind myself that this
was where, a few decades ago, the Khmer Rouge had killed millions;
where the Viet Cong had fought off the Americans. Laos, in contrast,
seemed calm and uncharted. The lights went off at eleven every night
and the only place open was a bowling alley serving noodles and beer
and cigarettes in red, white and blue striped boxes. It was still light
and we were on our rst drink when Johnny asked if he could join
us. We said yes.
Im an actor. Im on an extended vacation from the TV show Im
shooting, he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
So right now Im writing the great American novel. As the night
wore on we tried to match the pitch of his conviction; we wanted to
see the world, help people, go to university, study what we loved, and
above all have fun. We just wanted to have fun. He bought shots of
lao-lao and told ghost stories with a lighter in front of his face when
the electricity cut out. Later on, between drinks and wobbly strikes
on the bowling alley, he took my hand and recited bits of Lolita and
George Orwell.
What are your tattoos of? I asked him.
He rolled up his shirt sleeves, revealing a st-sized nautical star on
each shoulder.
These right here are my moral compass. They keep me on the path
Im meant to be on, he said grandly (he had a way of waving his
hand and icking off his cigarette ash at the same time which looked
very grand). It doesnt matter though, worlds gonna end in 2012.
We all laughed.
I decided I liked Johnny. I was 19 and I liked to think of myself as
comfortable with people who lived outside conventional moral bound-
aries: wrong and right were nothing compared to boring and excit-
ing; my heroes were Edie Sedgwick, Janis Joplin and Sylvia Plath. It
is only the really young the ones with time on their hands who
can admire such a talent for throwing life away.
Back at Johnnys hotel we played drinking games on the balcony
while he smoked rolled-up strips of a brochure for the Kuang Si
Waterfalls.
Never have I ever taken class-A drugs.
A few people, including Johnny, took a shot.
Never have I ever had sex in a church.
Does a temple in Japan count? Johnny asked.
No! With who? I screamed.
Yes. My ex-girlfriend. OK, next question.
Never have I ever slept with a celebrity.
Johnny smiled tightly, the glass still half full in his unmoving hands.
N
arconon International was founded in 1966 as a Scientology
front group offering drug rehabilitation programmes based
on Hubbards Fundamentals Of Thought. Tom Cruise has
called it the only successful drug rehabilitation program
in the world.
As a patient on their New Life Program, Lewis spent months attempt-
ing to loosen the grip that hallucinogenic drugs and alcohol had taken
on his life.
Before all that, in what seems to have been a brief episode of hap-
piness in a general drama of pain, Lewis dated pop star Katy Perry.
Once she hit mega celebrity he was dropped but her 2010 hit The One
That Got Away is about their time together: In another life I would
be your girl, she sings. Wed keep all our promises, be us against the
world. In an uncanny display of aesthetic premonition, the songs
music video shows Perry as an old woman returning to the cliff where
her rst love crashed spectacularly to his death in the California hills.
We eventually moved on to Vang Vieng where we spent all day in
cafs lying down, picking at fried rice and watching reruns of Friends
or Family Guy; distant American things. There was nothing else to do.
I listened to conversations at breakfast. I expected to feel like this
was the rst time Id really been awake. Wild elephants descended
through the fog on the mountains across the river. A blond boy in a
headscarf put out a cigarette in a plate of scrambled eggs. But Im so
tired I kinda just want to go back to bed, he said.
After a week or so I decided to nd a job. People had mentioned a
Canadian guy employing girls to promote a bar in exchange for money,
food and lao-lao so I walked down there one afternoon and asked if
he needed any extra help.
Well sure, he said, looking me up and down. You wanna beer?
He stood behind the counter pointing a fat felt-tip at a girl in a bikini.
I asked what he was looking for. These four Swedish chicks came in
yesterday and oh my God, he said, pulling the lid off with his teeth.
One of them was gold. Just so hot. Like out of this world, like four
perfect-titted porn stars, you know? Pull down your top a little more,
baby. He drew a Q on the girls left breast, and a Bar on the other.
Do you want one on your belly? She nodded. He licked his lips,
Between drinks, he took
my hand and recited
Lolita and George Orwell
117
G JULY 2014
MAILER AWARD
drew another green Q on her midriff. Its good for business this
stuff, you know? Hot drunk girls are the same wherever you go and
wherever theres a hot drunk girl therell be a guy spending money
to get her hotter and drunker.
In the time I worked there I sometimes thought about asking cus-
tomers if theyd met Johnny if they thought there was something
odd about him but it didnt seem like the kind of place where people
had much of a memory for faces.

F
or a couple of days you could still make out a blood stain on
the driveway of the Writers Villa. A handful of paparazzi and
journalists gathered to try and make sense of what went on
that morning.
There had been screams. There had been an attack on a neighbour
in the minutes before Lewis fell to his death. There had been a cat
Davis tabby, Jessie torn apart and discarded in the Villas en suite.
There had been previous charges for assault, battery, burglary. There
had been a custody battle over a baby daughter.
Reactions to Lewiss death veered wildly between damnation and
the disbelieving grief that always follows the loss of a young life. His
actions were inexcusable. He wasnt himself. He lost his way.
His alternative sentencing specialist Wendy Feldman knew how dif-
cult it was to draw the line between right and wrong: Whats the
truth and whats not I dont know, she wrote on her blog. When he
talked about his daughter, he talked about love.
I fell in to a burning ring of re. I went down, down, down, and the
ames went higher. The music grew louder, approaching us fast from
the dark end of the road. And it burns, burns, burns. Trumpets thun-
dered as the bike zipped past.
Johnny!
Brakes screamed. He circled back down the road towards the caf
where we sat drinking iced lao-lao.
Well, hey guys, he said, stepping down from his bike and turning
off the radio in the front basket. Mind if I join you?
He took a seat opposite me. This caf was small and hot and the
uorescent light hurt my eyes and I was sober and didnt know the
extent to which he remembered our conversations in the bowling alley.
I forgot to mention last time we met, he said. Joseph Conrad.
Joseph Conrad has been a real big inspiration for me.
I nodded cautiously. Heart Of Darkness?
He smiled. I thought about the Japanese temple, the great American
novel, the stars, and suddenly felt very young and very transparent.
Your strength, he said in that sharp, anglicised way Americans do
when quoting Literature with a capital L, is just an accident owed
to the weakness of others. He lit a cigarette. I said nothing. This
line right here means Im going to die young, he said, holding out his
palm to me and pointing. So I guess thats pretty soon.
In the weeks after we left Johnny that line seemed to come up a
lot. One morning after a night in Phnom Penhs Heart Of Darkness
club I woke up in the same bed as a prostitute my friend (a medical
student I eventually lost touch with) had brought back to the room
we all shared. I didnt pay her, he explained over breakfast. But she
said you looked like her daughter, he nodded at me. We all laughed
but I cant remember why.
When I got to university no one was shocked by anything. That was
it: the arched eyebrow, an entire generation committed to the princi-
ple that everything was basically bad to the bone.
Fellow gap-year kids returning with deep tans, Buddha pendants
and silk bed throws brought back a sheepish shroud of irony with
them too. I quickly realised that everyone had been to the same Green
Mango guest house and ridden the same elephants through the same
jungles past the same waterfalls. We laughed about it. The joke lay in
the repetition, the absurd draining of meaning that comes from doing
something over and over and over again.
After graduating we looked for something important. I just dont
know what to do with my life! we screamed at each other, as if life
were some burdensome object placed in our hands against our will.
Sometimes Id look Johnny up, wonder if he ever wrote his Great
American Novel, if he was still chasing that dream around the jungles
of Southeast Asia, guided by certain crooked stars and the reckless
conviction that seemed to have abandoned everyone back home.

S
o youre telling me that I cannot hire a car in your shop, said
Johnny, cracking his knuckles.
The store owner nodded. Correct, sir.
Even though I have all of the relevant documentation and
am of the correct age and willing to pay you double the usual hiring
price for a car of this kind?
The owner nodded again. It is a dangerous place, sir, the one you
want to go to. He pointed to a larger map on the wall behind us. We
turned around to look. The jungle there is a very, very dangerous
place, he shook his head. Its not good for you and your... he looked
at me and my friend in our halter-neck tops and Laotian pyjama pants.
He coughed. Girls.
Thats the point though! Johnny leapt up and walked over to the
map. Ive been here, he stabbed at Vang Vieng. Here and here, and
the urbanised constellations of Vientiane and Pakse. And every other
tourist trap that everyone else has been to and now Im stuck in this
place when I really need to be right here. He ground his nger into
the dark jungle shaded around Luang Prabang.
The owner shrugged. You cant. It is dangerous for the car and
for you. You can hire it to drive around the town but nothing more.
Anybody can do that! Whats the point? This is bullshit. Im done
here. Johnny walked out, leaving the door swinging behind him. We
cleared our throats and gathered up his passport, wallet and drivers
licence. The owner didnt sit down or take his eyes off us until we
were a few doors away.
We caught up with Johnny at the end of the road. I dont know
where you girls are headed, he said, his skin slick with sweat in the
vertical light of high noon. He kicked at the dust piles, spat against
their clouds. But Im getting out of this place. Im going. Im gone.

W
hen I nished reading the article I found I was no longer
interested in whether Johnny was bad or good, high or
sober, guilty or innocent. I was only interested in what
remained of him a couple of pop songs, some bad lms,
a few cleanly articulated roles in slick TV shows. Ghosts, mostly.
It can be hard to remember why you liked the things you did but
there was something about Johnny that made me think hed have been
better if the crucial points of his life had been plotted a little differently.
He probably wasnt a good person, or even one of the better ones, but
for those few weeks in Laos he seemed like the rst to capture some
shiny, ever-moving truth that had, until then, escaped us all.
I trawled the internet for more (theres always more) and found his
fathers statement: Johnny was the bright star of our lives. We always
looked up to him, and now I guess well have to look up a little higher.
Thats all I can tell you.
Michael Lewis lost his son long before he spoke those words; just
another one of the million little losses any parent, anyone who has ever
loved, will experience. For a grieving father there isnt much more to
say; life is a terrible thing, after all, but it could be so much worse.
This line means Im going
to die young, he said,
holding out his palm
118
G Promotion
Didnt have time to pack?
Heathrows personal-shopping
service takes the airport retail
experience to new heights
Gone are the days of
feverishly dashing along
the high street ahead of
an early morning ight,
gathering, in haste, all the
necessities for your stay
away from home.
From now on, you
can project an image of
assuredness and calm
before a globetrotting
endeavour, as Londons
Heathrow airport
has a new, exclusive
and complimentary
personal shopping service.
Encompassing everything
from fashion to male
grooming and technology,
departure-lounge
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second to none. Whether
you desire a ne-leather
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pair of Bally shoes, the
trained and multilingual
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the process a bespoke
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advance or request their
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passed through security.
Personal shoppers are
available from the rst to
the last departure of the
day, so the next time you
y from Heathrow, be sure
to check in with the team.
heathrow.com/stylist
Clockwise from top:
Bag by Cartier. Belt by
Hugo Boss. Luggage
tag by Burberry.
Watchby TAG Heuer.
Sunglasses by Ray-Ban.
iPad Air sleeve by
Smythson. Centre:
Shoes by Bally.
AND
PLANE
SIMPLE
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How it works
Entries, which must be no longer than 3,000 words, will be accepted
by email only to GQmaileraward@condenast.co.uk before 1 August
2014. All entrants must be current students at British educational
establishments. All entries must be original nonction. Students
may submit work in any of the many subgenres of creative
nonction: memoir or autobiography, essay, literary journalism,
proles of people and places, and so on. Whatever its subject, the
best work will be true material presented with compelling literary
merit. Good luck!
The winner
The winner will receive a 1,000 cash prize, have his or her work
published in a future issue of British GQ and be invited to spend
a month at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, a residential
educational centre based at the legendary authors former home in
Provincetown, Massachusetts, the United States. All travel,
accommodation and expenses will be covered.
About the Norman Mailer Writers Colony
The purpose of the colony is to nurture the development of writers
by using Norman Mailers contributions to literary culture as a
guiding force. Mailer (1923-2007) was a giant of American letters, the
author of more than 40 books, including The Naked And The Dead;
The Armies Of The Night; The Executioners Song; and The Fight.
ENTRIES
NORMAN MAILER
Student Writing Award
FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO GQ.CO.UK
A call
Win
1,000
cash
for
Prize writer:
Norman Mailer,
no stranger to
awards himself,
photographed in
New York, 1969
120
Front row, from left:
Dylan Jones, Jo Levin,
SI Newhouse, Nick
Carvell, Bill Prince,
David Gandy, Jamie
Millar, Simon Ward,
Sarah Mower, Caroline
Rush, Dermot OLeary,
Isaac Hindin-Miller,
David Watts, Johnny
Davis. Back row,
fromleft: Eric Down,
Holly Roberts, Grace
Gilfeather, Vanessa
Kingori, Charlotte
Hickson, Victoria
Higgs, Jessica
Punter,Nell Kalonji
L C
JULY 2014 G
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LC:M
On 15 June, the cream of British talent will be
stepping out at the capitals ffth mens fashion
showcase. It is widely agreed that in two short
years, LC:M has transformed the menswear
scene in this country. Four designers tell GQ
how their business has been boosted
STORY BY ROBERT JOHNSTON
LONDON COLLECTIONS:MEN
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OLIVER SPENCER started his career in
fashion selling second-hand clothes on
Portobello Road before opening his rst
Favourbrook store in 1992, supplying
decorative waistcoats to grooms and best
men, as well as eveningwear. He set up his
eponymous label ten years later, having
realised that a lot of customers coming into
Favourbrook wanted something more from
him than just formality.
At rst, it seemed important to keep
the two businesses separate, he explains.
Initially, this strategy probably cost me
money; had I not done so, however,
Oliver Spencer would most likely look very
different today, so I certainly dont regret it.
The nancial success of Favourbrook
helped support his edgling fashion line.
What we have managed to do over the past
four years is to create a brand that has a very
distinct handwriting, he says. But building
a brand from scratch is just a nightmare. I
sat down with Sir Paul Smith recently and he
said, I admire you, because when I was doing
it in the Eighties it was so much easier than
now. But now the business is protable and
its growing and we use all our own money.
Our next step is to become a household
name. I wouldnt come to work if I didnt
think I was going to better myself every day.
IN THE ve seasons of
LC:M so far, Dalton has
already claimed the opening
slot as her own.
My rst proper show
turned out to be the opener
of the rst LC:M, she
recalls. Previously, when
we just had the Mens Day,
I had been given a slot in the
Portico Rooms at Somerset
House. But with LC:M it was
a whole new ball game. I
have always admired those
old-fashioned salon shows,
with that slightly quieter
take, and I think the show
we do is really well suited
to where we are as a label.
When I was offered the
slot I was adamant that we
were bloody well going to
go full out to do it. Both to
prove that the collection
would be worthy of it and
that it didnt have to be all
bells and whistles. It should
just be about the clothes.
Alongside the British
press at that rst show was
the New York Times. Its
fashion editor at the time,
Bruce Pask, really took note
and has been immensely
supportive ever since. I can
still remember feeling the
pressure during the run-up
to it. Simon Chilvers came to
the studio to do an interview
for the Guardian and was
asking me how it felt; all
I could think was, Wow!
There is such a buzz
surrounding LC:M. Its very
important to be a part of it;
it has really pushed our sales
and markets who we are.
Ive been fortunate to
have had so much support,
and now I feel I have to
do my bit to give back, to
the BFC (British Fashion
Council) and all the
sponsors. Its a lot of
pressure, but I totally
get off on it when I see
the response.
But it doesnt get any
easier. In fact, it gets harder,
because you have to keep
delivering. People are quick
to pigeonhole you and you
dont want that. You want
to make people think, Oh,
I wasnt expecting that.
I never take it for
granted. All I want to do
is get beautiful clothes on
mens backs and hopefully
that will see me through.
Im overwhelmed by the
way that London is standing
on its own two feet, from
one day tacked on to the
end of womenswear three
years ago to now, where
I think you could pretty
much roll it out to a week.
First in line: Lou
Dalton (right)
opened this years
A/W 2014 show
with her utilitarian
designs (above
and top right)
Olivers army:
Spencers (above)
models at the Old
Sorting Ofce on
New Oxford Street
Lou DALTON
Oliver SPENCER
In Spencers quest for success,
London Collections: Men proved
to be a game changer. Back when
the mens shows were merely a
day tacked on to the end of the womens
shows, I was having lunch with Gordon
Richardson, the design director of Topman,
and he was telling me how his company
sponsored new-generation designers. He
told me, We couldnt sponsor an established
designer like you, but just do a show and
you wont believe what happens. So we
did, in an old banana warehouse in Covent
Garden. It was as if someone had turned
the lights on. Previously I had done two
presentations in Milan and they were a
complete waste of time.
With London Collections: Men there is
now a whole group of British menswear
designers showing here who wouldnt have
dreamt of going to Milan or Paris because of
the expense. It has made British menswear
ourish. Now international press and buyers
are coming to London to seek out new talent.
I really like what Christopher Raeburn is
up to at the moment hes very much what
I would call the future. I think Jonathan
Saunders does a really nice job and Patrick
Grant has got a great sense of style. Margaret
Howell always does a great show; shes
part of the old establishment and is just
phenomenal. Its all great right now, and
three days just isnt enough.
Spencer has also found that showing
during LC:M has changed how he views
his own collection. Of course, there are
question marks in my head every season
Is this going to sell? But although I have
quite a specic formula now, I realise you
have to add new things. For example, in my
last show there were these judo pants. A lot
of people liked them, but Charlie Porter of
the Financial Times called them tracksuit
bottoms for old men. But I realised that if
I hadnt done these, he may well have not
commented on the show at all. So its good
to do some more unusual things.
124
JULY 2014 G
LC:M
Like father,
like son
(below left):
Charlie and
Joe Casely-
Hayford
JOE CASELY-HAYFORD and
his son Charlie are two of the
best-known faces on the British
fashion scene. Joe, 57, rose to
prominence during the mid-
Eighties with clients including
the Clash, Suede and Jarvis
Cocker. Together with Charlie, a
regular on the GQ Best-Dressed
Men list, he is producing some
of the most exciting menswear
around right now.
We started working together
in 2009 when I was still at
university, explains Charlie.
I had just left my job as
creative director of Gieves &
Hawkes after nearly four years,
adds Joe. We had put the label
on hold. Originally it was very
much about being made in
Britain, but by the Nineties
this had become an almost
impossible ideal, because
British manufacturing had
all but disappeared.
I studied ne art in Florence,
continues Charlie. Then I went
to Saint Martins and became
interested in the idea of using
clothes to create self-perception.
So we started talking about what
we might do together.
Charlie would ask me about
what was going on at Gieves,
says Joe. After one particularly
long conversation, I decided to
set up a family business.
The fact we come from such
different backgrounds makes it
interesting, says Charlie. A lot
of our designs derive from long
conversations. Of course, a lot of
the time his experience prevails.
I guess its quite different from
how other designers work.
The result is, according to the
duo, quintessentially British.
Casely-Hayford is all about
British culture, as it represents
both ends of the fashion
spectrum, explains Joe. For
example, at LC:M there are both
tailors and high-street designers.
We position ourselves at the
JUST 24 years old, Kit Neale grew
up in Londons Peckham until his
parents moved to Gosport when he
was 14. Desperate to get back to the
capital, he returned when he was
just 16, not having been to college.
Instead he interned at places such as
the National Theatre and the British
Fashion Council, where he assisted
the designer Gareth Pugh and the
stylist Way Perry. Way is amazing,
says Neale. He taught me about
fashion, gave me a good grounding in how the media works and
how to put a collection together. Thats why I decided to go to
college and went off to study fashion at Ravensbourne.
Neale admits that he had been out of education for so long by
this stage that going back to college felt a bit fake. So when he
left, the rst thing he did was to start his own label. I tried to
fund my graduate collection and I went to all my contacts to try
to raise money. That ended up falling through, but as I had already
set up my brand, I found myself in deep waters pretty quickly.
Fashion colleges such as Ravensbourne are brilliant at encouraging
creativity, but business acumen is not on the syllabus. We made
a lot of mistakes in the beginning, explains
Neale, such as overpricing, having no real
strategy on where we tted in the market
not even understanding the market.
Luckily Neale had the British Fashion
Council to turn to in the form of Newgen,
a scheme backed by Topman that helps
young designers nancially. He was awarded
support for his presentation in January and
for another one this month. He was also
taken to the London Showrooms in Paris
during mens fashion week, a key showcase
for British talent in front of some of the
most important buyers in the business.
Equally importantly, the BFC offers
workshops to help young designers build
businesses. The workshops are fantastic,
enthuses Neale. They are small usually
two or three designers at most. Advisors
from Lloyds Bank talk you through topics
such as how to manage cash ow and how
to access different sources of money.
Today Neale is best known for his fresh
graphic prints. We are building a label for
men aged between 18 and 30, although we
have been surprised to nd we have quite
a large clientele among 30- to 40-year-olds.
We explore London life and London living
and are proud to exploit our Britishness.
For spring 2014, Neale came up with
Peckham Riviera, a fun take on his old
stamping ground, re-imagined as a pastel-
coloured rival to South Beach, while lately he
has turned his attention to Elephant & Castle.
Going into print at the beginning was a clear
business strategy, he says. I saw how digital
prints could go on anything and I didnt want
to be restricted, so that I could branch out
into different areas in future. We want to
create an empire!
CASELY-HAYFORD Kit NEALE
point where sartorialism and
anarchy meet. I guess thats
what makes our brand unique.
Given Casely-Hayford seniors
experience of Savile Row, an
important part of the business
is made-to-measure tailoring.
Our customers dont necessarily
have to wear a suit to work
as a lot of them are architects,
actors and the like, says Charlie.
These are people who actively
dont want to go to Savile Row,
with all its formality, so we have
found a real gap in the market.
The piece that exemplies the
vision of the brand in our rst
show is a cashmere coat with
huge graphic horizontal stripes,
says Joe. To me, this mixes
elements of British subcultures
with that Establishment classic,
the Chestereld coat. It is also
inspired by sportswear and
combines technical fabrics with
natural bres. Fine tailoring
created with craftsmanship and
technology perfectly conveys
the spirit of Casely-Hayford.
This January, Casely-Hayford
presented its rst runway show,
to great critical acclaim. We
had a discussion when we rst
started about whether to show
from the very beginning,
explains Charlie, but we
decided we would rather build
the business rst. And Im glad
we did, because the response in
January was so positive. We
almost doubled our business.
[LC:M] has proved to be a
renaissance for the menswear
industry in general, adds Joe.
It is amazing how you now
have so many designers doing
menswear and there isnt even
that much crossover.
Pattern recognition:
Neales signature prints
at his A/W 2014 show
Bright young
thing: Kit Neale
is one of British
fashions most
promising
talents
125
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Bright idea:
TheKlarus XT20s
duel-head design
allows a wide
andintense beam
witha range of
300 metres
EDI TED BY CHARLIE BURTON
AND STUART MCGURK
LEADING
LIGHTS
Look at the business
end of any de cent torch:
where once youd see
a bulb, now youll see
an LED. And new high-
power versions of that
technology are ushering
police-grade brightness
into more afordable
packages. We throw
alight on the best
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JULY 2014 G
THE LAB
XT20 by Klarus
Taking a lesson from Ghostbusters, it
crosses the streams from its dual-head
design to create the second brightest
beam on test. But theres one major aw
that prevents the Klarus from getting a
higher rating: the on/of switch is at the
back of the handle, yet the torchs body
length and front-heavy set-up mean that
you want to position your hand further
towards the head. Frustrating!
120. klaruslight.co.uk
Win: Strobe mode
Fail: Non-ergonomic

SX25L3 by Eagletac
So bright, its like holding a supernova
inyour st. Inevitably, that does mean
itrequires a great deal of electricity
intheform of six three-volt lithium ion
batteries, adding to its girth. For us,
though, that seemed appropriate for
itsretina-melting strength. It is the
mostexpensive on test, but youd
expecta proprice tag for what it delivers.
137. At Tac Light. taclight.co.uk
Win: A twist-head for changing
beamstrength
Fail: Chunky

UC40 UltimateEdition
by Fenix
This torch shouldnt be as good as it is
its small, its inexpensive, it only has 960
lumens yet its our joint favourite. The
beam is clear and strong (it can also be
adjusted to four diferent intensities, or
setto strobe) and has a broad throw.
Frankly, the only deciding factor between
this and the Eagletac is whether you want
to pay 65 more for a little extra power.
72. At Tac Light. taclight.co.uk
Win: Lightest on test
Fail: Short beam length

Viking X by Armytek
At 1,010 lumens, its comfortably in the
same class as the others, which marks its
price out as particularly impressive. The
trade-of is the lower-quality beam: the
colour skews yellow and it cant ood an
area with light as its competitors do. Still,
to its credit, the torchs thick walls are
reassuringly robust for its light weight.
65. At Tac Light. taclight.co.uk
Win: Tactical ring for holding in
cigargrip
Fail: Cant tail stand on its base

R40 Seeker by Olight

Its brightness wont leave the general user
feeling underserved, but while the Fenix
can produce a clearer beam of equivalent
strength from a much more slender
body,the Olight is already setting of on
the wrong foot. Its further let down by
anoccasional problem where the power
cutsout and the button doesnt turn on
again, but this may be peculiar to our unit.
95. At Torch Direct. torchdirect.co.uk
Win: Rechargeable
Fail: No straight to high beam function

1
2
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4
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The BREAKDOWN
Weight
Max
brightness
Minimum
battery life
Length
Range
UC40 Ultimate
Edition
by Fenix
94g
960 lumens
1 hour
30minutes
14.7cm
204 metres
SX25L3 by
Eagletac
309g
1,245 lumens
2 hours
45minutes
14.4cm
317 metres
270g
1,200 lumens
2 hours
21.8cm
XT20 by
Klarus
300 metres
245g
1,100 lumens
2 hours
R40 Seeker
by Olight
14.3cm
280 metres
165g
1,010 lumens
1 hour
40minutes
Viking X by
Armytek
15.5cm
300 metres
127
JULY 2014 G
THE LAB
P
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M
a
t
t
h
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w

B
e
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d
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ON-THE-GO
AUDIO
A new breed of
portable speakers
boast home-audio-
system quality in
throw-in-a-bag sizes
1
2
3
5
4
2
1
4
3
5
SRS-X7 by Sony
The only device with Apples AirPlay built
in, the SRS feels like a home-audio system
thats been shrunk. The touch-buttons
may seem a tad Nineties, but the only real
downside was the sound, which was, well,
ne, but we expected more for the size.
259. sony.co.uk
Win: Most adaptable; AirPlay built-in
Fail: So-so sound; heavy

Fastnet by Ted Baker

We expected a Ted Baker speaker to
lookgood and boy does it deliver, with
avintageLeica-esque styling, real brown
leather, ahinged cover that becomes a
stand and an old-school volume dial. Plus
the sound isremarkable for a device so
compact. Deep, rich and pure, its like
having a fullstereo in your overnight bag.
200. tedbaker.com/uk
Win: Rich sound; stunning build quality
Fail: Not cheap

Speaker 2go by Loewe
The Loewe Speaker 2go is a slick piece of
kit: a minimalist metal beauty. The sound
isdeep and expansive, and also boasts a
neat pop-up stand to angle the speaker
upwards. Add in the reasonable price
tag,and this is an attractive proposition.
200. loewe.tv
Win: Slick styling; good sound
Fail: Rubbish name

SoundLink III by Bose

Sonically the best on test the Bose
hasawhopping 14-hour battery
life.Butreally when will Bose hire
adecentdesigner? Its an ugly beast,
withacheap-looking plastic edging
thatbeliesthe quality within.
260. bose.co.uk
Win: Best sound; awesome battery
Fail: Ugly design

Esquire by Harman/Kardon
At just 0.75kg, the Harman/Kardon is
portably light and the brown grill and
curved metal speak of quality. Butthe
sound doesnt cut it the bass islacking,
and the highs tinny which is surprising
for an august audio company. The shape,
also, makes it easy to topple over while
going bonkers to Get Lucky.
170. harmankardon.co.uk
Win: Stylish
Fail: Average sound; unstable

The BREAKDOWN
Dimension
(wx h x d)
Weight
Watts
AirPlay?
Other
features?
Maximum
battery life
18.5 x 10.4
x4.5cm
1.4kg
30 watts
No
Fastnet by
Ted Baker
No
7 hours
Speaker 2go
by Loewe
24 x 10.5
x5.1cm
1.3kg
40 watts
No
No
8 hours
SRS-X7 by
Sony
30 x 13.2
x6cm
1.9kg
32 watts
Yes
Native Spotify
6 hours
14.7 x 14.7
x4.6cm
0.75kg
2x10 watts
Esquire by
Harman/
Kardon
No
No
10 hours
25.6 x 13.5
x4.8cm
1.37kg
Undisclosed
SoundLink III
by Bose
No
No
14 hours
129
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L
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Afecting a stand: Guardian
editorAlan Rusbridger, 60,
congratulates his staf on
winning a Pulitzer Prize for
the newspapers Snowden
coverage, 15 April 2014
JULY 2014 G
MICHAEL WOLFF
THE GUARDIAN, nanced through a trust
created by its then owners in the Thirties, has
traditionally been organised as something like
a private-equity rm, with investments in a
variety of businesses whose prots went to
supporting a newspaper. Earlier this year, with
the newspaper costing more than the invest-
ments yielded, it liquidated most of its holdings,
converting itself into an entity more like a
wealth-management company or, perhaps,
even a family ofce, wherein capital could be
tapped to support the interest of the family.
One of those interests is Edward Snowden
at a cost far from accounted for.
Curiously, the Guardian may well be the
best-funded newspaper in the world. But,
at its current losses, there is also something
nite to that money even a willingness for
it to be nite. Between business discipline
and philosophical mission, it would choose
the latter. Between exigencies and martyr-
dom, martyrdom.
I have written periodically for the Guardian
for more than a decade. Most recently I con-
tributed to what it has portrayed as something
of a life-or-death effort to transport a new
version of the Guardian to the US, giving me
a sideline view of the effect of the Snowden
story, not just on readers or the political world,
but on the organisation that produced it. The
cost of heroism, if you will.
US expansion has long been a Guardian
dream. For some years now, there has been no
growth left for it in the UK market with circu-
lation and advertising in perilous decline but
the US market seemed to the Guardian man-
agement full of opportunities for a serious but
stylish, left-leaning news outlet. The obvious
models, albeit on something of the oppo-
site political spectrum, were the Financial
Times and the Economist, which had adroitly
managed to internationalise their brands with
an investment in US distribution (quite a
131
G JULY 2014
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I
m
a
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s
suggest the Guardians sense of purpose and
the potency of its Kool-Aid. (I once sat next
to Rusbridgers wife at a Guardian dinner; she
kept referencing what seemed like a wholly
different person, a normal, fallible, workaday
chap named Al. Weird.)
His is an absolute, pre-modern sort of power,
faith-based and exclusionary. You believe
or you dont. You are in or you are out. You
are family or you are not. Emily Bell, once a
potential Rusbridger successor, who was at the
Guardian for the better part of two decades
(coming in through the Guardians acquisition
of the Observer ever an unresolved relation-
ship), told me, after she left several years ago
to take a teaching position in the US, I never
really was an insider.
Rusbridger has run the place since 1995 and,
in some less-than-rational way, its future exists
wholly in his head or at his whim. Not only is
there enormous deference to him and depend-
ence on him, but a sense of the abyss at any
suggestion that he might leave (he is often
suggested for eminent positions at places like
the Royal Opera House).
Rusbridger has maintained two dominant
ideas about the Guardians future: going digital
and going to the US.
The Guardian has been as aggressive as
any legacy news organisation in developing
its digital strategy and resources: both with
as much success and, as well, losing as much
money. Digital has been the harbinger of the
move into the American market, where ever-
growing trafc numbers have suggested that
the Guardian has a ready audience.
Rusbridger has been plotting his US move
since at least 2003, when the start of the
Iraq war showed signicant US trafc to the
Guardian site. His idea then, closer to the FT
and Economist, was to begin print distribu-
tion in the US. But on further study, the costs
shocking him, he settled for a small Washington
ofce with a discrete digital presence, where a
succession of US editors and business advisors,
all perceived as outsiders, have complained
about an inability to get the attention of
Rusbridger or anyone else in London.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Guardians for-
tunes continued a swift decline. The UK
newspaper market was roiled by a sudden
shift, beginning with the Independent, of
quality broadsheets turning tabloid. This was a
crisis of identity for the resolutely broadsheet
Guardian. Rusbridger assembled a secret team
to rethink the Guardians sense of physical self
and nally emerged with a newly designed,
modern newspaper, in miniature format, which
was expected to revolutionise or, anyway,
galvanise, newspaper reading. (I was out in
the cold as a Guardian friend for a few years
for describing it in Vanity Fair as resembling a
ladys purse.) While the new look buoyed the
paper in the short term, its circulation is now
lower than it was before the redesign.
Although the papers fortunes continued to
plummet, it moved to a sparkling new head-
quarters in Kings Cross, sending a mixed signal
to the staff otherwise encouraged to abjure
all frills and worry about the organisations
future producing a sense of sheepishness
or I see nothing among the faithful, but,
perhaps tellingly, no real resentment.
T
hen came hacki ng, and the
Guardians heroic, single-minded,
quixotic, obsessive and successful
pick your word effort to bring
down the Murdoch organisation in
the UK. The hacking story was all David and
Goliath (with Murdoch lieutenants often prom-
ising a gossip campaign against Rusbridger
himself) until the Guardian broke it wide open
in the summer of 2011 with the smoking-gun
revelation that the News Of The World had
hacked the phone of a murder victim, 13-year-
old Milly Dowler, deleting her voicemails and
cruelly leading her family to believe she was
still alive. As it happens, the Guardian got this
crucial part of the story wrong: no deletions
had occurred. But on that key error the News
Of The World closed, the Guardian prevailed
and Murdoch was hoisted.
And then there was WikiLeaks and the
Guardians partnership with Julian Assange.
The Guardians publication of stolen US State
Department documents made it one of the
most visible news organisations in the world.
It was a development near comparable to
when CNN, then a backwater cable channel,
found itself as practically the sole US news
organisation on the ground in Baghdad as the
Gulf War began in 1990, elevating it to inter-
national renown. Except for one difference:
the Guardians economic prospects were not
enhanced by Assange and WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks, and more international trafc,
encouraged Rusbridger to intensify his plans
to make the move to the US, only by now
it had become clear that it shouldnt be a
print product. Indeed, the print product in
the UK was increasingly seen as obsolete,
openly considered a vestigial organ if not
an albatross. The future would be a wholly
The Guardian
had a kind of
wildly speculative
confdence that it
could become an
American voice.
Notjust a British
voice in America
substantial investment). But the Guardian
was looking for something more, something
transformational. Like Superman blasting off
from the doomed planet of Krypton, or the
Corleone family leaving New York for Vegas,
or even like Rupert Murdoch, the Guardians
bugbear, outgrowing London and moving his
headquarters to New York, the Guardian, by
setting up shop in Manhattan on the corner
of Spring Street and Broadway in Soho had
a kind of spunky or wildly speculative con-
dence that it could become an American voice.
Not just a British voice in the US.
The planned expansion was all the more
gutsy or harebrained not just because
introducing a media brand in the US market
is a complicated and expensive effort, but
because there was no clear way for the
Guardian, even if it were to become a clarion
voice, to make money in the US. It had no
plan to sell online subscriptions it was actu-
ally opposed to making people pay. And it had
only a theoretical notion of how to sell ads in
the US and, indeed, a mostly dismal record as
a sales organisation.
A nite and dwindling amount of capital
in most enterprises means a erce competi-
tion about how to deploy it, usually with an
emphasis on limiting risks and eschewing larger
visions. But the Guardian again rather like its
nemesis, the Murdoch organisation makes
its bets and sets its direction with remarkable
singularity and unanimity. Debate is absent,
beyond the most ritual kind.
While the Guardian has a business staff
with a CEO, and is overseen by trustees with
ultimate responsibility, it has one real power
centre, strategic thinker and moral compass:
its editor, Alan Rusbridger. (A kind of pre-
ternatural consensus surrounds Rusbridger,
but underneath him the Guardian is a fraught
political cauldron, with underlings struggling to
align with him, stay in his favour and undercut
everyone else who is trying: a nest of vipers,
in the description of an outside consultant
brought in to work on one of the papers big
redesign projects.)
The 60-year-old Rusbridger is, surely, among
the most talented newspaper editors of his
generation (the other, at the opposite end of
the news and philosophical spectrum, is Paul
Dacre at the Daily Mail) and, as well, the most
opaque, sending cryptic messages in a cipher
which no one person can completely decode.
An hour with him is both unpleasant in
the exertions required to penetrate his lack
of transparency and ll the conversational
void and, yet, at the same time, uplifting
and restorative. The vacuum that surrounds
him somehow seems to represent moral
superiority and it draws you in. Six different
people of high rank at the paper have said
to me, on different occasions, the following
words: I would do anything for Alan. These
are not words you usually hear in a modern
company; they are not even credible. But they
132
JULY 2014 G
One of the oddest
aspects of the
US launch was
the confdence
in London that
Americans actually
knew what the
Guardian was
digital one, with most of the Guardians trafc
coming from the US.
Still, getting rid of paper, printing and deliv-
ery costs, and ever-slimming down the staff,
doesnt do anything if you have no revenue.
The Guardian had taken a moral position against
paywalls even as they were proving to be
growing revenues sources for many papers
and, at the same time, seemed almost proudly
inept when it came to selling advertising (in
the UK, much of the Guardians advertising
revenues, in something of a political deal or
understanding, had come from public-sec-
tor recruitment listings but budget cuts and
digital listings have diminished this business).
Whats more, the common practice of junking
up a web page with as many ad units as possi-
ble to increase revenue was, in the Guardians
view, just not done.
So the idea became... larger. Rusbridger had
the notion of the Guardian as a concept. One
that reected a community, and that could be
converted into an experience, with conferences
and more. At Kings Cross, at Soho House in
New York and at other Guardian-appropriate
venues there were many dinners convened
with friends of the Guardian reverential
affairs conducted by Rusbridger in which all
large ideas were solicited, and trivial money-
making concerns discouraged.
In the US, Rusbridger with limited
personal exposure to the country, and in
many ways at a temperamental distance
from it hired former Channel 4 CEO
Michael Jackson to create a formal
plan for the move. Jackson had been
in the US for more than a decade, rst
running USA Networks, a large cable
programmer, and then as the head of
content for IAC, Barry Dillers digital
company. He was a Brit with deep US
media experience who Rusbridger felt
he could relate to.
Jackson saw his mandate as coming up
with a plan to adapt the Guardian brand
and product, uniquely British in nature
really quite foreign to Americans and creating
a version that, while taking economic advan-
tage of synergies with the UK version, was
fundamentally tooled for the US audience and
advertising market.
Rusbridger accepted the Jackson plan and
then ignored it. Instead, he sent Janine Gibson
a Guardian lifer and Rusbridger factotum and
alter ego, who had never worked in the US
to run the new ofce, hiring and investing
at an impressive if not gob-smacking rate. A
dishevelled gure always in need of a cigarette
in nonsmoking Manhattan, she was tasked
with producing an American version of the
Guardian reminiscent of nothing so much as
the British version.
This was the fundamental question, and an
endlessly debated one, about the US operation.
Was it American or was it British? And had
the various attributes of those two identities
been adequately sorted? And how could they
be if it still largely remained a British effort?
And could there ever really be a non-Guardian
Guardian? And could Rusbridger ever be less
than the soul and vital centre of anything with
the Guardian brand? One odd aspect of the
US launch was the condence in London that
Americans actually knew what the Guardian
was, that its north London identity and sen-
sibility, its deep and uniquely British left-wing
assumptions, could be easily absorbed by its
US cultural equivalent (and what would that
north London equivalent be? Brooklyn?).
Certainly, much of Gibsons initial positioning
for the Guardian US seemed cockeyed and tone
deaf. There was an early notion to make oppo-
sition to capital punishment one of the tent
poles of the US editorial plan, and great enthu-
siasm to promote Occupy Wall Street, even as
the movement was sinking with hardly a trace.
Still, in the beginning, the US effort, lead by
Brits with a smattering of Americans, seemed
very much an enthusiastic start-up, shad-
owed by the existential issues of revenue,
but buoyed by a throw-it-against-the-wall,
lets-put-on-a-show, see-what-works,
nd-our-voice joie de vivre.
The Guardians overt political side
often grating even to many of the
faithful has always been comple-
mented or balanced by its lifestyle
side, its culture, arts, lm, media and
food writing (the Guardian has been
a leader in food journalism), all areas
vastly more amenable to advertisers
than its traditional politics, and a basis
much better than news itself on which
to make a news site self-sustaining.
And then came Snowden.
Or, really, rst came Julian Assange
and then came Edward Snowden and
the Guardians noble, or opportunistic,
desire (or both) to become the worlds
leading left-wing media brand and, indistin-
guishable in its own mind from that ambition,
to save the world as it itself is elevated.
In part this goes right back to all that money
in the bank. Should you spend it on big,
expensive, money-losing stories in the hope
that, long-term, their importance will redound
to your own gain? Or do you hedge your bets
more carefully?
This is, obviously, not a question asked
openly or not wisely asked, anyway. To do
so affronts the journalistic principles that most
journalistic institutions, and particularly the
Guardian, would never openly affront. And
yet these are the decisions that someone has
to make that are made.
Watergate, the mother of all anti- government
journalism, was carried on the back of an
immensely profitable Washington Post. A
money-losing Washington Post invested in the
Snowden story and was, not long after, sold as
something like scrap (to Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos). Snowden and the Post sale are not
Conicting sources (from
top): Rusbridger, former
NSA counsel Stewart Baker
and Janine Gibson in
debate, 19 September 2013;
Snowden styled on Obamas
hope poster; Daily Mail
dissent; WikiLeaks Julian
Assange, 26 July 2010
MICHAEL WOLFF
133
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JULY 2014 G
MICHAEL WOLFF
Heeeeres Jimmy! (Michael Wolf, June 2014)
Incapability Brown (Michael Wolf, March 2014)
Why I Love Fox News (Michael Wolf, January 2012)
MORE
FROM GQ
For these related stories,
visitGQ.co.uk/magazine
The Guardian had
broken the biggest
story of the day
increased traffc,
made people
famous, changed
history! and been
unable to monetise it
necessarily connected but, nevertheless, its
owners did not nd Snowden reason enough
to more rmly embrace the Post, and suggest
that doing big, expensive news is a much more
equivocal enterprise when you cant afford it
a circumstance the Guardian seems proud
to try to defy.
Both business-wise and journalistically, doing
the Snowden story was the obvious decision
to make for the Guardian. Its efforts so far had
hardly put it on the map in the US and sud-
denly Snowden did. But the Guardians invest-
ment was not only nancial and journalistic but
psychic. It was all in.
News outlets want to break big stories but
at the same time not be overwhelmed by
them a certain detachment is well advised.
It is an artful line. But the Guardian essential-
ly went into the Edward Snowden business
and continues in it. Its a complex busi-
ness, too: to ally yourself with larger-than-
life, novelistic characters, rst Assange, and
then Snowden, and stranger-than-strange
middle men, like the Guardians contract col-
umnist Glenn Greenwald, who brought in the
story. The effort to pretend that the story is
straight up good and evil, that this is jour-
nalism pure and simple, unalloyed public
interest, without peculiar nuances and rabbit
holes and obvious contradictions, is really
quite a trick.
In an effort to pull off that trick, the
Snowden brand with hints of baby Jesus
and the Guardian brand as something like
God the father and protector become nearly
symbiotic. (The Guardian now campaigns
ercely for a Snowden pardon.)
The theoretically freewheeling Guardian
locked itself down. Staff and contributor
Twitter feeds were closely monitored for indi-
cations of Snowden or Greenwald deviations,
with instant reprimands when any party-line
divergence was spotted. The Guardian had
become the story and its journalists had to
observe a loyalty oath in covering it.
Other controversies were discouraged, with
Gibson saying that the Guardian was too
exposed on Snowden to put itself at further
risk on other dicey stories creating a sort of
journalistic zero-sum game.
In the strange case of Emma Gilbey Keller,
a longtime Guardian contributor and wife
of former New York Times editor Bill Keller,
a piece she wrote on the nature of a cancer
patients tweets about the illness generated
objections from the subject and a surge of
angry Twitter blowback. It was, without con-
sultation with Gilbey, summarily removed,
suggesting that the Guardian saw its defen-
sive wall as the Twitterati good will that it
couldnt afford to antagonise its base.
Organisationally, Snowden was overwhelm-
ing. It all changed after last June [when the
Snowden story broke], according to one of
the Guardian staffers I polled for this account.
Most of the heavy lifting, decision-making
and oxygen in the room was returned to
London, creating the sense in New York of
after-thought, or of leaving everybody in
Manhattan twiddling their thumbs.
Rusbridger, whose Harry Potter look, cryptic
speech and generally abstracted countenance
make him a perplexing gure to Americans,
flew in to make television appearances
here, becoming the mystifying face of the
Guardian US. Or, really, he competed with
the ill- tempered and doctrinaire Greenwald
as the face of the Guardian US. (Confusing
matters more, Greenwald, who had arrived a
few months before the story broke, left the
Guardian a few months after.)
The Snowden mood mixed real internal
fright with fabulous self-dramatisation and
shone a blinding light on Guardian virtue.
The Guardian as sensibility a quirky,
expressive, witty, culturally inclined point
of view was overwhelmed by the Guardian
as pious mission, in which the issue is not
only delity to the cause, but your stand-
ing in the way you relate to it. The cause is
the core and the further away you are from
it being central to your being (and capacity
for self-dramatisation) the less good and
relevant you are.
Whats more, Snowden, and the continu-
ing great outpouring of attention around the
story, made no money for the Guardian. This
seemed inexplicable and dumbfounding to
Guardian management. They had broken the
biggest story of the day vastly increased
trafc, made people famous, changed history!
and been unable to monetise it. (At the
annual Cannes Lions advertising festival,
where media brands come to abjectly beg
for advertising, the Guardian hosted a dinner
last summer that was wholly about how the
Guardian was helping to save the world,
and not at all about how it could help move
the merchandise.)
And, too, Snowden hopelessly demoralised,
and, in a sense, broke the Guardian US, or at
least the people working on it.
The Snowden story was too imbued with
worthiness and principles for staffers to object
to it (indeed, that would have been the end of
your Guardian membership), but in a quieter
way the organisation rebelled: key players
in the New York ofce left, including many
of the top editors and writers, the CEO of
Guardian US, as well as Glenn Greenwald
himself. The replacement team is vastly
younger and cheaper, and, one suspects,
even more temporary.
Gibson herself returns to London this
summer, either as a reward for shepherding
the Snowden story or, in ambiguous Guardian
fashion, as a sort of punishment for the man-
agement turmoil provoked by the story, in
which she merely gets her old job back. (The
Guardian, as in its falling out with Julian
Assange, often nds it necessary to protect
its virtue by standing on both sides of a sit-
uation.) Gibson is theoretically one of three
people positioned as a potential Rusbridger
heir but the consensus is that the three are
such unlikely successors that Rusbridgers
position remains inviolable.
What has actually been accomplished?
What progress made?
In a more generalised accounting, the
Guardian and many others would surely argue
that the world is wiser for the Snowden rev-
elations (others argue that Snowden, in his
Russian redoubt, clouds the issue of modern
spycraft). For itself, the Guardian which,
along with the Washington Post, was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize for the Snowden revelations
has advanced its brand standing. But then
again, its brand might now represent less an
eclectic news outlet than an earnest conduit
for rogue information.
Perhaps, in the Guardians deepest sense of
itself and, in the left-wing imagination, that is
a noble future, if not a particularly lucrative
one. But, you can see how that might eclipse
the other business the milder, quirkier, more
protable sensibility stuff. Or see how thats
a balancing act which the Guardian might not
be able to afford or have the management
acumen to pull off.
The success of the Snowden story, at the
expense of the New York operation, has
many people in the Guardian US constella-
tion or, now, diaspora wondering about
the future of New York. There is a sense that
the gravitational pull is back to north London,
that however much it seeks a world beyond,
however much it tries to break out, however
much it strives to transform, the Guardian
will ultimately invest its money in staying
the same.
135
OF MODERN LUXURY THE NEW RULES
Driving
Modern
BESPOKE
Shades, shoes and a serious
stereo how the top-end
embraced the tailor-made
Destination
LUXURY
From Caribbean boltholes
to central London spas the
lowdown on where to spend it
The New
CONNOISSEURS
The men raising the
bar andredening the
rulesofthe high life
Chiwetel Ejiofor on life in the fastest lane
Modern
BESPOKE
Shades, shoes and a serious
stereo how the top-end
embraced the tailor-made
Destination
LUXURY
From Caribbean boltholes
to central London spas the
lowdown on where to spend it
The New
CONNOISSEURS
The men raising the
bar andredening the
rulesofthe high life
Chiwetel Ejiofor on life in the fastest lane
PHOTOGRAPHED FOR GQ DELUXE BY GREG WILLIAMS
G JULY 2014
Welcome to the second issue of GQ
Deluxe the thinking mans guide to the
good life. More than ever, were aware
of the shift towards a new kind of luxury,
one thats understated and unique,
experienced not just bought. Weve
noticedit from the top-end fashion houses,
which provided us with the clothes for our
four Luxury Looks and the masters of
theModern Bespoke, all of whom are
creatingbeautiful individual items for their
customers. Were sensing it from the new
kinds of tailored experiences available
ateach of our Destination Luxuries and,
more than anywhere else, were amazed
atthe work of ourNew Connoisseurs, the
men making it all happen. And, of course,
were thrilled to talk to Britains latest
superstar Chiwetel Ejiofor, a man with
exactly the kind of grace and sophistication
the new luxury is all about. Enjoy.
Jonathan Heaf Editor
2014 The Cond Nast Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited.
NottobesoldseparatelyfromtheJuly2014issueofGQmagazine.PrintedbyWyndeham Group. Colour origination by Tag: Response
Editor-In-Chief Dylan Jones Editor Jonathan Heaf Deputy Editor David Annand Creative Director Paul Solomons Art Director Khalil Halwani
Photographic Director Russ OConnell Managing Editor Mark Russell Chief Sub-Editor George Chesterton Sub-Editor Lee Stobbs
Contributors Grace Gilfeather, Robert Johnston, Cameron McNee, Holly Roberts, Wilma Studios, Greg Williams
D E L U X E
THE NEW RULES OF MODERN LUXURY
Chiwetel Ejiofor photographed
forGQDeluxe by Greg Williams
Suit,1,195. Shirt, 195. Tie, 135. All by Burberry.
uk.burberry.com. Shoes by Grenson, 200. grenson.
co.uk. Watch by Breitling for Bentley, 9,900.
breitling.com. Photograph Greg Williams Styling
Grace Gilfeather Hair Carlos Ferraz at Carol Hayes
Management. With thanks to the Westbury hotel,
Conduit Street, London W1. westburymayfair.com
ON THE COVER
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The NEWCONNOISSEURS
marc-newson.com
paddle8.com
Black magic: Newsons
champagne cofret
with Dom Prignon
ULTIMATE LUXURY?
Time time is the
greatest luxury for me.
Time to do what I want
orjust do nothing at all.
LUXURY OBJECT?
A wonderful and
unattainable piece of art.
LUXURY DESTINATION?
Tawaraya Ryokan in
Kyoto, Japan.
Australian-born product
designer Marc Newson
hasworked across an
incredible range of
disciplines reimagining
everything from
timepieces to airline
interiors. His bright
soft-edged aesthetic and
innovative material use
have been instrumental in
the move towards a kind
of playful pop-luxury.
The DESIGNER
MARC NEWSON
Formerly the chief
auctioneer at Phillips de
Pury, Alexander Gilkes
co-founded the online
auction house Paddle8
in2011. With its
super-competitive fees
and focus on artworks
below $100,000 the house
has changed the game
foremerging artists and
rst-time collectors.
The EXECUTIVE
ALEXANDER GILKES
ULTIMATE LUXURY?
Still-wet art works
straight from the studios
of the most coveted
emerging artists, such
asAlex Perweiler of New
Yorks Still House Group.

LUXURY OBJECT?

Im currently ogling the
18th-century longcase
clock given to me by
mygenerous father.

LUXURY DESTINATION?

Sailing around the azure
coves of Calvi in Corsica,
aboard a Swan, during
Calvi On The Rocks
music festival.
Join the dots: Damien
Hirsts colour woodcut,
Methionine, 2010
The NEW CONNOISSEURS
From the kitchen to the catwalk, we meet the men redening the life of luxury
Sellers market:
Alexander
Gilkes has
revolutionised
theauction of
contemporary art
Back to nature:
Marc Newson brings
the owing lines
of biomorphism
into luxury design
G JULY 2014
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rosewoodhotels.com
chilternstreetw1.co.uk
Reign of Spain:
Nuno Mendes has
transferred his
sense of culinary
adventure to the
Chiltern Firehouse
Launch pad:
Michael Bonsor has
guided the opening
of the spectacular
Rosewood London
A seasoned operator at the top
end of the travel world, Michael
Bonsor is the launch hotel
manager of the sumptuous
Rosewood London, one of
thecapitals grandest hotel
openings for decades. His
attention to detail has ensured
the day-to-day operation of
thehotel is as impressive as its
stunning 85-million interior.
The MANAGER
MICHAEL BONSOR
After learning his trade
under superstar chefs
Jean-Georges Vongerichten
and Ferran Adri, Nuno
Mendes shot to fame at
thehelm of Viajante,
theinnovative Iberian
restaurant at the Bethnal
Green Town Hall Hotel.
Now ensconced at Chiltern
Firehouse Andr Balazs
new ultra-hip hotel hes
redening luxury dining
forthe lucky few that
canget a table.
The CHEF
NUNO MENDES
Hot stuf: Scarfes Bar
at the Rosewood on
Londons High Holborn
ULTIMATE LUXURY?
Time with my partner
and dog! It is so hard
tocarve out, but when
youdo, it is the most
rewarding feeling. It
trumps a tailored suit
orane watch any day.
LUXURY OBJECT?
My Bentley GTC is a
trueluxury it makes
youinnitely happy
every time you get in it.
Itis British craftsmanship
atits nest.
LUXURY DESTINATION?
Mustique, is the only
place I truly relax. A close
friend has a house there,
which is exquisite.
The island is still
very private and at
the houseparties you
always meet the most
interesting of people.
ULTIMATE LUXURY?
Getting a pair of
shoesmade by my
friend Sebastian Tarek
(sebastiantarek.com).
The whole thing is an
experience from start
tonish. He enters into
adialogue with all his
clients, gets to know and
understand each person
and tailors his creations
accordingly. The shoe
ts the person instead
ofthe person tting
theshoe.
LUXURY OBJECT?
My Junghans X Max
Billwatch (junghans.de),
which I recently bought
for myself. I love its
classic looks. There are
vey few things that I buy
myself it is really rare
for me to indulge in
something just for me
that is so special.
LUXURY DESTINATION?
My luxury destination
isnot luxury in the
ve-star sense. But it is
pure luxury to me in the
sense of peace that I nd
when Iam there. A tiny
hut in a tree overlooking
the beach in Ashvem,
Goa. A hole-in-the-
wall place that can
onlybedescribed as
puremagic.
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The NEWCONNOISSEURS
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The pioneer of the clean-lined
body-elongating one-button
suit is back at the helm of
Savile Row stalwart Kilgour
after a period away from the
fashion industry working as a
sculptor. Insiders are already
talkingabout how the
future-minded designer will
recreate the contemporary.
paulgreenart.com
Since it opened in
Birmingham in 1982, Paul
Greens Halcyon Gallery has
been one of the go-to
destinations for collectorsof
the highest of high-end ne
art. Now based inMayfair, he
has dedicated teams focusing
on both contemporary works
and raremasterpieces and
areputationfor making the
weather in the art world.
ULTIMATE LUXURY?
Spending as much time
as I can with my family.
LUXURY OBJECT?
A set of books given to
me by my wife Katy. An
original set of catalogues
from the great exhibition.
They are three volumes
for the International
Exhibition 1862. They are
colour-plated catalogues
in three volumes Art
andSculpture I, II and
III.It took 3,000 plates
used to produce the
catalogues which would
take one artist 42 years
to create.
LUXURY DESTINATION?
My home in Spain in the
mountains, nothing but
sky, eagles and olives.
ULTIMATE LUXURY?
Time. The only luxury
that you cannot buy...
LUXURY OBJECT?
Birds of paradise
owers, difcult to
readily nd, look good
when they die and
drytoo as they are
soarchitectural.
LUXURY DESTINATION?
Walter De Marias
lightning eld installation
in New Mexico its
apilgrimage every
timeIgo.
Handiwork: Paul
Green inside the
Halcyon Gallery
with Lorenzo Quins
sculpture Love
A design for life:
British-born Carlo
Brandelli blurs the
boundaries between
art and tailoring
Art house: The exterior
of the inuential Halcyon
Gallery in Mayfair
Cut and thrust:
Kilgoursiconic bespoke
suits start at 4,000
kilgour.com
The ARTIST
PAUL GREEN
The ARTIST
CARLO BRANDELLI
143
CHIWETEL
EJIOFOR
The DRIVE
PHOTOGRAPHS BY GREG WILLIAMS
STYLI NG BY GRACE GILFEATHER
Chiwetel Ejiofors career
has just stepped up a
gear. GQ Deluxe talked
to Britains latest acting
megastar about what
drives him forward
Suit,1,195. Shirt, 195.
Tie, 135. All by Burberry.
burberry.com. Shoes by
Grenson, 200. grenson.
co.uk. Sunglasses by
Boss, 150. boss.com.
Watch by Breitling
ForBentley, 9,900.
breitling.com
Hair Carlos Ferraz at
Carol Hayes Management
With thanks to
the Westbury hotel,
Conduit Street, W1.
westburymayfair.com
JULY 2014 G
The DRIVE
C
hiwetel Ejiofor shakes my hand, sharp as
atack in his Burberry suit. For many years
he was the actors actor, lauded for his
performances in low-budget lms,
cultTVshows and most of all on thetiny
stages of Londons critically acclaimed theatres.
Now, of course, hes a movie star and hes got the
itinerant life that goes with it. I catch him in London
on his way from Los Angeles to Lagos for the Nigerian
premiere of Half Of A Yellow Sun, after which he will
be of to Atlanta, Georgia, to start lming Triple Nine,
a new lm by John Hillcoat. Its about ex-military
guys who join forces with dirty cops and start working
for the Russian mob, he says. Its going to be a really
good thriller-heist action movie. John Hillcoat is
afantastic director. Im very excited about it.
After the weighty intensity of his recent lms it
sounds like a good idea totake on something that
requires a diferent register. Is it part of a master plan?
I do it on a script-by-script basis, he says. Ive
justread scripts and seenwhat appeals to me.
Andworked in all the mediums that I can.
I ask him if the mediums might include the Bond
franchise. Its all speculation at the moment so well
see, he says of the rumour that hes being lined up
asthe next arch-villain. Youll be the rst to know.
What is for sure, however, is that he hasnt closed
the door on television now hes been nominated for an
Oscar. I dont understand what all these rules are that
people come up with. It seems arbitrary to me. You
follow the scripts, the stories, the writers, directors.
Youve got to do the bestwork that you can nd.
Its this desire for the best that motivates his own
famous work ethic, which has seen him accrue an
above-average list of skills even by actor standards.
Aswell as mastering a bands worth of instruments
heshad to get quickly procient in archery, Brazilian
jujitsu and combat training.
Ive done a lot of military stuf before, but Ill be
advancing my weapons training, he says of Triple
Nine. I ask if its some kind of fake watered-down
version for actors. He shakes his head. You go with
the real people, the Navy Seals, or whoever. You use
real weapons. And what about the driving? Im
looking forward to that, he says. Im pretty sure
theres going to be good driving in Triple Nine.
Either way, his place in the fast lane isassured.
STORY BY DAVID ANNAND
Cutting edge:
Chiwetel Ejiofor puts
the Bentley Mulsanne
through its paces
around the Mall and
Buckingham Palace
CHIWETELS VERDICT ON THE CAR
The Bentley is a beautiful car incredible to drive. Its sturdy. Its big. Driving
up through the Mall and Buckingham Palace in a car like this is a beautiful
experience. Its got that really strong torque so when you gun it, it sticks with
you. In London its tough as its sopacked but Im really itching to let y.
THE BENTLEY MULSANNE
Named after the straight at Le Mans where the cars achieve their top speed,
the Mulsannes class and nesse have made it one of the most sought-after
Bentley models. And with vital statistics like these its not hard to see why...
Engine capacity: 6752cc twin-turbocharged V8
Top speed: 184mph
Acceleration: 0-60mph in 5.1 seconds
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Jacket, 1,580. Trousers,
185. Scarf, 225. All by
Rake. rakestyle.com.
Glasses by Paul Smith,
190. Available at David
Clulow. davidclulow.com.
Bag by Mulberry, 895.
mulberry.com
Below: Coat, 795.
Trousers, 565. Both
byPringle of Scotland.
pringlescotland.com.
Glasses by Paul Smith,
190. At David Clulow.
davidclulow.com.
Briefcase by Gieves &
Hawkes, 1,195.
gievesandhawkes.com
G Promotion
Jumper by John
Smedley, 145.
johnsmedley.com.
Skirt by Burberry
Prorsum, 1,495.
burberry.com.
Sunglasses by
Marc Jacobs, 119.
marcjacobs.com
Whether browsing
your favourite stretch
of stylish outtters
or taking inspiration
from the weekend
travel sections,
spur-of-the-moment
decisions can lead to
a world of possibilities.
With the Bentley
Continental GT V8 S
Convertible, there
are rewards for
spontaneity
CITY
Coat by Burberry,
1,095. burberry.com.
Suit by Stella
McCartney, 1,525.
Available at Selfridges.
selfridges.com.
Shirt by Joseph, 175.
joseph-fashion.com.
Bag by Mulberry,
1,300. mulberry.com
Opposite: Coat, 750.
Suit, 1,595. T-shirt,
325. Belt, 125. All by
Gieves & Hawkes.
gievesandhawkes.com.
Glasses by Paul Smith,
190. At David Clulow.
davidclulow.com.
Scarf by Budd, 165.
buddshirts.co.uk
G Promotion
Suit, 1,595. T-shirt, 325.
Both by Gieves & Hawkes,
gievesandhawkes.com.
Shoes by Mr Hare, 420.
mrhare.com. Socks
by Pantherella, 17.
pantherella.com. Scarf,
165. Pocket square,
45. Both by Budd.
buddshirts.co.uk
Opposite, clockwise from
top left: Dress by Nicole
Farhi, 595. nicolefarhi.com.
Handbag by Bentley,
4,800. bentleyhandbag
collection.com. Watch by
Breitling, 9,580. breitling.
com. Suit by Thom Sweeney,
1,530. thomsweeney.co.uk.
Shirt by Smyth & Gibson,
125. smythandgibson.com.
Tie by Emma Willis, 95.
emmawillis.com. Watch by
Breitling, 9,580. breiling.
com. Tank top, 585. Skirt,
1,750. Both by Erdem.
erdem.com. Shoes by
Rupert Sanderson, 375.
rupertsanderson.com
Car featured Bentley
Continental GT V8 S
Convertible in St James
Red with black hood
and linen interior
Hair Simon Izzard at
David Artists using
Unite Professional system
for Blushes Make-up
Michael Gray at David
Artists using Sisley
Womens styling Hope
Lawrie. hopelawrie.com
Models Nina Doinghaus
atSUPA; Stuart Jones
atPremier Model
Management
With thanks to ME Hotel,
melondonuk.com
Take a journey through a selection
of Londons coolest destinations at
gq.co.uk/newluxury
G Promotion G Promotion G Promotion
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All easy charm and
efortless cool, Tom Ford
sauntered into the fashion
world of the Nineties and
shook up the luxury clothing
market with his maximalist
aesthetic. Few people know
how to make clothes that
are both casual and rened
like he does: this red suede
bomber jacket paired with
a white rollneck perfectly
captures the playboy spirit
of the Seventies. Worn with
a pair of sharp sunglasses
like these by Hugo Boss it
makes for the perfect late
summer outt.
Jacket, 4,990. Rollneck, 590.
Jeans, 530. All by Tom Ford.
tomford.com. Shoes by Salvatore
Ferragamo, 455. salvatore
ferragamo.com. Watch by
Breitling for Bentley, 6,090.
breitlingforbentley.com. Belt by
Mulberry, 195. mulberry.com
WEEKEND
Uniti 2 by Naim, 2,795. W1000X headphones
byAudio Technica, 629. Both at Audio Lounge.
The LOOK
audiolounge.co.uk
If you want surround
sound that actually fts in
its surroundings you need
an audio system thats
been designed for your
space. For that you need
to call in the professionals.
Londons latest specialists
are Audio Lounge, who,
after a home visit, will
putyou together a system
costing anything from
5,000 up to 350,000
from their range of
super-high-end
audioequipment.
AUDIO
LOUNGE
The SYSTEM
MODERN BESPOKE
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DESTINATION LUXURY
Of the great ancient cities in easy
striking distance of the UK, few
are more exciting than Istanbul.
Since being founded back in
324AD by Constantine The Great,
Constantinople has captured the
imagination. At its height it was
the most advanced city on the
planet and todays Istanbul
adroitly unites its glorious history
with a keen modernity. The literal
bridgehead between East and
West, its a Muslim metropolis with
a thriving fashion, restaurant and
clubbing scene and despite
recent problems an atmosphere
as liberal as many European
capitals. Its thrillingly diferent
and only four hours from London.
While the historic centre is
unmissable watching ghostly
seagulls oat around the oodlit
minarets of the Hagia Sophia at
midnight is an unforgettable sight
the new cool Istanbul is to be
found on the other side of the
Golden Horn. Here, in a maze
ofthe back streets of Beyolu
district near the main shopping
drag of Istiklal Caddesi, you can
nd fantastic restaurants and cool
bars, as well as a rash of high-end
new hotel openings. This is the
home of artists, actors and the
Istanbul intelligentsia, a bohemia
on the Bosphorus.
The St Regis Istanbul, Mim Kemal
Oke Cad, No35, Sisli, opens on
1September. stregis.com/istanbul
I S T A N B U L
The CITY
Located in the heart
of buzzing Nisantasi,
the 118-room
St Regis is the
latest addition to
Istanbuls exciting
hotel scene and its
800 sq m spa is sure
to be a destination
in its own right.
ST REGIS HOTEL
ISTANBUL
Just a short hop from London, but a world away
fromBritain. The gateway to the east is fast becoming
the discerning travellers decadent destination
LIGHT FANTASTIC
The mighty Hagia
Sophia looks down
on the Bosphorus
in hip Istanbul
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The resident shoemakers at
Gieves & Hawkes agship store
No1 Savile Row, Carrducker
isrmly ensconced as the
fashion-forward alternative
tothe old-school English
traditionalists. The ten-year-old
company makes just a hundred
pairs of shoes a year from its
east London workshop and
their full bespoke service
encourages client input in the
creation of their idiosyncratic
and personalised footwear.
Theyre the people to visit
forupper class uppers.
carreducker.com
Bespoke shoes by
Carrducker, from 2,800.
MODERN BESPOKE
CARRDUCKER
The SHOES
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MODERN BESPOKE
For a man there was a time when going
tothe gym was an act of grunting self-
punishment. Weekend indulgences meant
that you would drag your pallid shell to
thenearest sweat bunker after work on a
Monday night and endure as much pain as
your screaming heart and limbs could take.
For James Duigan, founder and creator
ofBodyism gym, there couldnt be a less
efcient, less soulful method of toning ones
physique. Duigan whos life-enhancing
gymcan be found in the luxe Bulgari Hotel
inKnightsbridge believes a healthy body
can only be truly achieved in tandem with
ahealthy mind. Combining lifestyle tweaks
(when you go to bed, nutrition, stress
management), with a low-impact training
schedule that focuses as much on stretching
and warming up as high-intensity interval
training, Duigan wants you think before
youget breathless. After a Body Oracle
Evaluation they can devise a work-out
thatts as snuggly as a Savile Row suit.
Thebestbit? It works. Bodyism: going
tothegym has never been more you.
bodyism.com
NO SURFACE TENSION
Wind down in the Bulgari
Hotel pool after your
bespoke Bodyism work-out
DESTINATION LUXURY
OFFICE
The SPA
The LOOK
Coat by Alexander McQueen, 1,720.
alexandermcqueen.com. Suit, 2,495.
Shirt, 250. Both by Gieves & Hawkes.
gievesandhawkes.com. Tie by Richard
James, 85. At Selfridges. selfridges.com.
Shoes by Canali, 430. canali.com.
Sunglasses by Tom Ford, 289. tomford.
com. Watch by Herms, 5,150. hermes.
com. Document holder by Mulberry,
695. mulberry.com
Dressing up for the
ofce is all about
understatement and
elegance not ashing
it about with fur trims
and bling. Recently
rejuvenated Gieves &
Hawkes makes exactly
the kind of suit for the
big meeting and works
perfectly with shoes
that give an outt a
little personality like
these fringed monk
straps by Canali.
Bodyism: get the 360-degree
work-out that ts you as
beautifully as your nest suit
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Jacket by Moncler, 600. At Selfridges.
selfridges.com. T-shirt by Dolce
Gabbana, 295. At matchesfashion.
com. Trousers by Moncler, 151. At
matchesfashion.com. Trainers by Gucci,
325. At matchfashion.com. Bag by
Lanvin, 1,355. lanvin.com. Watch
byVictorinox, 389. victorinox.com
SPORTS
LUX
The days when sports
gear was all aertex and
scratchy synthetics are
long gone and the new
generation of work-out
wear is good enough
fora lot more than just
the gym. Adaptable,
comfortable and
lightweight, this neat
padded jacket by
Moncler is ideal for
looks smart or casual as
are these quietly brilliant
trainers by Gucci.
The LOOK
The RESTAURANT
CANVAS
canvasmr.com
For a while there it looked like the London
dining scene was heading towards the
culinary equivalent of a command economy.
Increasingly, restaurant goers found
themselves with no control over when they
ate (with block-long queues having replaced
the good old reservation), or in some cases
what they ate (thanks to the sudden
ubiquityof the single-option menu). The
chef, it seemed, had turned commissar, in
control of all he saw.
But that was then and theres a new now
ifMichael Riemenschneiders new restaurant
Canvas is anything to go by. At his tiny
twenty-cover space hes put the diner rmly
back in control allowing them to create their
own tasting menu as well as choosing how
many courses they want (up to belt-bursting
sixteen), customers can adapt the food to
their ends with vegan andvegetarian options
on ofer. When we visited he was planning
apaleo weekend fora special booking but
we were happy tostickto six courses of his
signature dishes among them langoustine
and pearl barley, and his beyond decadent
version of bread and butter pudding each
of which came paired with an ideal wine
fromhis delightful sommelier.
Choice, it would seem, is back on
themenu.
Diners take charge with a
create-your-own tasting menu
Above: Langoustine, pearl barley, veal and
justcrustace from Canvas 50 per person
tastingmenu
DESTINATION LUXURY
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DESTINATION LUXURY
JULY 2014 G
Bespoke glasses by Tom Davies, from 395.
NEW HORIZONS
A beautiful villa
overlooking the sea at
Jumby Bay, Antigua
JUMBY BAY
The GLASSES
TOM
DAVIES
MODERN BESPOKE
Aesthetically appealing
and technically
accomplished, British
designer Tom Davies
rangeof bespoke eyewear
is millimetre-perfect,
ensuring that whoever
you are your face will ft.
The ESCAPE
Were always told that the
trueluxury is time, which is all
well and good, as long as we
remember that its not universal.
Ask anyone in Pentonville. Time
is a relative luxury. Unless of
course its time spent at Jumby
Bay in Antigua. Then its
universal. Because we all know
what we want from island
paradises, dont we? We want
turquoise seas, a crescent of
white sand, exotic birds
chattering in the palm trees,
tunasteaks seared pink and rum
punch on tap. And this is what
you get from Jumby Bay and
then some.
Our beachside courtyard suite
overlooks the water with its high
ceilings, giant bed and outdoor
bath that we soak in at dusk
the purple petals of the
bougainvillea falling around us in
the windward breeze. The resort
is on a private island, a ten-
minute ferry ride from the
mainland. We jump on bikes and
cycle beyond the hotels network
of suites, through the waterfowl
reserve, then past some of the
estate homes on the private
island that can be rented
through the hotel, such as the
stunning Lazy Lizard, which
sleeps 12 in super high-end
Balinese-style bedrooms arrayed
around a stunning pool and
manicured gardens. At night we
wander to the colonial Estate
House restaurant one of
threein the resort and sip
international standard cocktails
with a local twist before
eatingproper Italian food.
The heat of the day is made
bearable by the shade of the
palm trees, the Caribbean breeze
and the lovingly made Pia
Coladas. We lie on the beach,
thinking we want for nothing.
And then suddenly it dawns on
us. If only we had more time.
Stay at Rosewood Jumby Bay
from 630 per night. Price
basedon two staying in a
Rondavel room on an all-
inclusive basis. To book, visit
jumbybayresort.com or call
00800 8767 3966 (toll-free).
Time stretches out on the beach of this
luxurious and private Caribbean bolthole
tdtomdavies.com
157
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Jacket and waistcoat, 1,920(sold as
three-piece suit). Shirt, 245. Tie,
120. Allby Dolce &Gabbana.
dolcegabbana.com. Trousers, 1,335.
Umbrella, 395. Bothby Alexander
McQueen. alexandermcqueen.com.
Loafers by Berluti, 1,210. berluti.com.
Pocket square byTurnbull & Asser,
55. turnbullandasser.co.uk. Watchby
Breitling, 3,780. breitling.com
The LOOK
EVENING
So much of dressing
well as a man is about
muted colours and
subtle cuts.
Eveningwear ofers the
best opportunity to
break the shackles and
nothing gets noticed
like a pair of statement
trousers, such as this
brocade pair by
Alexander McQueen.
An elegant dinner jacket
will also get a lift from
a well-chosen pocket
square like this rafsh
burgundy number by
Turnbull & Asser.
The LUGGAGE
GLOBE-
TROTTER
The signature Globe-Trotter suitcase
isredolent of the days when travel
wastruly glamorous, all grand touring
Edwardians and porters on the
platform. This timelessness is mirrored
by the production process, which still
sees eachcase handmade in England.
Bespoke Orient 26in suitcase by Globe-Trotter,
from 2,275.
globetrotter1897.com
drakes-london.com
Bespoke tie, 155.
Make sure your blade length is perfect
and your knot sits right with a Drakes
handcrafted custom-made tie.
The TIE
DRAKES
BEYOND
EXPECTATION
You are notorious for
overpacking, not unpacking.
A personal butler to do it for you,
one of the many reasons why.
stregis.com
20102014 Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Preferred Guest, SPG, St. Regis and their logos are the trademarks of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., or its afliates.
a legacy of luxury. now at over 30 of the worlds finest hotels & resorts.
africa the americas asia europe the middle east
Hey, Hollywood, didnt you hear?
Breaking Bads BryanCranston is the danger! Hey, Hollywood, didnt you hear?
Breaking Bads BryanCranston is the danger!
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ON iPAD AND WEB BROWSERS
And available soon on smartphones
Digital Lifestyle
Magazine
Of The Year!
INTERNATIONAL
WINNER
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JULY 2014 G
IMRAN AMED
I
stopped regularly wearing a watch several years ago as my
mobile phone slowly but surely became the go-to place for
information about everything. Indeed, the reex action of
looking at my left wrist to nd out the time was replaced by a
quasi-obsessive habit of checking my phone every few minutes
for emails, text messages, Instagram and everything else.
I bet Im not the only one.
Thats why I have been so intrigued to see more and more people
wearing technology-enabled bracelets on their wrists everyone
from the artist Marc Quinn to the young people who work on my
team at The Business Of Fashion. These are not timepieces but part
of the rapidly growing market for wearable technology devices that
can track your every move, how many minutes you sleep, calories
you burn and so forth. The general idea is that by having access to
real, measurable data, these gadgets can help us to lead healthier,
more active lives.
The trend is catching on fast. According to a report by Credit Suisse,
the market for wearable technology (not just wristbands; computer
chips are being embedded in everything from eyeglasses to trainers
to clothing) could soon reach up to $50 billion (29.4bn) a year. A
study by Canalys predicts that more than 17 million tech bands are
expected to be sold this year alone, and more than 45
million by 2017.
Three of the biggest players are the Fitbit Flex, the
Jawbone UP24 and the Nike+ FuelBand SE. To see
what all the fuss is about, I decided to try all of them
simultaneously for one week, to get a feel for whether
having this kind of data was helpful to me, and to
assess which band was the best and which, if any, I
could see myself wearing over the long term.
First things rst, none of these devices is the kind
of thing one would wear to make a style statement.
Its not to say that they are ugly, but there is nothing
particularly aesthetically appealing about them
either. Unlike, say, the classic elegance of a Swiss
watch, these look and feel more like those rubber
friendship bracelets anyone who grew up in the
Eighties may remember, just slightly thicker and
even more unsightly. They have a long way to go
before they become something people want to wear
for stylistic reasons.
Then there was the setup and ongoing
maintenance of each device ie, keeping them
charged up and synced with my iPhone. While I
quite like the name Fitbit and it has more than a
50 per cent share of the wearable-tech market, a
better name might be the ddly bit. There were
so many things to make sense of when opening
up the packaging: two separate-sized bands, a
charging device, and then the bit itself, which can
be inserted into different bands. So clunky was the
set-up and charging process that it was the rst of
the three bands to go it lasted only three days.
By comparison, the Jawbone UP24 was a breeze
to set up. But it, too, has an unwieldy external
charger, which uses an earphone-like jack on one
side to plug into the device and a USB-format
plug on the other side to connect to a computer
or laptop.
The easiest by far to set up was Nikes FuelBand,
which plugs straight into the computer via USB. It
is the only one of these devices that has a built-in
screen so you can track your results and progress
directly, and the only one that is waterproof,
meaning I did not have to take it off in the shower
every day.
But the FuelBand has no sleep tracker and, as it turns out, this was
the information that I found most interesting. As a very active person,
it was of course useful to know that I take an average of 12,000 steps
per day, and all of the devices delivered fairly consistent data about
this. But understanding how many hours I had slept, and how many
of these represented truly restful sleep, was something completely
new to me. Still, whether the data are accurate was hard to verify.
Partway through my testing period, reports broke out that Nike
had laid off a signicant portion of its FuelBand team, bolstering
rumours that the company was shutting down its wearables division
and collaborating with Apple on something called the iWatch or iBand
although none of this could be veried and the companies refused
to comment. But the lay-offs at Nike seem to underscore the
difculty of a marketing company trying to be a tech company.
Indeed, my conclusion is that the wearables market has a long way
to go before I would be motivated to wear one of these devices every
day. By the end of the week I had stopped wearing any of them,
either because the charge had run out or I had forgotten to put them
back on after taking a shower.
So for now, my wrist remains device-free. But the wearables market
is denitely one to watch, and whoever gets the fashion and function
right could lead the way for a whole new growth vector
in the technology marketplace.
Things are only just getting started. In addition to
Apple, Intel is planning a big splashy entrance into
the wearables market later this year through a design
collaboration with the edgy New York fashion retailer
Opening Ceremony. Samsung, Apples ercest rival,
has just launched the Samsung Gear Fit, which tracks
sleep, steps and even your heart rate.
Stay tuned.
Wristbands
havea long way
to go before
people will
wearthem for
stylistic reasons
Watch this space:
Tech-enabled
bracelets may call
time on the humble
chronograph
among a certain
demographic
An increasing number of us are switching from
watches to wristbands loaded with personal data
but they dont yet match function with fashion,
says Imran Amed
ARE YOU ON THE
BAND WAGON?
161
G JUNE 2014 G JULY 2014
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E
ach year the GQ Men Of The Year
awards strives for more for bigger
names, for more outstanding
achievements, for men (and one
woman) at the peak of their powers but
2013 may have been the year that we even
managed to impress ourselves.
Not just a Hollywood legend in Michael
Douglas, but one whod pulled of the
performance of a lifetime as Liberace in
Behind The Candelabra.
Not just a musician whod had a good year,
but in Pharrell Williams, someone who had
three No1s, which is only just the right side
ofgreedy. Entrepreneur Of The Year Evgeny
Lebedev was a multibillionaire media
magnate about to launch a TV station. GQ
Men Of The Year 2013: go big, or go home.
Musical legends (Sir Elton John) mixed
with sporting ones (Sir Bobby Charlton).
Titans of tailoring (Tom Ford) joked with
kings of comedy (Simon Pegg and Nick
Frost). The prince of the in-crowd (Nick
Grimshaw) rubbed shoulders with the don
ofthe new establishment (Boris Johnson).
Agod (Thors Tom Hiddleston) shared
the stage with a woman best known
for witchcraft (Emma Watson). Justin
Timberlake even turned up just to present
(go on then, Justin, if you must).
It was an array of talent most thought
would be impossible to match so we
decided to make this year even better.
Inproud association with Hugo Boss, the
GQMen Of The Year awards will once
againbe held at the Royal Opera House
inCovent Garden, London, on the evening
of2September, andwed like you to help
uschoose one of the winners.
GQ is asking for your help selecting the
Breakthrough award winner. Go to GQ.co.uk
to vote the deadline is 26 June and one
lucky reader will be chosen at random to win
two tickets to the ceremony and a money-
cant-buy goodie bag from Hugo Boss.
This years GQ Men
Of The Year awards
is hurtling into view
and you can win the
chance to join our
annual celebration
of the brilliant and
the beautiful. To
get yourhands
on 2014s hottest
ticket, read on...
162
MOTY
Vote by post to GQ Men Of The Year, Vogue House, Hanover Square, London W1S 1JU
Dan Stevens
Tom Hiddleston
andEmma Watson
Pharrell Williams and
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley
Eddie Redmayne,
Alexa Chung and
Nick Grimshaw
Ellie Goulding, Sir Elton
John and Rita Ora
Arctic Monkeys
Michael Douglas, Justin Timberlake, Tom Ford and Samuel L Jackson
MEN OF THE YEAR
Gillian Anderson
and Boris Johnson
To vote for the Breakthrough award winner,
email gqletters@condenast.co.uk or vote online
at GQ.co.uk. Closing date: 26 June 2014
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This months new releases
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EDI TED BY BILL PRINCE
JULY 2014 G 165
HIGHER GROUND
Edwin Heathcote hails architect Rem Koolhaas, the man
reconstructing the Venice Architecture Biennale
City link: An artists
impression of
PontJean-Jacques
Boscco, a bridge
being built in
Bordeaux, France, by
OMA, Rem Koolhaas
co-founded company
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G JULY 2014 Photographs Eyevine; Getty Images
T
here is an exquisite irony in holding the greatest forum for
contemporary architecture in Venice. Here is a city that has
remained almost entirely static for three centuries. There is no
new architecture in Venice. It is unspoilt. By modern architects. Is
that why it is beautiful? Is that why everyone, even architects, loves
to be there? It has been in terminal decline for centuries, sinking,
decaying, fantastic. Once a city of decadence and illicit sex in wigs
and masks, it is now a city of fat tourists and souvenir shops. But it
teems with festivals. The sexy elds of lm and art dominate. Glam-
orous parties, buckets of money and puddles of PR mix a Bellini of
beautiful, slightly surgically adjusted people, wealthy producers and
collectors. The Architecture Biennale
is not like that. There are a couple of
parties, but they are rammed and
sticky. The Architecture Biennale is,
usually, a cocktail of inated models
of extravagant skyscrapers and
cultural buildings, thinly disguised
pitches for work and a giant whinge
by and about architects not being
recognised for their genius. There
may be dozens of art biennales and
hundreds of lm festivals, but there
is only one for architecture that really
counts and the result is architects
talking, loudly, to themselves.
But this year is different. This year
the director is Rem Koolhaas, the
greatest architectural thinker of his
generation and a man unafraid to tell
it like it is.
Koolhaas is the architect who has
transformed Prada into a cultural des-
tination as much as a fashion brand,
with stores redened as epicentres
and an impressive in-progress cul-
tural centre in Milan. He has built the
most radical and brilliant public build-
ing of this century: the crystalline
Seattle Central Library, in which the
building is reduced to a ramp rising
through the Dewey Decimal System
of book stacks. He is the architect of
the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, the
huge, looping propaganda tower that
dominates the citys smoggy skyline.
He is an architect in love with modernity. Four years ago his
installation at the Venice Biennale railed against what he called
cronocaos the increasing tendency to conserve and preserve. He
highlighted the creeping ubiquity of heritage protection, Unesco
landmarking, cultural conservation and the protection of landscapes
as an absurdity that will trap us in our own nostalgia, making us
unable to build new cities, or even to change existing ones.
This year, perhaps in deliberate provocation of his Venetian
setting, his theme is modernity. In an introductory talk he showed
photos of newly built buildings in cities across the world a century
ago. It was a panoply of national styles and local ornaments,
curry-house domes and Mughal windows, Renaissance arcades and
half-timbered Tudoring, art nouveau swirls and naked girls inscribed
into the architecture. This was 1914. He followed it with a slide of
2014, the age of central business districts, clusters of Identikit glass
towers from the US to the UAE, Boston to Beijing. Everywhere looks
the same. How did this happen, he is asking? How have architects
allowed architecture to become globalised, homogenised, banal?
Its a question not entirely answered by Koolhaas latest block-
buster building, a massive complex in his home city of Rotterdam
called, unimaginatively, De Rotterdam. It is a huge wall of glass and
steel, unmistakably modern. I asked Koolhaas once why he lived in
Rotterdam. Because it is ugly and boring, he said.
Koolhaas likes ugly as much as he likes modern. This is an architect
deeply uninterested in the pictur-
esque. This is the architect who
coined the word bigness to describe
the condition of contemporary archi-
tecture. The mall, the airport, the
ofce, he explained, have become so
huge that their exteriors can no
longer bear any realistic relationship
to their interiors. They are the big
boxes. You cant make streets or
squares between them, they do not
contribute to a cityscape. It is the end
of architecture, the end of the tradi-
tional city. Bigness, he wrote, is no
longer part of any urban tissue. Its
subtext is f*** context.
Venice does have a subtext, though.
Rems sideshow is entitled Funda-
mentals. This is a parallel show about
the bits of buildings the windows,
stairs, oors, lifts and so on. Here he
is attempting to study architecture at
a more mundane level, the level of
everyday physical familiarity rather
than intellectual examination. He
shows a series of famous figures
standing on balconies. Mussolini,
Hitler, Lenin, Ceausescu, Evita, Havel
and so on. Balconies may not sound
like much of a basis for a study of
architecture, but how might history
have looked without them? All those
dictators, demagogues and revolu-
tionaries in search of a podium.
Sometimes it is the most invisible and
least architectural elements that determine
not only the shape of our cities, but the
events that shape our history. The balcony
allows even the humblest resident to look down on the street or the
square with the power of a pope or a prince. It is a platform for
surveying the city, much like the Biennale itself. If you want to know
what is going on in architecture, go. There is no better viewing point.
And if you hate it, theres always Venice.
The Venice Architecture Biennale runs from 7 June until 23 November.
labiennale.org
Edwin Heathcote is an architect and the architecture and design
critic of the Financial Times.
Beyond the nostalgia trap
Radical modernist Rem Koolhaas is taking the Venice Architecture Biennale to new heights
By Edwin Heathcote
A R C H I T E C T U R E
Height of Kool: Rem Koolhaas (inset) De Rotterdam building in
the Netherlands and the Seattle Public Library (below) in the US
166
JULY 2014 G Photograph Getty Images
R
ight now is the 30th
anniversary of one of the
most signicant months in
the history of pop. In June 1984,
Prince released Purple Rain (20
million copies, ve hit singles), while
Bruce Springsteen launched Born In
The USA (30 million, seven hits).
That month, Huey Lewis & the News
spent one week at the peak of the
Billboard album chart. Otherwise,
the top spot was held by just four
albums all year Purple Rain, Born In
The USA, Thriller and the Footloose
soundtrack and three of those
(sorry, Footloose) are lasting classics.
Such mass agreement didnt
stop there. At one point, Prince
simultaneously enjoyed the top
album, song and movie in the US.
U2 and Madonna were on their way
to becoming, respectively, the rock
band and female star who dened
the decade. In Britain, ve of the
ten bestselling singles of the Eighties
came out that year. For all these
reasons 1984 was the pinnacle of
what critics call the monoculture,
when it felt as if everyone was
dancing to the same beat.
Just a few years ago, it was
generally agreed that this would
never happen again. The gatekeepers
of old radio, retail chains and MTV
had lost their grip on the publics
listening habits, as the vast libraries
of Amazon, Spotify and iTunes
allowed a million niches to bloom.
Some listeners celebrated this
apparent revolution. Others mourned
it: the US writer Tour complained,
Today theres no Moments, just
moments. Theyre smaller, less
intense, shorter in duration and
shared by fewer people.
The prophet of the new era was
Chris Anderson, whose 2006 book
The Long Tail: Why The Future Of
Business Is Selling Less Of More
insisted we were leaving behind
the tyranny of lowest-common-
denominator fare and entering
a more tribal micro-culture era,
where were all into different things:
monoculture RIP. Like all addictive
theories, it chimed so neatly with
common sense that it had to be true.
Except that it wasnt.
Anita Elberse of Harvard Business
School rst challenged the long tail
theory in 2008, and her recent book
Blockbusters: Why Big Hits And
Big Risks Are The Future Of The
Entertainment Business politely but
rmly squashes it. Across the board,
the winner-takes-all model is back
with a vengeance. Microculture
is wonderful for the curious and
voracious connoisseur, but its not
where the money is.
But Elberses thesis elides the
differences between art forms; she
only understands pop music when it
resembles Hollywood in the form of
well-funded megastars such as Lady
Gaga and Jay-Z. Boardroom cunning
cant explain why Adeles 21 sold
28 million copies; it cant explain
All hail the short tail
No more blockbusters? Dont tell the techies...
By Dorian Lynskey
M U S I C
Gangnam Style. Elberses top-down
analysis underrates how consumer
behaviour bucked the long tail. Most
listeners didnt want to be liberated
from the shackles of monoculture
after all. They liked it.
Tech evangelists always overrate
the power of gadgets to change
human nature. The internet may be
virtually innite, but free time and
attention are not. Even without the
practical restrictions of airtime and
shelf space, few records have the
cultural room to go supernova. And
instead of reducing the power of
big hits, online activity magnies
it. When a song goes viral today it
generates a feedback loop of cover
versions, parodies, YouTube mash-
ups, tweets and think pieces that can
last for months: exactly the kind of
ubiquitous, unifying Moment that
we thought was gone. Consider Get
Lucky, Blurred Lines or 2014s
most streamed track, Happy, all of
which involved Pharrell Williams, the
dapper king of monoculture 2.0.
Its not exactly 1984 redux. Todays
blockbusters, driven by social media,
tend to be songs rather than albums:
Pharrells charming, lightweight
album Girl (RCA) is doing ne, but
its no Thriller. But last year was still
dominated by a handful of stars
Kanye, Daft Punk, Miley Cyrus
who were played, danced to and
debated for months on end.
This unpredicted reversion to the
monster hit would be depressing
if the money-men could bank
on a stream of lowest-common-
denominator clones. However, the
biggest singles of recent years have
come from a heterogenous bunch,
including a chubby 30-something
South Korean (Psy) and an unknown
teenager from New Zealand (Lorde).
As in the Eighties, the communal
experience has room for variety
and unpredictability.
I worry about what monocultures
revenge means for the mass of
musicians. If the prophets of
atomisation had been correct,
then more people would be able to
make a good living from music. In
economic terms, the internet has
squeezed the artistic middle classes
while boosting the super-rich. But as
a fan of pop as a unifying force, not
just a private pleasure, Im relieved
that there is an enduring human
desire to get together around a
shared song. And then post a bad
cover version on YouTube.
Bruce almighty:
Bruce Springsteens
Born In The USA
was one of only
four albums to
dominate the
charts in 1984
LYNSKEYS
LIST
Futurology
Manic Street
Preachers
(Sony)
Fiercely modernist
in both form and
content, the
Manics Berlin-
made 12th album
is one of their
boldest and best.

Lazaretto
Jack White
(Third Man/XL)
Without a band to
tie his hands, solo
Jack is pure
theatre: classic
rock spruced up
with sexual
psychodrama and
vaudevillian
ripeness.
New Eyes
Clean Bandit
(Atlantic)
This years
Disclosure, or
perhaps the
low-calorie
version. Breezy,
nimble dance-pop
built for
summer-long
ubiquity.
167
G JULY 2014
GQ BOOK CLUB
L I T E R AT U R E
I
ts the least efcient use of your
time that you can imagine, says
Jess Walter of writing ction.
True, it took him 15 years to write
his 2012 bestseller, Beautiful Ruins
(Penguin, 9), but in the time its
taken to publish the follow-up,
WeLive In Water (right,
Penguin, 9), he has become
the kind of novelist whose
name is seen everywhere, so
perhaps hes being too hard
on his working methods.
In Beautiful Ruins, Walter
drew on his experiences as a
screenwriter in Hollywood,
combining them with the
lives of ctional characters
on the margins of the 1962
production of Cleopatra. Walters
brilliant plot weaves stories within
stories that, consumed together, take
on an almost epic quality.
As the exotic Roman and Ligurian
locations of Beautiful Ruins and the
big-city paranoia of his New York
9/11 novel, 2009s The Financial
Lives Of The Poets (Penguin, 9),
pay testament, Walter has two
styles of ction. One is to venture
out and write, he says, and the
other is to sit home and write.
We Live In Water, a collection
written over the same period as
Beautiful Ruins, is founded on the
kind of imaginative magnetism that
makes where a writer is from just
as important as where they travel.
All of the stories in the new
collection are set in Walters
hometown of Spokane, US, where
even before the recession about a
fth of the population lived below
the poverty line. Walter writes,
On any given day in Spokane,
there are more adult men per capita
riding childrens BMX bikes than
in any other city in the world.
Its a typically tragicomic Walter
observation. As he says, The idea
for me was to capture a moment in
which, because of the nancial crisis,
we have stopped noticing poverty...
As such, we meet homeless drug
addict Bit, who spends his last $20
on the new Harry Potter book for
his son in foster care. In Virgo, an
aggrieved journalist seeks revenge
on his superstitious ex-girlfriend by
reworking her horoscopes into a
daily stream of prophecies of doom.
In the most haunting of these stories
a drug dealer falls in love with one of
his young homeless minions. And in
the perfectly structured title piece,
a divorcee returns to Spokane to try
to discover what happened
to his own absentee father
who disappeared in 1958.
Despite the authenticity
of his stories, Walter, 48,
is the rst to admit that as
a younger man he had a
love-hate relationship with
home. As he notes in his
long afterword, a list of 50
facts about Spokane and
his place in it, I had a
conversation with someone about
all that was wrong with Spokane.
He said it was too poor and too
white and too uneducated and too
unsophisticated, and as he spoke
I realised something: this guy hated
Spokane because of people like me.
The Walter family were cattle
ranchers, his father worked on a now
defunct aluminium plant and he was
the rst of his family to go to college.
If there is a connection to be found
between both We Live In Water and
Beautiful Ruins, he says, It is in lives
that we dont notice. The characters
that make up Beautiful Ruins are
kind of in the wake of fame. Fame
blows by like a big, fast speedboat
and theyre whats left over.
Theres a comparable sense of
marginality to We Live In Water, too.
I think these are other lives that
are sort of left in the wake, he says.
Maybe it comes from growing up
in a working-class family, in a place
that is left in the wake of history
the Pompeii of America, you know. If
it doesnt get destroyed by a volcano,
no one will ever know about it.
He has a point. Tap Spokane into
Google News and you will likely be
confronted with many small-town
tragedies, but as the 103rd largest
city in the US, these are hardly
events that generate headlines. In
the bleakly comic, perfectly told
versions of his city he presents,
Walter has a far larger captive
audience. Its one that he, and his
home town, thoroughly deserve.
The lost chronicles
Jess Walter slows down to capture tragicomic moments
By Olivia Cole
Just when you thought youd
read everything there is to read
about the punk-rock wars,
justwhen you thought youd
consumed all there is to know
about 1976 and 1977, when
Britain turned bright yellow
anduorescent pink, and
whenaglottal stop became the
currency of choice, just when
you thought you couldnt read
any more about the Clash, the
Sex Pistols and the various
warsof attrition between the
custodians of the laughingly
titled new wave along comes
the best punk memoir of the
decade. Viv Albertine was
amember of the Slits, not only
one of the most important
punk bands, but also one of the
most inuential all-girl groups
of all time. Her autobiography,
the rather brilliantly entitled
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes.
Music, Music, Music. Boys,
Boys, Boys (Faber, 14.99),
adds another voice to the
ever-expanding library of
booksabout London in the
mid-Seventies, telling her
storyagainst a background
offamily disquiet and musical
revolution (the title of the
bookis what her mother
alwaysused to sayshe was
obsessed with). Alongthe way
she bumps (andsometimes
grinds) into most ofthe punk
principals, including Sid
Vicious, Mick Jones, Johnny
Thunders andJohn Lydon.
Funny, uncompromising and
extremelyfrank (here, bodily
functions are to be celebrated,
not disguised), Albertines
bookis a masterpiece of
recollection. Frankly, she
makesLady Gaga look like a
showroom dummy. Dylan Jones
ATYPICAL GIRL
Tom Barbashs
compulsively
readable collection
of short stories,
StayUp With Me
(Simon & Schuster,
8.50), centres
onemotional rifts
inthe lives of
NewYorkers: a
middle-aged Dante
professor who
creates his own
special circle of hell
by introducing his
young, virile son to
one of his attractive
female students;
aparty host who
proceeds with his
annual Thanksgiving
party neglecting
totell his friends
that his wife has
lefthim. But if you
are looking for
well-travelled,
longer-form ction,
Alex Prestons new
novel, In Love And
War (Faber & Faber,
15), features spies,
love afairs and life
in Thirties Italy in
actional cocktail
thats hard to resist.
Nick Harkaway,
who has written
nonction on
thepower of the
internet, gives
cyber-addiction
astarring role in
histhird novel,
Tigerman (William
Heineman, 17).
Theson of John
leCarr, Harkaway
follows an Afghan
veteran seeking a
quiet life in the
ctional former
colony of Mancreu.
But if you prefer to
be frightened by
real-life events,
consider Morten
Storms Agent
Storm: My Life
Inside Al Qaeda
And The CIA (inset,
Atlantic Monthly
Press, 16), a
chillingaccount
ofthe forces at
work in jihadi
terrorism and
counterterrorism.
Asmall-town
Scandinavian
gangcriminal who
became a supporter
of extreme violence
before becoming
adouble agent for
the CIA and the
British and Danish
intelligence services,
Storm isHomelands
Sergeant Brody
come to life. OC
168
JULY 2014 G Illustration Phil Disley
G
od, he looked knackered by the end.
As Wayne Rooney dragged his bones
from the pitch at Bayern Munichs
Allianz Arena back in April he appeared
every bit the World Cup disaster waiting to
happen. Again.
We know the signs now: late-season inju-
ries; patched-up, increasingly laboured
performances; the ever-present weight of expectation. Rooney will
be part of the World Cups commercial swirl again this summer, lining
up beside stellar contemporaries such as Cristiano Ronaldo and
Neymar, except this time even the marketing department embraces
the gloomy personal narrative. Cut to the ad and Ronaldo marches
purposefully through an airport packed with fans, while Neymar
looks out from the team bus at Brazils World Cup mania beyond.
Rooney, unsmiling, puts on a suit in his hotel room as if hes got
12 points on his licence and a magistrate to impress. Nobody
smiles; nobody looks glad to be there. A voice reveals
Rooney has never scored at a World Cup. He needs to
make a difference, the pundit concludes. Leaving
the building, Rooney passes through the type of
babbling media scrum that met Oscar Pistorius at
the start of his trial. None of it looks fun.
Pressure shapes legends, is Nikes message.
Risk everything.
And here it is once more: the last words
Rooney needs to hear before a major tourna-
ment. This is it, boy. These four weeks will
dene the rest of your life. Impossible is
nothing, Adidas told athletes before Paula
Radcliffe ran the 2004 Olympic marathon. But
it was wrong. Impossible was something. Im-
possible left her suffering what appeared to be a
nervous breakdown on a kerbside in Athens. Im-
possible turned out to be as solid as any brick wall.
So Rooney now enters what has become a vicious
circle of hype. His sponsors know his history of failure.
Their storyboard is all about taking what may be a last
chance, righting the wrongs of the past, setting the
record straight, proving his greatness on the biggest
stage of all. You know, the usual head-muddling shit
he swallows every time. The world is watching, the
world is judging, England expects.
Gary Neville said he never met a player less affected
by pressure than Rooney. But that was young Wayne,
who turned to the rest of the dressing room on the eve
of Englands European Championship game with France
in 2004 and told them, Just give me the ball. I want
it. Ill do it. And he did.
Somewhere along the road in his career, for
England at least, that changed. Rooney still wants
the ball, but now he must use it to prove himself.
There is now hype about his failure to live up
to the hype; hype about his struggle to justify
the hype. Yet if the past ten years of interna-
tional competition have seemed a millstone
for Rooney, perhaps that is because he is thrust
not just onto a football pitch but into a mar-
ketplace. Through the sponsors, his advisors
garner cheques their client cannot cash, not least because he is
saddled with an under-performing national team. So Rooney charges
around in ever-decreasing circles trying to justify a sell that was
never truly his, becoming ever more frustrated and angry until the
inevitable calamitous denouement.
The same with Manchester United. One of the reasons Rooney
appeared to be approaching burnout as another momentous summer
approached was his disproportionate commitment to a team that
had lost its way without Sir Alex Ferguson. There are plenty of
United players who will go to the World Cup lightly raced, but
Rooney played against Bayern Munich even when his manager,
David Moyes, admitted he had trouble striking the ball.
Towards the end of the 2012-13 season, Roy Hodgson, the England
manager, attended Manchester Uniteds Champions League last-16
tie against Real Madrid, for which Rooney was dropped. Hodgson
said privately that he could understand Fergusons decision.
He hasnt exactly pulled up trees for me, either,
he complained. This season, that has changed.
Rooney was instrumental in dragging
England through a stumbling qualifying
campaign, and his partnership with
Daniel Sturridge offers real promise.
There was never any true threat to
Rooneys place, but now he is
regarded as integral to any English
hope of progress. So business as
usual. It was Sven-Gran Eriks-
sons utter inability to construct a
useful plan without Rooney that
led to his ill-fated insertion into
the quarter-nal with Portugal in
2006. Clearly unt and furious at
this disadvantage, he was shown a
red card. Dont kill him, pleaded
Eriksson to the press after England were
knocked out on penalties. We didnt need
to; Eriksson already had.
Four years on, and in the build-up to South
Africa in 2010 Rooney found a perfect and unlikely
foil in Emile Heskey. As Heskey occupied defenders
with sheer physicality, Rooney attacked from deep and
was Europes top scorer in the qualiers. Then Fabio Capello
meddled with the formula and, anticipation again at fever pitch,
Rooney opped. Capello is convinced peer pressure got to him. As
others enhanced their reputations, Rooney, whose image was
projected onto tall buildings in the host cities, cursed and
snarled as England stunk the place out against Algeria.
His private life was unravelling, too, but that had never
bothered him in the past, and one of his nest perfor-
mances for England, away in Switzerland in 2012, came
when the lurid headlines were at a peak.
So if that doesnt trouble him, what does? Go back to
that television spot and an old joke. What do you call
a Scouser in a suit? The accused. In Brazil, Rooney
must stop thinking he has a case to answer, and start
playing football again.
Martin Samuel is the chief sports writer of the DailyMail
and the 2014 NPA Sports Writer Of The Year.
Conforming to hype
As the World Cup kicks off, Wayne Rooney must tune out media pressure to keep his eye on the ball
By Martin Samuel
S P O R T
Best foot forward:
With the weight of
the World Cup on
his shoulders, all
eyes are on Rooney
169
G JULY 2014
P O L I T I C S
I
f you want to know why the Tories, at heart, in their bones, irre-
spective of the ups and downs of the polls, still expect to win, or at
least remain in coalition, after 7 May next year... well, heres why.
Before the 1997 general election, Labour devoted an entire party
political broadcast to images of Tony Blair trotting the globe, shaking
hands with world leaders, schmoozing his way round the planet. The
objective was to present Blair not only as the likely winner, treated
as such by heads of government, but as a presidential gure.
What Margaret Thatcher had called strong leadership, Blair took
even further. The Labour Party, parliament, the cabinet: all had
a role to play. But between his landslide
victory over John Major and ejection from
Number Ten by Gordon Brown in 2007
HMG came as close as it had ever been
to a cult of personality.
Blair wanted Number Ten and the cabinet
Ofce to act as a British West Wing. He
wanted his own plane the much-satirised
Blair Force One. What became known as
sofa government was his botched attempt
to make an Oval Ofce of the prime minis-
ters den, and his own job a presidency in
all but name. For such aspirations, he was
widely pilloried especially after the lib-
eration of Iraq, which came to be seen
(quickly and wrongly) as a monomaniacal
act of individual recklessness, and a case
study of what goes wrong when too much
power is concentrated in one mans hands.
Since Blairs departure, politicians of all
parties including his own have disowned
his presidential style and pledged to
strengthen the power of parliament and the
importance of the cabinet. You will often
read or hear about the growing importance
of parliamentary select committees or the
respective enthusiasm of the PM or leader
of the opposition for teamwork (which is
to say, the achievements of the cabinet or
shadow cabinet).
Yet such political diplomacy is a mere
diversion from the general trend. In ofce,
David Cameron has headed an unprece-
dented governing arrangement, in which
power is notionally dispersed not only between two parties but among
the Quad (Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander)
and a maze of bipartisan committees. But, in practice, this is the
Cameron government. It is Number Ten that runs the show. It is the
PMs aides who wield most power. It is Daves friends who prosper.
Parliament can still stop the ambitions of a prime minister, as it did
when Cameron hoped to intervene with Barack Obama in Syria. But
those presidential yearnings have been thwarted occasionally, not
killed off. The direction of travel is clear.
Even now, Lord Falconer, one of Blairs closest lieutenants, is chair-
ing a discreet review for Ed Miliband investigating the structure of
government, with particular attention paid to the power of the
Centre (a euphemism for Ed and his advisors). If he wins, Miliband
intends to be every bit as presidential as Blair. He may do so with less
swagger: I cannot see Prime Minister Miliband and First Lady Justine
turning to wave as they board the PMs personal 747. But even as
he promised decentralisation, devolution, handing power back to the
people Ed would be aggregating authority to himself as ruthlessly
as any of his predecessors.
Why is this so? Primarily because of technology: television and now
the web. These media demand personality, an identiable individual
who is accountable for what is happening, or not happening. We
expect answers, quickly. We have been made impatient by consumer-
ism and digitalisation: a question in the Commons some time next
week is not going to cut it. The same forces that have nurtured the
culture of celebrity have driven political
presidentialism.
So it is no accident that the leadership
debates dominated the last general election
campaign. In fact, the contest had 650
separate events, each for a separate con-
stituency. But it was fought as if the voters
were choosing between Cameron, Clegg
and Gordon Brown, rather than their own
particular constituency candidates. Self-
evidently, general elections remain parlia-
mentary in ofcial form; but, in their true
character, they are profoundly presidential.
Which brings me back to my opening
proposition. The Tories fret about UKIP.
They fret about the collapse of the Lib
Dems beneting Labour. They fret about
the statistical recovery not being matched
by a sense of improved wellbeing among
voters, or the limitation of such a sense to
the South insufcient to win an election.
Yet their ace in the hole (they believe)
is Miliband. He is more cunning and more
opportunistic than the Conservative high
command expected, and has maintained
high levels of unity in a party that looked
set fair for civil war after its rst defeat in
18 years. His conference speech last year
may have made little economic sense, but
its emphasis upon the cost of living set the
political agenda for months.
Miliband has all this. What he does not
have is a presidential bearing. In the most
supercial sense, he looks like a political
nerd, a bit of an oddball, a nice enough guy, but not a man you could
easily imagine standing between Obama and Putin at a summit.
In an ideal world, such impressions might not matter. But as Malcolm
Gladwell shows in his best book, Blink, they matter enormously.
In poll after poll, Cameron who looks completely at ease with the
US president or Angela Merkel beats his Labour opponent hands
down as a man suited to be PM. By common consent, he excels at the
choreography of leadership, the big moment or the statesmanlike
apology. So it all comes down to this: what, precisely, will the voters
be asking themselves on 7 May? The Conservatives hope it is this:
who is the most plausible prime minister? Because if that is the ques-
tion, then Cameron is indeed home and dry.
The updated paperback edition of Matthew dAnconas In It Together:
The Inside Story Of The Coalition Government is published this month
by Penguin, 9.99.
Im a celebrity... get me into Number Ten
Image is everything in elections, which is why Ed Miliband is not in poll position for next May
By Matthew dAncona
Disproportional representation: (Big) Ed Miliband doesnt
measure up to popular expectations of a potential PM
Photo illustration Rex 170
JULY 2014 G
F I L M
Thinking outside the box
With C4s Fargo reboot, TV is stealing Hollywoods ideas and its thunder
Oculus ++
Heres looking at you
Following the death of Kaylie
(ex-Doctor Who companion Karen
Gillan) and Tims (Brenton Thwaites)
beloved parents, caused by a (yes)
supernatural mirror ten years earlier,
Oculus chronicles the siblings return
to their childhood home to orchestrate
their revenge on the mirror. In fairness,
some good camera-work heightens
the fright and ofers a unique take on
the damaged childrens psyches, but
Oculus potential falls short with a
tiresome seen-it-a-mile-of nale.
Alice Howarth Out on 13 June.
Fruitvale Station ++++
Rotten apples
Pushed with all his considerable
might to no avail by Harvey Weinstein
during Oscar season, but winner of
the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance,
Fruitvale Station only barely got a
release here with a minor studio
yet its well worth hunting down.
Telling the true slice-of-life tale of
a young black man (played by the
standout Michael B Jordan) as he
struggles to stay on the straight and
narrow, juggling job and child, its
a triumph of small moments leading
to a tragic nale. SM Out on 6 June.
The Young And Prodigious TS Spivet
++++
Big brains
Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amlie) whirls
back to form with this whimsical
tale of a precocious child who leaves
home to pick up an award from
the Smithsonian. It explodes with
visual ourishes as an expression of
its theme, which is the imagination
(dangerous when mythologising the
US; fruitful in its capacity to advance
science). Jeunets use of 3-D, in
particular, has an intelligence that
others lmmakers would do well to
imitate. Charlie Burton Out on 13 June.
The not-quite boys are back in town,
in the form of Channing Tatum and
Jonah Hill, once again pretending
to be in full-time education to bust
another drug ring in 22 Jump Street
(out on 6 June). Only this time, theyre
in college. The rst worked due to its
pitch-perfect ear for the American
kids of today, so with the same team
behind it expect a bigger, brasher
and just-as-funny sequel, possibly
with Spring Break and college girls
wearing bikinis thrown in, too.
Elsewhere, one to take your
parents to at the weekend but
almost certainly avoid like a David
Moyes Best of Manchester United
DVD otherwise is Jersey Boys
(out on 20 June), Clint Eastwoods
rather unlikely lm adaptation of the
perma-hit musical, which promises to
do for the songs of the Four Seasons
what Mamma Mia! did for the music
of Abba that is, make people who
didnt like their records in the rst
place hate them that much more.
Finally, Grace Of Monaco (out
on 6 June), which who knows?
could well be brilliant, stars Nicole
Kidman in the lead role as Grace Kelly,
following her split loyalties during
a dispute between her husband,
Monacos Prince Rainier III (Tim Roth),
and Frances Charles de Gaulle. Yet
prestige biopics nearly always open in
the winter Oscar season, so this feels
like the burying of a bad lm. SM
Chef +++
A tried-and-tested recipe
After being skewered by a prominent
food blogger, head chef Carl Casper
(Jon Favreau) has a very public
meltdown, before deciding to go on
the road with a son, a loyal friend and
a food truck in tow. Having assembled
a cast of prime Hollywood cuts
(Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey
Jr, Dustin Hofman), writer/director
Favreau dishes out the feel-good vibes
with a Havana-drenched soundtrack
and food porn aplenty. Formulaic but
fun the fast food of Tinseltown.
Stephanie Soh Out on 25 June.
O
K, OK, we all know hell, weve been told
enough that the best stuff is on TV now:
The Godfather was baroque opera next
to The Sopranos; The Lord Of The Rings was a
puppet show compared to Game Of Thrones; and
what lm could ever attempt doing a Breaking
Bad? Now, if the nal nails arent quite hammered
in the cofn, then the coat of varnish is certainly on
the lid classic lms are being remade as TV shows.
Normally, only big-brand lms spawn a small-
screen show (a Terminator, say, or a Star Wars)
and theyre nearly always from kid-friendly action
icks aimed at an audience with ice cream round
their mouths (were including adults in this).
But the recent TV version of Fargo wasnt this.
For one, it was based on an acclaimed Oscar-
winning Coen brothers drama with none of the
hokey mission-a-week hooks TV traditionally
demands. For another, it wasnt a spin-off by
swapping Martin Freeman for William H Macy
and Billy Bob Thornton for Steve Buscemi, it was
a re-imagining. Weve said TV can do everything
that cinema can do. Now it was trying to prove it.
Its not entirely new: The West Wing was sewn
from the offcuts of Michael Douglas rom-com
The American President. What the writer cut
the political nuance became the TV show.
Now its going industrial: Paramount Pictures
recently announced it may develop the 1998
Jim Carrey lm The Truman Show which saw
Carrey as the unwitting star of his own TV show
into a TV series (yes, we get the irony), and plans
are also afoot to raid its entire movie catalogue.
We are just getting started, said Paramount TV
president Amy Powell. And for serious lm, it could
be the beginning of the end. Stuart McGurk
Out of Ofce: Martin Freeman
subs for William H Macy in the
TV remake of 1996s Fargo
For your
consideration
171
G JULY 2014 Photograph Linda Nylind
P
ipilotti Rist lmed our dogs
tongue. Catherine Butler,
owner of the head-turningly
cool-but-jolly hotel/restaurant At
The Chapel in Bruton, Somerset, is
talking about the Swiss video artist
who spent last year living in the
village with her ten-year-old son.
Pipi is the ultimate ambassador for
contemporary art: she sat on the PTA
at the primary school, made new
posters, broke every rule. The
contemporary art world is usually
elitist and a bit scary, but if artists
are immersed in the community,
they bring you into their world.
Rists was the rst artists residency
organised by Hauser & Wirth
Somerset, the arts centre opening
this month at Durslade Farm, a Grade
II listed farmhouse and its cluster
of outbuildings. Designed by
Paris-based architect Laplace & Co,
the complex includes ve galleries,
a bookshop, resource centre, art
installation/restaurant, a meadow
planted by garden designer du jour
Piet Oudolf, an orchard and several
mini allotments. We want to bring
together art, architecture, gardens,
local food, education and landscape,
says director Alice Workman.
Rists prolonged stay in the village
was a statement of intent: Hauser &
Wirth, a hugely successful blue-chip
gallery with spaces in Zurich, London
and New York and a roster of top
international artists that includes
Louise Bourgeois, Martin Creed, Ron
Mueck, Paul McCarthy and Zhang
Enli, is doing something no other
commercial gallery has done before.
It is not just showing art; it is
ensuring that it becomes embedded
in the community. There will
now be a generation of children
growing up here, talking about
contemporary art, says Butler.
Iwan and Manuela Wirth, co-
owners of the 20-year-old gallery
with Manuelas mother, Ursula
Hauser, bought a 15th-century
farmhouse in 2007 on land adjoining
Durslade Farm. They became At
The Chapel regulars and almost
immediately offered to lend Butler
art for her triple-height walls,
bar-cum-screening room and eight
bedrooms. The restaurant is currently
hung with work by Phyllida Barlow,
whose new installations inspired by
country ftes and carnivals form
H&W Somersets inaugural show.
When a certain brand of local
includes writer and presenter
Mariella Frostrup, lm-maker Julien
Temple, artist Richard Pomeroy and
his wife, the writer Helena Drysdale,
photographer Don McCullin, fashion
designer Alice Temperley and actor
Anna Friel, as well as an increasing
ow of young creatives relocating
from London, the food-art-nature
hook-up seems inevitable. But
H&Ws approach is unusual, casting
art and the environment in a new
Rural renaissance
Hauser & Wirth brings contemporary art to the countryside
By Sophie Hastings
A R T
light. Butler will run classes on topics
such as Sustainability Or How To
Skin A Rabbit, while the gallery will
be afliated with Exeter Universitys
Centre For Contemporary Art In The
Natural World.
With names such as the Piggery,
the Threshing Barn and the Granary,
the galleries are all evocative spaces.
In the Farmhouse, Rists permanent
domestic work juxtaposes art and
land and almost everything else
you can think of in an eye-popping
installation. One hundred and
forty-four glass objects excavated
from a local rubbish tip are
suspended from the sitting-room
ceiling, their shadows sharp against
a backdrop of lm showing the
hands of a local farmer gently
touching a succession of red owers.
You switch it on like a light; its part
of the environment, says Workman.
Elsewhere, bedrooms are
covered in wildly clashing,
chintzy wallpapers, Luis Laplaces
take on English country-house
chic; bathrooms feature mixed-up
coloured suites from the Seventies
an avocado bath against dark
mustard walls; a blue loo with a
black seat in a midnight-blue room.
Furniture is sourced from local
ea markets and antique shops;
the dining room provides total
immersion, with walls painted by
Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca.
Three of the bedroom doors still
bear the names of the sisters who
grew up in the house, written on
faded owery labels; one has been
back to visit and she was very
happy to see her childhood home
being used again, says Workman.
But our biggest responsibility was
the bats living in the Threshing Barn.
We employed a consultant ecologist
as soon as we began. Mitigation for
the bats was the rst thing we had to
do, and theyre still here, ying in
and out of the arched roof tiles.
Hauser & Wirth Somerset opens on
15 July. hauserwirthsomerset.com
Brigitte Bardot:
Unseen London
1968 (below)
Black & Blue,
Mortimer Street,
London.
Until 11 July.
blackandblue
restaurants.com
Marina Abramovi
Serpentine Gallery,
London.
Until 25 August.
serpentine
galleries.org
Anya Gallaccio,
Nathan Coley
Jupiter Artland,
Edinburgh.
Until
28 September.
jupiterartland.org
Ai Weiwei In
The Chapel
Yorkshire
Sculpture Park.
Until 2 November.
ysp.co.uk
Gary Webb
Cass Sculpture
Foundation,
West Sussex.
Until 16 November.
sculpture.org.uk
Making Colour
National Gallery,
London.
18 June -
7 September.
nationalgallery.
org.uk
Digital Revolution
Barbican Centre,
London.
3 July
14 September.
barbican.org.uk
ALSO
SHOWING
Land and (artistic) freedom: A digital
rendering of the new arts centre
at Durslade Farm in Somerset
172
In Band Aids 1984 charity epic Do They
Know Its Christmas?, which went to No1 in
every country in western Europe apart from
France (where it reached No34), there is an
erroneous fact that states, And there wont
be snow in Africa this Christmas time. Gazing
out of the window from the Fellah Hotel near
Marrakech in Morocco, its clear to see that
the Atlas Mountains are dusted in a white
compound of a decidedly frozen nature. Does
it snow here often? we enquire of the hotel
staff. Oh yes, they reply, every winter. In
fact, just 45 miles from Marrakech, there are
pistes open from December to March.
Morocco delivers numerous surprises for
rst-time visitors. We often think of North
Africa as being characterised by the hustle
and bustle of bazaars, but the boutique Fellah
Hotel is a sanctum of tranquillity, a ve-star
desert oasis where relaxation and re-ener-
gising are central to its charm. For de-stress-
ing, a Wat Po Massage Centre, with therapists
trained at Bangkoks Wat Po temple, will
loosen muscles and mind, while a Fellah
Moroccan Wellness Centre offers daily yoga
and a hammam with cleansing steam baths.
Of course, the Fellah isnt all about pamper-
ing. To get your heart pumping, a Thai boxing
class is recommended, available for all levels,
and help build a roaring appetite to tackle the
regional dishes at the on-site Fellah restau-
rant and Touco caf.
As bets a boutique hotel, the Fellah skil-
fully balances contemporary chic and tradi-
tional style. Its ten villas (totalling 69 rooms)
make use of Berber patterns, but each unique
space is furnished with ea-market omnium-
gatherum and modern commissioned pieces
by local craftsmen. Creativity is the driving
force a UNESCO-Aschberg-recognised arts
and cultural centre makes the Fellah an attrac-
tion for artists and art lovers alike.
By the time you read this, the snow will
have disappeared from the Atlas peaks and
trickled into the Atlantic Ocean. In June,
poolside temperatures at the Fellah lift above
30C ideal for sipping a cocktail, topping up
your vitamin-D level and making time for
essential daydreams.
Escape the stresses of city
life at the Fellah Hotel, an oasis
of calm in the shadows of
Moroccos Atlas Mountains
AND RELAX
LIVETRAVEL.FASHION.LIFESTYLE
Time out: At Moroccos
Fellah Hotel, discover
unique rooms, a large
Mediterranean-style pool
and a library with more
than 10,000 books
Fellah Hotel, Km 13, Route de lOurika, Tassoultante, Canal Zabara 40 000, Marrakech, Morocco. Rooms from 142 per night. fellah-hotel.com
T h e C O N T
Ive got people
where positive
encouragement
works, and others
where I have to
threaten to crack
their head open
JULY 2014 G
MARK WAHLBERG
E N DE R
From gang runner to show runner, Mark Wahlberg has always been
ascrapper. Whether taking the lead (see Transformers: The Age Of
Extinction next month) or as a producer, Bostons troubled blue-collar
kid is now Hollywoods heavy hitter. With one Oscar-winner under his
belt, cinemas best player-coach is squaring up for another round
PHOTOGRAPHED BY
PEGGY SIROTA
STYLI NG BY
DAVID THOMAS
STORY BY
MATTHEW SPECKTOR
Suit, 2,205. Shirt, 240. Both by Giorgio Armani. armani.com. Pocket square by Spencer Hart, 25. spencerhart.com.
Cufinks by David Thomas x JBH, 3,282. jasonofbh.com
175
G JULY 2014
Mark Wahlberg is a hustler. Hes a bona de operator. His
whole movie-star avatar is rigged to hide in plain sight the
interlinking entrepreneurial machine that whirs and pumps
unnoticed beneath.
Or rather thats what Im thinking as I sit in a plush suite at
the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills if not quite the last place
youd think to encounter Mark Wahlberg the lm producer and
businessman, investor in things ranging from sports beverages
(Aquahydrate, an electrolyte-enhanced, ph9+ supercharged
water) to restaurants (the superbly named Wahlburgers), then
certainly a little incongruous when you shade it up against the
persona projected by Wahlberg the actor, which is rugged, salt-
of-the-earth, South Boston to the core.
The man has low-key determination, but the easy grit he
projects on screen suggests a paradox. On the charisma scale
hes closer to Clint Eastwood than he is to someone like Sean
Penn but in his affect he never seems particularly coiled. Hes
not clenched like Tom Hardy and hes never unless playing
for laughs in comedies such as The Other Guys with Will
Ferrell, or Ted overly operatic. Wahlbergs voice rarely seems
to rise on screen. Hes no-nonsense. Often the characters he
depicts are awed then travel through a period of self-doubt
to something resembling enlightenment. Theyre tough but
breakable. He burns cool in a way that never seems to strive
to be cool.
Yet to be so collected and so successful off screen makes people
suspicious. What sort of an operation is he running here? The
man has more power plays than Robert Evans. Besides the exec-
utive movie money moves, the drinks company, the burger joints
and the reality TV shows theres the imminent, juggernauting
Transformers: Age Of Extinction, the fourth in the series, out next
month. Hes just wrapped a remake of 1974s James Caan vehicle
The Gambler. No one as diligent as Wahlberg can possibly be as
unrufed or as calm as he appears. All that laid-back, swagger-
ing, blue-collar machismo. It must be a put-on. Right?
How ya doin? When he enters barely ten minutes behind
schedule he seems at ease, in his loose-laced, box-fresh trainers
and his plain beige T-shirt, which he wears just ne at 42. He
ambles into the suite like theres no hurry, no pressure to sell the
hell of out of a multibillion-dollar franchise some critics labelled
an abomination and characterless.
Theres no amped-up surge of subtle defensiveness or bom-
bastic charm. With Wahlberg theres just a calm, patient author-
ity. He shakes my hand, a little clumsily, with his left, inverting
it with an apologetic glance at his right, which hangs by his
side looking tender.
What happened? I enquire.
Boxing. He grimaces then explains that its an old injury.
Whenever I do the dishes or catch it on the side of my trou-
sers it ares up.
The dishes? The fact that Wahlberg might be found suds up
to his elbows, tea towel over one shoulder like LAs answer to
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall goes to the heart of the matter.
Try to picture Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Tom Cruise, Jason
Statham or just about any other action star doing the same
without it seeming more than a little comical. Right off the bat,
the actor doesnt appear to be posturing at regularity, but seems,
quite simply, to possess it, to be what hes always been: the
youngest of nine children, born in Dorchester, Massachusetts,
to working-class parents, his mother a bank clerk, his father
a teamster.
Lots of actors come from humble roots, of course, and
many retain their sense of regularity, but few seem to have
grown into it the way Wahlberg has, from the douchey, boxer-
short-ashing homeboy with the big mouth, ripped abs, and
one-hit-wonder rap career. As he gets older, and unlike many
of his peers, Wahlbergs ability to be a total jerk aside from
the odd rambling appearance on late-night British chat shows
seems to be diminishing.
Settled in our chairs, refreshments offered, its straight to
business. Did you see some of the movie? The actor is
Youre not the boss of me, Jack. Youre not
the king of Dirk. Im the boss of me. Im
the king of me. Im Dirk Diggler. Im the star.
Its my big dick and I say when we roll!
DI RK DI GGLER
BOOGI E NI GHTS, 1 997
176
JULY 2014 G
MARK WAHLBERG
Suit, 2,205. Shirt, 240. Tie, 150. All by Giorgio Armani. armani.com.
Watch, Wahlbergs own
177
G JULY 2014
Shirt by Giorgio Armani, 240. armani.com
Im 42 years old.
I havent looked in
a mirror in ten
years. Ive got
nothing to prove
178
JULY 2014 G
MARK WAHLBERG
referring to Transformers, the reason were
here, of which I had been screened approxi-
mately 15 minutes. In it, Wahlberg plays Cade
Yeager, a single father of a post-adolescent girl
(played by Nicola Peltz) who inadvertently
gets the family swept up in the drama of the
Transformers return.
Wahlberg is eager to pick through the scenes.
Whatd you think? Did you see the scene with
the short shorts? Not lost on me and, from the
rapidity of his question, not lost on Wahlberg
either, is the fact hes playing the sort of part
that not long ago would have fallen to someone
else, Harrison Ford or Kevin Costner, say.
Hes playing the concerned father, in other
words, and the scene in question involves him
squaring off against his daughter, clad in those
very Michael Bay-approved shorts mere
apostrophes on the long, golden legs of Peltz
and her boyfriend, to whom he does not take
an immediate liking.
If Hollywood had its way, normally [in a
movie like this] Nicola would play my girl-
friend. The actor is keen for us to know he
could save the world and still get the girl if he
chose to. But I wanted to embrace the idea
of playing older, of playing
he hesitates a moment what
will be my reality in the very
near future. Wahlberg has four
children, two boys (eight and
ve years old) and two girls (four
and ten), with the model Rhea
Durham, to whom hes been
married for ve years.
When I first found out we
were having a girl, he says, of the
eldest the one whose impending
teen-dom makes playing a man like Cade Yeager
less of a stretch than it wouldve been it was
a little kick in the stomach. My mother was like,
Thats what you get! He laughs. But its really
been the greatest thing ever, because I have a
wonderful relationship with [my daughter],
thats helped me in my other relationships and
in my relationships with women in general.
Wahlberg isnt using relationship here
in the vibey, car-pool-syncing, tofu-grilling
Hollywood sense, of course, where one is said
to have such a thing with ones spirit animal
or ones yogi. (One suspects LA is simply a
place of work and convenience for Wahlberg,
somewhere to og his premium water, rather
than a state of mind.) Does his family life
affect his choices as an actor? I try not to
let it, he explains, although he admits that
family concerns sometimes do enter into busi-
ness decisions.
My wife is very particular about what the
kids can watch, he says, before telling a story
about taking his oldest daughter to Cinema
Con earlier this year. They encountered a child
he couldnt have been more than eleven
who began singing the Thunder Song from
2012s Ted, a movie so riotously obscene that
whatever misgivings Wahlberg may have about
letting his own children see it (he plays a bong-
hitting, rental-car clerk whose life is largely
disrupted by his best friend, a talking teddy
bear with a disposition along the lines of Bill
Hicks) to most they dont seem unusually con-
servative. I have a bit of a double standard,
he admits. My boys, they want to watch eve-
rything, but Im very protective of my girls. A
sequel to Ted is yet another thing thats on the
deck for Wahlberg.
Family life and stardom, stardom and
producer-dom (hes produced a number of
HBO shows, including Boardwalk Empire),
producer-dom and mogul-hood: is all this
about maximising earnings, taking risks,
keeping things fresh or just the way a modern
movie star must expand the brand nowadays?
Producing helps, actually, he says of his inter-
linking ventures. I get to spend more time at
home, work from home. Theres enough time
in the day to do it all and still get eight hours
of sleep a night.
I push him on this, as it seems an awfully
muted answer, not wildly self- examining,
especially for one who seems to be so dedi-
cated, a man who you can believe drills down
deep into the numbers when he needs to. His
movies often require gruelling preparation,
whether its The Gambler, for which he lost
61lb to play a college professor whose addic-
tion runs him afoul of the Mob, or 2013s Pain
& Gain, for which he bulked to the size of
Popeye to play a money-hungry bodybuilder,
or Lone Survivor, for which I would imagine
the actual Navy Seals he trained with werent
too concerned about those eight hours of
sleep. Does his commitment set him apart or is
it just something now required to ensure hes
as bankable as the Bradley Coopers or Ryan
Goslings of this world?
Everyones different, he says, still some-
what indirectly. I know some actors have
their whole routine where they dont want
anybody around them [on the set], or they
need to play music or whatever, but the James
Cagney philosophy always made more sense
to me. Prepare for the part. Be the part. And
with no great effort, play the part. With no
great effort? Sure. There were times on the
set of Lone Survivor where Id be covered in
blood, and Id just be throwing the football
around, playing games [before a take], and
then the director would yell Action! and Id
do what I do.
L
ets take a moment to consider
what it is Mark Wahlberg does do
on screen. Because its that ease,
that raw-yet- graceful presence that
isnt the natural, seemingly innate
stardom of a Leonardo DiCaprio, or the pre-
ternatural acting chops of a Christian Bale (to
name but two co-stars against whom Wahlberg
has more than held his own, in 2006s The
Departed and 2010s The Fighter, respectively),
but a knack that is hard won, fully earned, that
allows him surprising versatility.
Its sobering, actually, to think back on his
somewhat reluctant beginnings as a movie
actor (in 1994s Renaissance Man, a lm for
which he was pressed to audition by director
Penny Marshall; I told her I didnt want to do
it, he recalls, and she said, Why not? Youre
the only actor Ive met in your age bracket who
talks about Robert Ryan and John Gareld and
Edward G Robinson) and to realise how much
ground Wahlberg has covered.
Never mind illustrious co-stars Matt
Damon, Jack Nicholson, Charlize Theron, Philip
Seymour Hoffman there are also the lm-
makers, Martin Scorsese, David O Russell,
Paul Thomas Anderson, plus
James Gray and Antoine Fuqua,
Seth MacFarlane and Michael
Bay. Hes not just haunting the
auteurs corner, any more than he
is operating within the narrow yet
challenging connes of being an
action star. Hes just as good in a
beer-bottle comedy like Ted as he
is in a quality potboiler like 2007s
Shooter, and hes positively eye-
opening in something like The
Fighter, one of those Oscar-calibre movies in
which hes been appearing with more regularity
than youd think for the past decade and a half.
A key element, of course, is preparation.
What Wahlberg might lack in nesse or oily
charm or, indeed, natural thespy lan, he makes
up for with dogged diligence. One can imagine
once hes decided to commit to a particular
part, once his mind is xed on it, his jaw locks
like a pit bull, if only so he can turn it down
on his own terms a little later on.
Leaving aside the physical training rituals,
the gain and loss of muscle for various parts
that may make even Bales fabled starvations
seem mild, he tells me he reads every script of
every lm he does out loud, in full, multiple
times per day, every day, for six months prior
to the shoot, and then continues this ritual all
the way through lming.
A movie like Lone Survivor the true story of
a US special-forces unit and their botched yet
valiant mission to kill notorious Taliban leader
Ahmad Shah would have been gruelling to
shoot, and the nagging physical pains that
endure from lms like that Im 42 going on
75, the actor says ruefully at one point, glanc-
ing down at his bad hand all testify to the
grind. One suspects, in fact, that acting is
No one as diligent as Wahlberg
can be as calm as he appears.
All that laid-back, swaggering,
blue-collar machismo. It
mustbe a put-on. Right?
179
G JULY 2014
S
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Bryan Cranstons Monsters
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Bradley Cooper Drowns Kittens
(Jonathan Heaf, April 2013)
Mark Wahlberg On The Next Transformers
(Oliver Franklin, GQ.co.uk, February 2013)
MORE
FROM GQ
For these related stories,
visitGQ.co.uk/magazine
less like an art form for Wahlberg and
more like an endurance sport. Yet when I ask
him about working on both Pain & Gain and
Transformers with Michael Bay, a director whos
known to have something of the sociopathic
taskmaster about him (remember the genocidal
madman to whom Megan Fox compared the
director after her stint in the rst Transformers
movie), Wahlberg just nods diplomatically.
Michael knows exactly what he wants and
how to get it. I love that. There are no mind
games with Michael. As opposed to working
with David O Russell? After all, on 2004s
I Heart Huckabees the directors colourful inter-
actions with actress Lily Tomlin are preserved on
YouTube for all to see. Everyones different,
Wahlberg says atly. I have an easy working
relationship with David. It may have been dif-
cult for others, but its always easy for me.
At this point, I ask him about his life as an
executive producer and about what makes him
good at it. After all, many actors try, but few
can do it so effectively. Ive got good people
skills and Im a good player-coach. The only
way you can succeed is if you have the right
people around you.
Its a frustratingly anodyne
answer, one that might have been
tugged from the pages of some
populist business handbook, but
the fact remains, producing as
Wahlberg practises it not as
a movie star collecting the fee
because he can, but as an alert,
responsible businessman aware
of the budgets and bottom lines
is a job, and not a particularly
glamorous one. He may have
launched his producing career with a show
that was loosely based on his own younger life
Entourage but in order to produce as widely
as he has requires more than people skills. It
takes drive, energy and savage ambition.
I press him again. I got tired of waiting for
the right project to drop on to my desk. Finally
a ash of that drive, a little honest heat from
within. If I dont do it, nobody else is going
to do it, and if I dont tell everybody how to
do it, its not going to be done the right way.
Preparation. Risk assessment. Control. Ive got
people where positive encouragement is going
to get the best results and other people where
I have to threaten to crack their head open.
T
he actors voice never rises. That
crack their head open is gura-
tive or at least it sounds gura-
tive, delivered with a wry smile and
a nod but it opens a can of worms
nevertheless. For all his familial devotion,
for all his churchgoing (Wahlberg is a devout
Catholic; hes claimed to attend church twice
every Sunday) and his community work, he
wasnt always so upstanding.
Addicted to cocaine as a young teenager, he
sold drugs, had myriad run-ins with the police
and the kicker, really the most troubling bit
of Wahlberg arcana was involved in a set of
racial incidents, the harassment of a group of
African-American schoolchildren (throwing
rocks at them) when he was 15, and the severe
beatings of two Vietnamese men a year later.
In one of the latter episodes, the victim was
permanently blinded in one eye and Wahlberg
was arrested for attempted murder and con-
victed of assault, for which he served 45 days
of a two-year prison sentence.
On the one hand he was young, and that
sort of ordeal, while never the sort of thing
that can be expiated in full, isnt necessarily
denitive. One can grow up, as Wahlberg cer-
tainly has lets not forget his brief yet vivid
passage in the early Nineties as a bubble-gum
rapper and deeply un-musical musician as the
leader of Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch
but how much of this recklessness remains?
Does he train it all back on himself, or subli-
mate it into his religious observance? One cant
say Wahlberg is reluctant to talk about his past
exactly I gave up a few bad habits, stopped
burning the candle at both ends, he murmurs
when I ask him also about the more recent
effects of parenthood and family life on his
moral development but hes not wildly illu-
minating on the topic either.
The pressures of his background have a lot
to do with Wahlbergs choices, both as an actor
and as a man. When I ask him about 1997s
Boogie Nights, effectively his screen break-
through he was excellent in Fear the year
before, but playing porn star Dirk Diggler was
his rst truly adult turn he goes immediately
to his initial reluctance to play the part.
Growing up the way I did, and where I did,
youre always worried about what people are
going to think, he says. I read the rst 35
pages of Boogie Nights, and it was one of those
things where its very difcult to wrap it in a
bow and make it sound appealing to a guy like
me. Showgirls had just come out, and Id come
from the whole Calvin Klein [modelling] thing...
He trails off, and I think for a moment about
what a guy like me entails. For a tough kid
from Boston, the prospect of playing a porn
star, and not an idealised one but a dimwitted,
intermittently vain Valley boy who slides for
a time into gay hustling, must have been a
stretch. It must have entailed some discom-
fort, even fear. I told my agent, Nope. Not
doing it. But then I met with Paul [Thomas
Anderson], and I saw where he was coming
from. I fell in love with him immediately.
I think, too, of how different that performance
is, even from what came after it. Theres an una-
bashed sweetness, a rare vulnerability involved.
Think of how gently Wahlbergs character rejects
Philip Seymour Hoffmans gay camera-boom
operator, how his Dirk Diggler isnt just a kid
with an oversized cock and an inating ego, but
one with just enough of a vanilla soul.
That was a good moment for me, he says.
After that movie I just felt different as an actor.
I couldnt have done a movie like Ted without it.
I wonder for a second about the leap from Dirk
Diggler to playing opposite a profanity-spitting
teddy bear, albeit one who would surely know
the Diggler lmography if their worlds were
coextensive. Sure. Just to be able to believe in
it, since I had to play so many of those scenes
without anybody else there. It helped with
[Transformers] too, where a lot of the time I was
against somebody off-camera doing the voice,
or reading it through a big booming speaker.
When one considers Wahlbergs achieve-
ments as an actor, taking in the range of what
hes done and the amount of elbow grease hes
put into it, its hard not to con-
sider this last movie as a formi-
dable achievement: injecting a
surprising humanity into a CGI-
turbo-charged popcorn summer
blockbuster thats not much
known for being long on feeling.
The clips I saw, at least, show
just that. Wahlbergs scenes in
which hes struggling to protect
his daughter are, dare I say it,
kind of moving.
As I size the actor up now, having heard from
him how ercely and aggressively he prepares
(Im always ready to work ten times, 100 times
as hard as everybody else on the set, and Im
also always ready to throw my own ideas away
and just do what [the director] asks of me,
he says at one point), I can only wonder again
how it all comes out seeming so effortless.
I ask whether he ever feels vulnerable or
foolish when acting a scene. He shrugs and gives
me an answer that somehow seems to pull it all
together, to carry a rugged intensity, a certain
deance and a good-natured indifference at
once. Look, Im 42 years old, I havent looked
in a mirror in ten years. I dont give a f*** how
I look. If I have to prepare for a part physically, I
will, but Ive got nothing to prove, he says, grin-
ning. Im not trying to impress anybody.
I got tired of waiting for the
right project to drop on to my
desk. In my business, in my
life, if I dont do it, nobody
else is going to do it
180
JULY 2014 G
MARK WAHLBERG
Suit, 2,205. Shirt, 240. Belt 235. All by Giorgio Armani. armani.com. Pocket square by Spencer Hart, 25.
spencerhart.com. Wallet chain by David Thomas x JBH, 3,603. jasonofbh.com
181
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O brother...
JULY 2014 G
THE SAATCHIS
...where art thou?
For 25 years the Saatchi brothers
worked past brutal put-downs,
thrown furniture and hostile
takeovers to build advertisings
most audacious agency. But today
they barely speak, and GQ reveals
what drove apart the bookish peer
and the bullish patron
STORY BY ANDREW ANTHONY
Prots and loss:
From perfect
partners to fractured
fraternity, the Saatchi
boys Maurice (left)
and Charles,
23 August 1978
183
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two siblings who were almost a single person become so
divided? How did a match made in the warmth of family life end
in a cold silence?
One clue to the strength of the brothers early relationship, and
therefore, perhaps, to the depth of its subsequent breach, is that
they were, at rst, outsiders, brought up in a tight family in an
immigrant community. The Saatchi saga begins 2,500 miles away
in Iraq. The brothers were born in Baghdad to an Iraqi Jewish
businessman named Nathan Saatchi and his wife, Daisy. There
was another brother, six years older than Charles, and there would
be a fourth brother, seven years younger than Maurice. In 1947,
the year before the creation of Israel and the mass expulsion of
Jews from Arab lands, Nathan decided to sell up his business and
move his family to England. Charles was just four when he arrived
in London, and his brother only a baby. Nathan had bought two
textile mills in England and his business soon prospered. The
Saatchi boys grew up in wealthy suburban comfort in Finchley
in north London and then Highgate.
But their differences in character began to show early. Charles
was completely unacademic, barely passing an exam. He left
school at 17, a rebel with a leather jacket and a motorbike. He
loved television but was seldom found in the company of a book.
By contrast Maurice was a gifted scholar, an A student who went
on to study sociology at the LSE, where he received a rst. Turning
down the offer to become an academic, he joined Haymarket, the
publishing company owned by Michael Heseltine. He was an avid
reader, particularly of books and academic journals on business.
He also had a natural gift for selling, but it was Heseltine who
tutored him in the art of buying. He was an attentive student. I
can certainly remember feeling we had an ace here, Heseltine
later recalled.
Meanwhile Charles had been making his mark as a bright
young copywriter. The Sixties world of advertising in Soho may
not have compared to the Madison Avenue version dramatised
in Mad Men, but it was nonetheless a time of great creativity
and largesse, attracting some talented and ambi-
tious young men. Aged 23, Charles joined Alan
Parker and David Puttnam who were soon to
galvanise the British lm industry at the Collett
Dickenson Pearce agency. It was there that he
established his reputation and in no time he
had set up his own consultancy and was making
enough money to drive around town in a Ferrari
and a Rolls-Royce.
He had also become a gifted self-publicist,
feeding stories about himself to the trade press.
Fallon wrote that no one in advertising had ever
worked on his publicity more assiduously. The
effort paid dividends. Charles got himself talked
about in ways that none of his peers did. He was
even proled in the Sun at 26 years of age, after
an anti-smoking campaign his consultancy pro-
duced came to national attention. He spoke about
playing poker and, as a result of his campaign,
quitting cigarettes. Had he managed to stick to his
resolution, perhaps he would never have taken to dining al fresco
to smoke, and perhaps he would never have been photographed
outside Scotts restaurant last year with his hand around his now
ex-wife Nigella Lawsons neck.
But back then, Charles main concern was to build his prole, or
maybe aura is a better word. Advertising is by denition a world
of exaggeration, hyperbole, overstatement. The word genius is
not uncommonly employed to describe someone who thinks up a
clever way of selling dog food, but when people began to speak of
Charles in those terms it was with a genuine sense of reverence.
He had all the classic ingredients for creativity. He was
They were the
ultimate FRATERNAL
PARTNERSHIP,
combining
complementary
talents and an
UNBREAKABLE
familial bond to
monumental effect
here is a photograph from the front
cover of the advertising trade paper Campaign from 11 September
1970. It shows a 27-year-old Charles Saatchi dressed in a light
suit and what appears to be a button-down shirt with a tie. His
hair is cut in a vaguely mod style and he looks very cool. Theres
a youthfully arrogant swagger to the way he holds himself, but
also a palpable sense of someone who knows what he wants.
Behind his left shoulder, half-obscured, is his 24-year-old
brother, Maurice. Hes conservatively dressed in a dark suit and
wears glasses. His physical presence is much less condent, as
if hes content to stand in his older brothers shadow. The lead
story the photo illustrates is the announcement of a new adver-
tising agency called Saatchi & Saatchi. The writer
notes of the brothers, Both are excitable, sound
very much alike, use the same expressions (most
advertising is either terric or shit). If one stops
talking the other instantly takes up the script.
Each is caught up in the infectious enthusiasm
of the other.
Inside two decades that enthusiasm would drive
Saatchi & Saatchi to become the biggest advertis-
ing agency the world had ever known, trailblazing
a hugely protable new relationship with the City
and showing British companies the route to a glo-
balised economy. At the height of the Saatchis
power in 1988, their biographer Ivan Fallon would
write, The two brothers, middle brothers at
that, are so close they operate almost as a single
person. They were the ultimate fraternal part-
nership, combining two complementary talents,
an unbreakable familial bond and a shared vision
to monumental effect.
Yet in recent years Charles and Maurice have not been seen
together and the brothers appear to have little to do with one
another. Today, they couldnt be more unalike people, Fallon
says. Theres Maurice, who has devoted his life to the memory
of his dead wife, and theres Charles and his ex-wife.
They are Cain and Abel, muses one old friend of both brothers.
One is tall and aquiline and the other is hirsute and muscular.
Those are the descriptions from the Bible. Perhaps its because
they are Sephardic Jews.
Any comparison that involves the original fratricide cannot
possibly suggest brotherly love. What happened? How did
184
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THE SAATCHIS
Caught red handed:
1. Named after Charles
Saatchis excuse for
grabbing his now ex-wife,
Nigella Lawson, Playful
Tif is by a young British
artist who, unsurprisingly,
remains anonymous.
2. The infamous image of
the couple, 9 June 2013.
3. A Conservative advert
by Saatchi & Saatchi from
the 1987 election. 4. The
agencys Berkeley Square
HQ opened in 1989.
5. An anti-Tory billboard
from 2010. 6. Campaign
heralds the rms launch,
11 September 1970.
7. Maurice Saatchi
(centre) at a shareholder
meeting, 1991. 8. A Tory
poster from the rms
rst lost election in 1997.
9. Maurice with Pippa
Middleton, 24 September
2013. 10. From left: Kay,
Maurice and Charles
Saatchi and Josephine
Hart, 16 September 1997.
Sons of fortune: Charles
Saatchi arrives at the trial
of his ex-wifes PAs, 29
November 2013; younger
brother Maurice, now Lord
Saatchi, is conrmed as joint
chairman of the Conservative
Party, 10 November 2003
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THE SAATCHIS
unpredictable, inspired, volatile and iconoclastic. Id say bril-
liant and impossible, but thats often true of brilliant people, is
how one former senior Saatchi & Saatchi executive describes
Charles. You know, demanding, unreasonable, a bit mad.
Another says, Charles is a creative genius. I was in the room
when he was given a British Airways ad with The Worlds Number
One airline written on it. He crossed out Number One and put
Favourite. Hes just got it.
Everyone agrees that he gave the impression that he didnt
give a damn what anyone thought about him. Yet at the same
time he was meticulous in his news management. Of course,
he was promoting his company, but he was also busily promot-
ing himself. And by only ever giving off-the-record briengs he
retained an air of mystery.
But in the early days, as the myth around him mushroomed,
he was sometimes awarded credit that rightly belonged to others.
Although he never made any false claims, it was typical that he
became known as the creator of the legendary Pregnant Man
contraception advert for the Health Education Council. Charles
did have a vital role in selecting and pushing the idea, but it was
the brainchild of two others.
In another piece of characteristically deft showmanship, Charles
announced Saatchi & Saatchis arrival by writing an advertis-
ing manifesto and running it as an advert in the
Sunday Times. He got one of his employees to sign
it ironically Jeremy Sinclair, the man who had
come up with the Pregnant Man idea. As with
most manifestos, few of its declarations came to
fruition, but it did the job, because it made the rest
of the advertising industry sit up and take notice.
This new agency was selling something no other
agency had ever sold so nakedly before: itself.
Despite the Saatchi & Saatchi name, no one was
in any doubt that Charles was in charge. He was
the man with the ideas, the energy, the strength of
personality. He was the one making the demands,
and he was the one inspiring all around to believe
his mantra, nothing is impossible. Maurice was
clearly the junior partner, the younger brother,
the novice.
When Charlie announced he wanted to set the
agency up with his brother, I questioned it, recalls
Sir John Hegarty, who was a founding shareholder
in the company. Charlie said, Yeah but hes my
brother and I can trust him. I thought Maurices lack of experi-
ence was a real concern, which to a certain extent it was, but his
talent made up for that.
If initially the other staff questioned Maurices role, they soon
began to respect his work rate, planning and organisational vision.
It was a gentlemanly convention held among advertising agen-
cies back in 1970 that you didnt poach clients. The Saatchis set
about breaking that taboo. It wasnt really done to go chasing
after other peoples clients, says an executive who worked at the
rm in the Seventies. Saatchis built a reputation of being more
pushy, more prepared to upset people to win business.
Whats more, they wanted to expand by buying other agencies.
Maurice was at the forefront of both strategies. He did the cold-
calling and suffered the endless rejections.
Charles had little patience for the mundane. He had a phrase
he often used, min aggro, meaning get the problem solved
with minimum fuss. Charles liked to quote George Bernard
Shaw, says one former colleague. It must have been in a
book he accidentally read. All progress depends on the unrea-
sonable man. The difference between Charles and Maurice is
that Charles is ruthless and unreasonable and Maurice is ruth-
less but at least gives the appearance of being reasonable.
Charlie didnt like meetings, big gatherings or presentations,
which a lot of those sort of people dont like doing, says Hegarty.
Maurice on the other hand was very good at shaking peoples
hands, getting people together. He was very affable, learned, very
rounded. Charles was utterly focused. They were Yin and Yang.
A perfect pair really.
Hegarty says neither Charles nor Maurice expressed political or
moral beliefs when they started out and, even if they had them,
they would not have put them ahead of a business opportunity.
In the early days, Saatchi & Saatchi made their name on anti-
smoking. We were famous for doing anti-smoking. As soon as
Silk Cut came along and said weve got three times the budget of
the anti-smoking campaign, they dumped the anti-smoking cam-
paign and started promoting cigarettes.
Even those who speak of Maurice as a hard taskmaster always
mention his courteous manner, his civility, his concern for the
feelings of others. Charles was constantly urging everyone to
think big, to think the unthinkable. And he was willing to say
the unsayable if he felt one of his senior staff had fallen short.
He certainly had a temper, recalls one former executive.
He would just ip out.
I think the violence has been exaggerated, says another.
Although I did once get hit by a phone hed thrown across
the room. I think he was frustrated because it
wasnt working. Charles can be tremendously
kind but hes also brutally impatient. Hes like a
bundle of frustration. His creativity comes out
of that.
He was particularly unforgiving with his brother,
whom he regularly lambasted and one story of
Charles throwing a chair at his younger brother
has gone down in advertising lore.
He used to say to Maurice, How could you
have come from the same womb as me? says
one former executive who witnessed the tirades.
Maurice would completely take it. He wouldnt
react at all.
Hegarty agrees. I think Maurice just thought
it was what you had to do, so therefore he would
tolerate what big brother said.
By all accounts, Charles would quickly forget his
anger. Whether Maurice did is another question.
No doubt he recognised the method in his brothers
madness, but the younger man wouldnt have
been human if he hadnt felt some lingering resentment over the
manner in which he was treated.
Whatever the nature of their relationship back then, the
brothers didnt socialise together outside work, except through
familial connections in the north-London Jewish community.
But as work took up so much of their time that wasnt noticed
as an issue.
T
hroughout the Seventies and particularly in the
Eighties, as Saatchi & Saatchi grew with phenome-
nal speed, Charles became increasingly remote and
unwilling to engage with people he didnt have to deal
with. He never attended board meetings or AGMs and
refused to meet clients. There are stories of his going to absurd
lengths to avoid his high-paying customers. On one occasion,
a major client came to a presentation at the Saatchi & Saatchi
ofces. It was late and Charles wanted to know the outcome, but
instead of attending he hovered around outside the presenta-
tion room. At the end of the meeting, after it broke for coffee,
Charles found himself accidentally cornered by the group con-
taining the clients. Instead of introducing himself, he pretended
to be an ofce cleaner.
Charles was
particularly
UNFORGIVING
with his brother.
One story about
him THROWING A
CHAIR at Maurice
has gone down in
advertising lore
187
G JULY 2014
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That sort of eccentricity only inated the legend, not least
within the company itself. His remote power was denitely felt
by everybody, says one former senior executive. I would liken
it to the head of a crime family, a maa family, in that you really
did feel he would do anything for you if you worked for
him and you were seen as a loyal person, above and beyond
what youd expect from an employer. And you felt there-
fore part of his family. If you left the agency, you knew
that you would be nothing to him.
But when it came to clients, he wouldnt even make an
exception for Margaret Thatcher. As prime minister, she
visited the Charlotte Street ofces and the whole senior
staff turned out to greet her except, that is, Charles. The
agencys relationship with the Conservative Party changed
its prole, and that of the brothers, creating an attention-
grabbing sense of power. Saatchi & Saatchi would oversee
the advertising strategy for all three of Thatchers successful
general elections, but it would be the rst that would truly
make the agencys name.
Coinciding with the infamous winter of discontent, the agency
came up with a poster and lm campaign featuring massive
queues and the damning phrase Labour isnt working. The
Conservatives duly won the 1979 election and Saatchi & Saatchi
became a household name. Again Charles was seen as the great
creative mastermind behind the scenes, and theres plenty of truth
in that perception, partly because it was Charles who the creative
staff were most determined to please.
But along with Tim Bell, who later fell out with the brothers,
it was Maurice who cultivated Thatcher. It was Maurice who
later become a peer and joint chairman of the party who was
the ideologue. It was Maurice who outlined what Thatcherism
should stand for, jotting down the main principles that would ini-
tially win the agency the Tory party account.
In 1979, Saatchi & Saatchis policy of expansion through
acquisition of other agencies was already underway. In 1976
the agency went public and was able to raise capital through its
increasing share price on the stock market. Again, it was Maurice,
with Charles encouragement, who drove these developments.
Shareholders were just more people that Charles had no inter-
est in meeting. Charles was all in favour of making the company
number one, of constant expansion and relentless ambition. But
it was Maurice who made it happen.
B
y the time of their final election campaign with
Thatcher, in 1987, relations with the Tory party had
become fraught. Bell, who had once been known as
the third brother, had left the company on bad
terms. He had been close to Thatcher,
which was perhaps one reason that his relations
with the brothers declined. He was brought back
in by the Tories, alongside the Saatchis, on the dif-
cult but victorious 1987 campaign, leading to a
bitter dispute as to who was responsible for what.
But leaving these fractious moments aside, 1987
was also the year that Saatchi & Saatchi became
the biggest advertising enterprise in the world.
And although Charles was still seen by most of
the staff as the senior partner, it was Maurice who
could most appropriately lay claim to the success.
He had taken the theories of a Harvard professor
called Theodore Levitt, and turned them into the
economic reality of globalisation. Maurice had
created a global brand for a new global market,
and Charles had little to do with it. If he remained
the nominal emperor, the global empire was his
younger brothers domain.
Maurice was probably running the company, but the relation-
ship between them was still very much older brother, younger
brother, and Im the talented one, youre the lackey, says one
highly placed colleague from that time.
What Charles continued to contribute was a galvanising mood
of exceptionalism. You were rewarded for taking risks and being
audacious, says another veteran from that era. Another recalls
pitching to the Treasury for a campaign to improve the savings
ratio. I remember a meeting with Maurice and I think the media
budget [for the campaign] was 10 million. Then Charles came
in and said, Make it 20. And we just doubled the number. That
was one of his grand gestures he doubled the budget without
knowing anything about it.
For all his methodical attention to detail, Maurice
was obviously still in thrall to his brothers vision.
But what had once been revolutionary had with
success become overblown, a shift that was sym-
bolised by the move into garishly opulent ofces
in Berkeley Square. And surely a certain hubris
informed the ill- fated attempt to buy Midland
Bank in 1987, when the nothing is impossible
credo found its limits. The bid was rejected, and
when the City got wind of the failed deal, con-
dence in the Saatchis rapidly dropped, along
with their share price. The British establishment
thought, Were not going to let these Jew boys
from Golders Green own a clearing bank, says a
friend. That was a step too far.
The rejection was probably down to pure busi-
ness rather than any anti-Semitic sentiments, but
it proved the turning point that would lead seven
years later to the Saatchis being ousted from their
By 1987, Saatchi
& Saatchi was the
BIGGEST AGENCY
IN THE WORLD,
but if Charles
remained nominal
emperor, the
GLOBAL EMPIRE
was Maurices domain
Burning ambition:
(clockwise from above):
Fire destroys more than
100 Saatchi-owned
works of art in 2004;
Charles Saatchi and
Damien Hirst, 1997;
Hirsts shark in
formaldehyde at
the Saatchi Gallery
188
JULY 2014 G
THE SAATCHIS
own company by a shareholder revolt in the US.
Although Maurice and Charles theoretically united
to create a new company, M&C Saatchi, the reality
was that it was Maurice in sole charge; Charles was
present only in the title. The brothers had effec-
tively separated in corporate terms and the divide
would soon grow to be personal.
While Maurice set about building a new
company, Charles continued to devote himself
to what had become his prime obsession: collect-
ing contemporary art. Back in the Sixties, when
he met his rst wife, a cool American Hitchcock
blonde named Doris Dibley, Charles had become
interested in art and, more specically, buying it.
He had little time for the art world, its preten-
sion and opaque language, but he had an eye for
striking, convention-breaking artworks. He was
early to trends, collecting Americans such as Jeff
Koons, Cindy Sherman and Cy Twombly when
they were all but unknown in Britain. Together with Doris, he set
up the Saatchi Gallery in St Johns Wood, one of the UKs rst
white box galleries.
As Fallon says, From nothing, he has gathered the most impor-
tant collection of contemporary art in private hands in the world.
Thats an incredible achievement. You dont do that by being an
ordinary person.
Charles has been criticised for bulk buying and selling, for treat-
ing art like a commodity. Hes not a collector, sniped one of
Nigella Lawsons friends. Hes a dealer. But one Saatchi Gallery
insider argues that he has supported a generation of young artists
who might otherwise have withered, and he uses the money from
sales to fund the 70,000 sq ft Kings Road gallery and keep it free
for visitors. He always says to me, Im a total egomaniac. I love
showing off what Ive bought. But its not for the art establish-
ment. He doesnt want to be noticed by the critics.
Yet for all Charles apparent indifference, his ex-wife, at least,
appears to believe he cares what the public thinks about him.
When she took the stand at the public-relations disaster that was
the trial of the couples former assistants, the Grillo sisters, Lawson
told the court, [Charles] said to me, if I didnt go back and clear
his name he would destroy me. The Domestic Goddess appears to
believe that Charles had attempted to manipulate the story from
behind the scenes, as he used to do in the early days of Saatchi &
Saatchi, and accused him of spreading false allegations of drug
use... on a PR blog dedicated to salvaging Mr Saatchis reputa-
tion and trashing mine.
Lawson accused Charles of intimate terrorism, a phrase so
memorably toxic that, amid his pain, the old advertising man
in Charles must have felt a grudging respect. Lawson said she
resorted to smoking cannabis to free herself from a brilliant but
brutal man. She also described him as intensely jealous and in
constant need of her attention.
According to a friend, Charles has been rattled by the way he is
now perceived. I think hes been incredibly upset by it. I think
he feels its been very damaging. Hes really concerned that this is
what people will remember about him and hes very troubled by it.
B
oth brothers are, in their different ways, very private
people, especially when it comes to personal matters.
An old friend says that while neither was inclined to
discuss their private lives, it was Charles who was by
far the most protective of his privacy. But his response
to his crisis has been unusually overt. He got into a public spat
with the Spectator columnist Taki, in which Charles boasted to
the Greek septuagenarian of his skill as a cage-ghter. He has
also been photographed out and about with the colourful fashion
presenter Trinny Woodall. Lawsons friends have
supposedly taken to referring to Charles as the
recluse about town.
For his part, Maurice, who was made a lord in
1996, has quietly dealt with his grief by focusing
on the artistic legacy of his late wife and a private
members bill, inspired by her experience, designed
to liberate medical and scientic research and
which he believes will lead to a cure for cancer.
I think it will be his nest achievement, says
a friend.
Maurice was asked about his brothers plight
on The Andrew Marr Show. Marriage is a private
place, he answered, explaining that it was
impossible even for best friends to know what
happens. Some observers took this as a sign of
fraternal support, but one close friend of Maurices
isnt sure. Maurice is very elegant. He doesnt
bad-mouth Charles and he doesnt do anything
about him. Its as though Charles doesnt exist. The company is
called M&C Saatchi and that C in the letterhead is about as close
as Maurice gets to Charles.
If there were underlying tensions between the brothers that
emerged after M&C set up, they were only exacerbated by their
spouses. They didnt like each others wives very much, says
Fallon. Charles didnt like Josephine.
Maurice married Josephine Hart, his second wife, in 1984. By
all accounts she did not get on with Charles and Charles, never
the most gifted peacemaker, did not get on with her. She hated
him, says an old friend of Harts. She just hated him. And she
was very supportive of Maurice.
Maurice was famously uxorious towards Hart. Even before her
death he would speak of her as the person he most admired and
the writer he most respected. She would hold poetry readings
and, a gregarious woman, she had a large number of friends in
the arts and media. Even Lawson, another social animal, struggled
to get her husband to join in with her gatherings he sometimes
excused himself from their own dinner parties. So he was never
going to make concessions for his sister-in-law.
Friends of the brothers have been aware for a long time of the
froideur that exists between them, but neither brother appears to
have spoken to anyone about the cause of the split. In 2010, there
was a 40th anniversary party for the original Saatchi & Saatchi. It
was held at the Saatchi Gallery and everyone was there, includ-
ing people who had fallen out with the Saatchis. The one notable
absentee was the owner of the gallery, Charles.
Most of his friends believe that Maurice is deeply unimpressed
by his brothers antics, but he has made sure not to mention them.
And his friends know better than to ask.
Siblings grow apart all the time. Its an old familial story.
But it seems particularly odd that two brothers who put their
minds together to create one of the most remarkable business
ventures of the last half-century cannot nd a way to speak to
each other.
They are enigmas, says an old friend of both men, not just
to the world at large, but to each other and, ultimately, I suspect,
to themselves.
Maurice doesnt
BAD-MOUTH Charles.
He doesnt do
anything about him.
Its as though Charles
DOESNT EXIST. The
M&C in the company
letterhead is as close
as they get now
On The Trail Of The Serpent: The Fatal Charm Of Charles Sobhraj
(Andrew Anthony, April 2014)
Charles Saatchi Threatens To Take Down Taki!
(Andy Morris, GQ.co.uk, January 2014)
Icon: Gay Talese (Andrew Anthony, August 2012)
MORE
FROM GQ
For these related stories,
visitGQ.co.uk/magazine
189
G JULY 2014
Mario Balotelli, a striker for the Italian national side and Serie A club
Milan, is one of the few footballers whose name is known by people with
no interest in the game. That broader, bigger image is only partly driven by
his talent. Still only 23, with a string of successes and controversies already
behind him many of which were generated after playing for Manchester
City between 2010 and 2013 he has become almost as well known for his
off-eld exploits as for his on-eld skill, though he is at pains to say most
of the things written about Super Mario in the tabloids arent true.
When he arrived for our meeting in Milan, he was late and looked grumpy. He was driving
a red Ferrari and tossed his keys and diamond rings to his agent to look after while he did a
photoshoot, rst for Puma, then for GQ. So far, so diva. But very quickly a different character
emerged. True, he could be a little snappy, and when lunch came, he wanted to eat alone.
Over several hours, however, I saw a Balotelli who was accommodating, funny, easy-going
and thoughtful when we sat down for the
interview. His answers were considered
especially about his role as a footballer and
a cultural gure as he prepares to represent
Italy in the World Cup this month. He was
fascinating about his identity and passionate
about the racism that he believes lies behind
the way he is projected through the media.
Balotelli was particularly vocal on this last
point, in fact, saying that most black men
suffer without the advantages of being
an international footballer.
Super Mario, indeed.
PHOTOGRAPH BY FABRIZIO FERRI
Known more for the
mischiefhe causes off the
pitch than his abilities on
it, Italys sharp-shooting
MarioBalotelli takes GQ
one-on-one to talkracism,
this months World Cup and
the truth behind his off-feld
antics. Whyalways him? Our
arch interrogator fnds out
190
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL
Why so serious?
Probed as to why
he never looks
happy on the
pitch, Balotelli
simply says, It
isconcentration
Literally every
time I leave
the house they
write about me
P
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AC: Do you miss England?
MB: Sometimes I do, yes.
AC: What did you like about
England?
MB: The quality of the football,
the atmosphere in the stadiums, the
crowds, the intensity of the game.
AC: Which do you think is the
best league in Europe?
MB: I think the Premier League.
Winning it with City was great.
AC: Will you be back in England
one day?
MB: [Smiles.] Maybe.
AC: Manchester must have been
a bit of a culture shock.
MB: It was difcult for me at rst,
because everything was so different,
but then little by little I got used to it
and it was OK. I was there for football
and the football was amazing, and at
Manchester City we had people from
all sorts of cultures, some of them
maybe closer to mine than England,
like France, Spain, South America.
I liked the mix of cultures. Even if
the press got into my private life too
much, my life off the pitch, I could
be happy for the football.
AC: You were already quite a
big name, but England was where
you became something more, a
bit of a phenomenon. How did
you handle that?
MB: I didnt have to handle anything.
I had English TV at home but I never
watched English TV. There were lots
of English papers but I never read
English papers. I heard about the
crazy stories because my team-mates
would tell me about them and have
a laugh and a joke about them.
AC: You must have been aware
you were different, otherwise why
did you lift up your shirt to reveal
the Why always me? message?
MB: That was the time I had the
accident in the house when a friend
let off reworks. It was the week of
the derby match against [Manchester]
United, and all week going around the
place United fans were taking the piss
out of me, so I just decided if I score,
I will do something a bit different,
and thats what I did.
AC: Does it bother you that you
get more media attention than
most players?
MB: I would prefer it not to be at the
level it is. I would prefer it was only
about football and that we would
be talking football not what the
media say. I am not bothered about
the media; I care about football. But
the English press, they just tried to
show Mario in a bad light.
AC: I hear the Italian media
are always on your case...
MB: I dont like it, honestly. I dont
like the character they created off the
pitch. In theory, to combat all this, I
would have to disappear in my private
life and appear publicly only on the
pitch. But its impossible. I have a life
too; I go out, I have a girlfriend, I go
to restaurants, I have friends, a family.
The thing is, literally every time I
leave the house, they write something
about me, something good or bad or
wrong or right, but they always have
something to say. I dont think its my
fault. And I dont understand why
they invented this character.
AC: At Euro 2012 you scored your
rst goal [of the tournament] and
Leonardo Bonucci [defender for
Italy] ran up to you and put his
hand on your mouth. What were
you going to say that he was so
worried about?
MB: Id played a few games, and Id
played them well, I think, but I hadnt
scored. Thats all. And I was under
pressure, people were writing about
me having to be kept on the bench.
So when I nally scored I wanted
to tell them that this was my job,
that I could do this. I wanted to say,
You always talk a lot, now shut up.
I was angry.
AC: Are these different characters?
The character that they created,
the one sportswriter Brian Phillips
calls MARIO BALOTELLI!!!, and
you, the man, do you feel they are
the same?
MB: No.
AC: Why so much media hype then?
MB: Because Mario moves money,
sells newspapers, and [appears on]
covers of magazines. And that Mario
is not the nice, sweet Mario whos
with his family.
AC: So you do have to worry
about handling it?
MB: Its difcult, but Im getting
used to it. It was more difcult a
few years ago. I have to be more
careful. My life has changed a bit
whenever I move, I have to plan it
ahead, and anticipate what might
happen, even if I only want to go
buy a T-shirt.
AC: In England the public
seemed to like you. Didnt you
feel the love when you were
at Manchester City?
MB: Yes, I did. I did feel the people
liked me, but they still had opinions
based on stories that just werent true.
AC: Such as?
MB: Escorts in my house.
AC: Not true?
MB: No. Throwing darts at youth
players...
AC: I thought that was true?
MB: [Shakes head.]
AC: Are there any of the myths
that you heard about and thought,
I wish I had done that? Like the
one about giving the homeless
man 1,000?
MB: They said I was coming out
of a casino. I had never been inside
the casino.
AC: But you gave the man
the money?
Mino Raiola, Balotellis agent:
It was 400. I was with him. It was
400. They mix up their stories all
the time.
AC: Do you feel special, Mario?
MB: I feel like a special person
because I feel I have something
inside me that my family passed to
me and I can pass to other people.
AC: Namely?
MB: Respect and love and joy.
AC: But what makes you special,
what you are as a footballer or
as a man?
MB: It is both. The way I play, people
are happy to see me, many people.
Big bang theory:
Finishing touches
are put on a Mario
Balotelli efgy
that pays homage
to his of-eld
antics, including
rework-gate,
which he blames
on a friend, 2
November 2011
192
JULY 2014 G
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL
And the few people who really
know Mario, they are proud of me.
AC: I support Burnley...
MB: Burnley?
AC: Yes. Dont tell me you havent
heard of them?
MB: I dont think so.
AC: Theyve just been promoted.
Youll be playing us when you
come back to the UK! Anyway,
I have watched you a lot, and
you never seem happy.
MB: When I play, I really concentrate.
It is concentration.
AC: But surely when you score you
could celebrate? Roberto Mancini,
he said even when Mario scores a
hat-trick, why cant he celebrate?
MB: Yeah, and I told him. It is
because I am not him. Maybe
I celebrate when I get home!
AC: What, with the life-size
statue of yourself?
MB: No, because the statue
is in Brescia. We are talking
about Manchester.
AC: So I watch football, I play
in charity matches, I played
with [Diego] Maradona, and
the thing is if I scored a goal,
even playing in a park, I want
to celebrate.
MB: Ah, in a park I am the same.
On Xbox, if I score, I celebrate.
But not on the pitch.
AC: But are you happy when
you score?
MB: Yes, I am happy.
AC: Are you happy when the
fans sing your name?
MB: Yes, I like that. Its nice.
[Big smile.]
AC: You can hear it, yes, even
though youre concentrating?
MB: Yes, sometimes I hear it.
AC: But you still dont look happy.
MB: I am happy at the way I play.
I dont have to smile to be happy.
Happiness is about how you
are inside.
AC: Sometimes you seem like
youre almost out of the game,
and then youll do something
incredible in a second.
MB: Thats who I am. When I play
I dont think about what I can do,
or how to manage my energy. I
mostly think about trying to score
goals and help the team.
AC: So what do you actually think
about when youre on the pitch?
MB: When were on the attack, I look
for space. Like, I should go there,
or I think about where to go now so
that I can attack some empty space
later. Im mostly thinking about
being dangerous. When we defend,
I think about what the coach tells
me and where I should go.
AC: The coachs words are in
your head when you play?
MB: Yes, totally. Instinctively, I
might want to do a specic thing,
and, depending on the situation, I
might stop doing it or I might do it
even quicker depending on what the
coach tells us. And this relationship
between my instincts and the
coaching is very helpful to me.
AC: Whats your natural instinct
when you play?
MB: My instincts are to attack as
best I can. To be dangerous. I think
defences often put themselves in
particular positions and players like
me, who are very instinctive, might
break a defences systems because we
do things that are more unpredictable.
AC: Why did Jos Mourinho [who
managed Balotelli at Internazionale
after Roberto Mancini left] say you
were, unmanageable?
MB: Who said that?
AC: Jos. You know he did.
MB: He jokes a lot. He likes to
joke around.
AC: Who was a better manager,
Mancini or Mourinho?
MB: No, I dont want to get into that.
I like them both. I liked Mancini and
I liked Mourinho.
AC: Could you be a manager?
MB: A manager? Me? No. I am
too young.
AC: But when youre older?
MB: No. No way. [Laughs.]
AC: If you were a manager, how
would you manage you?
MB: Dont treat me differently.
AC: I read you said that only Lionel
Messi is a better player than you?
MB: I never said that. Never said
it. There are many great players,
players better than me right now.
AC: So whos the best player?
MB: I dont want to get into that,
but there are great players, really
great players, the best for me are
[Cristiano] Ronaldo and Messi, and
Zlatan Ibrahimovic. [Radamel] Falcao
is a great player but he is injured.
AC: Clarence Seedorf [Balotellis
current manager at Milan] has
described you as a sweet boy.
What do you think about that?
MB: I dont know, Im not very good
at describing my own character. But
the few people who really know me
will say good things about me, Im
sure. And those who dont know me
can have their opinion.
AC: Who will win the World Cup?
MB: The best team.
AC: Which is?
MB: [Laughs.] One of the best teams.
AC: Do you watch football on TV?
MB: No.
AC: Do you watch videos of
yourself?
MB: Sometimes, to try to learn,
improve. Movement, technique,
things I can do better.
AC: Are you improving? Are you
getting better?
MB: I think so, yes.
AC: Now, I know you dont like
being asked about this, but that
crazy back heel against LA Galaxy
[Balotelli was through on goal
and, instead of shooting, did a
backheel trick which missed the
goal, and Mancini substituted him
immediately] care to elaborate?
MB: [Groans.]
AC: What were you thinking?
MB: I thought the referee had blown.
I thought I was offside.
AC: Were you surprised to be
hauled off?
MB: Yes, I was. Strikers have missed
worse goals. I was not even trying
to score, I thought the game had
stopped, but I understood, because
Mancini thought I was trying to score
like that. I tried to explain but...
AC: How many times, both in
your life and in your career as
a footballer, do you think you
have been a victim of racism?
MB: A few times, sure. In my life
certainly, and in football yes.
AC: Italy is not like England is
it? In Italy there are not so many
black men growing up as Italian.
So are most black guys here
subject to racism?
MB: Yes.
AC: Worse than England?
MB: I dont know about this.
Racism is everywhere. Maybe it
Its really sad
tothink that we
canchange racism
in Italy only by
winning the World
Cup. I hope we can
change things even
if we dont win it
Top gear (from
top): Balotelli
wearing the
infamous glove
hat before the
Manchester
Cityvs Everton
game in 2010; his
current girlfriend
Fanny Neguesha
193
G JULY 2014

is more open here, or in Spain.
There are racists in England but I
think they hide it more.
AC: But you never experienced
overt racism in England?
MB: No. Not open, no. At City, just
after I joined, we were on a plane
going on tour somewhere, and I
looked around and I realised there
were more black players than white
players on the team. That was a big
difference. That was kind of amazing.
In Italy I was often the only one.
AC: A colleague from GQ Italy
was saying he does not think the
Italian media would be on your
case so much if you were white?
MB: I dont think so, too.
AC: In Italy people arent used to
seeing successful young black men?
MB: They arent used to seeing
people who are different, not white,
who act not as rebels but normally.
So if they act normally, they seem
like they are being rebellious. I think
what the ignorant people dont like
is that people who are different are
allowed to act that way. So these
stupid people, they get angry with
me. They say horrible things. But I
havent done anything different from
other people. I have made mistakes,
like everyone does. And I have
always paid for my mistakes. I think
that if I was white, yeah, maybe some
people would still nd me irritating
or annoying, but it wouldnt be the
same. Absolutely not.
AC: So there is an element of
racism to the way you are treated?
MB: Absolutely, there is. But thats
the way it always is. Jealousy is a
horrible thing, but when this jealousy
is towards people who are different
from the majority, and who maybe
also have more than you, then it
becomes anger, it becomes rage.
And thats the overt racism.
AC: So white football players
who act like you dont get treated
like you?
MB: Youre right, but I dont want to
dedicate this interview to ignorant
people. We can talk as much as we
want, but all you have to do is let
them talk. The only thing we need is
for smart people with good hearts to
get together and be united, and these
idiots will go away. Or, I dont know,
maybe theyll stay there, but there
will be less of them.
AC: Why not talk about it?
MB: I dont talk much. I know
people are ghting this thing, and
its important. But, in the media,
every time I have talked about this
subject, people talk about it for three
or four days, but then everything
goes back to normal. So, either there
is something really strong for all of
us to do, some real movement or
real action, and in that case I will be
the rst guy to participate. But if
its just talk, Id rather not. Because
we can talk about it as much as we
want, but things dont change that
way. When there will be something
real, and strong, to really help people
and society, and really help people
who have less than me because I
get hit with racism, and I suffer, and
it hurts, but at the same time I am
lucky enough to have a lot, and some
people dont have a thing, nothing
at all then I will help, for real.
AC: Dont you think that, because
of your visibility, you could do
something about it?
MB: Yes, I do. But these are serious
things that you really have to think
about. Its not a question of thinking
about whether to do something
like this or not. I know I want to
do something. Its more about how
we do it to be effective.
AC: Or maybe you could achieve
this effect just by winning. Like
the World Cup.
MB: Its really sad to think that we
can change Italy only by winning
the World Cup. I hope we can change
things even if we dont win it.
AC: But are you conscious that
you can be a cultural gure?
Like when France won the
World Cup, and everyone was
saying it was the birth of a new
multicultural France?
MB: Are you asking if you think
I can change this society?
AC: Yes.
MB: I hope so. There are many
young guys like me who have
a tough background, and they
deserve to be lucky.
AC: When you played against
Naples this season, you were
substituted and you cried on
the bench and there was an
avalanche on Twitter saying it
was because you were racially
abused again true?
MB: No, it wasnt that. It had
been a hard week for me [Balotelli
had acknowledged paternity of his
ex-girlfriend Raffaella Ficos one-
year-old daughter, Pia, for the rst
time] and I had been under a lot
of pressure, and as I came off it just
built up and it was like a bomb.
AC: Do you cry a lot?
MB: No.
AC: That was very public.
MB: Men cry.
AC: I wondered if you felt a sense
of rejection because you were
taken off?
MB: No, it wasnt that. It was just
pressure inside, building up, then
needing to nd a place to go.
AC: How will Italy do in the
World Cup?
MB: We have a good team. We
have some great players. We are
well motivated. We can do well.
AC: Do you see yourself as a
team player or as an individual?
MB: I used to be an individual,
denitely. Now I think I am more
for the team. Tactically, and in terms
of my role within the team, Im a
different player, especially compared
to the start of my career. I think Im
a more useful player now.
AC: What is it like for you when
you are just walking around Milan?
MB: I am very private. Sure, I like cars
and I like clothes, and I might look
like I like being looked at, but I dont
really. I prefer to be with friends, my
girlfriend, my family, not the public.
AC: So can you walk down the
street without being bothered?
MB: No, no way. No chance. That is
why I dont live here. I live well out
of Milan, and commute every day.
AC: What about if you go to France
or Germany? The same?
MB: Pretty much. People know me.
AC: Do you ever like being
approached, and people just
want to talk to you?
MB: Sometimes sure, people are
nice. But I dont like being the
centre of attention. I know I look
like I Iike it, but I dont!
AC: So why do you look like it?
I care about football.
But the English
press tried to show
Mario in a bad light
Wheels of fortune:
Balotelli (driving)
leaves San
Carlo,an Italian
restaurant in
Manchester, in
hiscamouage
Bentley
Continental GT,
10December 2012
194
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MB: It is the way I am. I dress the
way I am. My hair is the way I am.
You know, lots of people talk to me
and they come and speak to me and
they think I must be stupid because
of the way the media is and they
are shocked when I am not stupid.
AC: Are you shy?
MB: I am, yes.
AC: Are you political at all?
MB: Political? No.
AC: Your real parents were from
Ghana. Do you feel a sense of
connection with Ghana?
MB: Yes, but I have never been.
I have never been to Africa.
AC: You must, you must go.
That would be wild.
MB: Everybody tells me that. We
help a school there but I have never
been. I am going to go. I really want
to. The thing is I was not allowed by
law before. I was born in Italy, my
parents were from Ghana, if I had
gone there, I would have needed
a visa to come back.
AC: Because you were fostered
not adopted?
MB: Yes. So I wasnt allowed till I was
18, because when I was 18 I could
become Italian. But I am African
rst. I do not say I am Italian and
Ghanaian, I am Ghanaian and Italian.
AC: But you play for Italy?
MB: Yes, I was born here. Italy has
given me my life, my culture. But I am
African; just I have not been yet. I am
black. That is the rst thing you see.
My natural parents are African, but I
have lived most of my life with Italian
parents and Italian culture so I am
Italian but in my blood I am African. I
feel Italian because I have everything
from Italy but I feel African.
AC: Do you have any sense of
what it could be like going to
Ghana? Have you seen the pictures
of Didier Drogba when he goes
to the Ivory Coast?
MB: I have. I dont think it would
be like that.
AC: Do you feel a sense of extra
responsibility because you are
often viewed as a symbol?
MB: No.
AC: But you go with the team to
see the Pope and you are the one
taken off into a room with him.
Was that not just a bit weird?
MB: I asked him if he wanted to
play poker.
AC: You didnt?
MB: [Laughs.] No, I am joking.
AC: But why did he choose you
for a private session?
MB: I asked and he said yes.
AC: So what did you talk about?
MB: It is private. I went there for my
mum, it was something between me,
the Pope and my mum. It was just me
and him, but it was for my mum.
AC: So you have told your mother
what he said?
MB: I am not saying. I just cant say.
AC: Youve played some of your
best games in the Italy shirt. How
does it feel to wear that shirt?
MB: Its a bit different, because
youre playing for your country. Its
a different responsibility. Im not
saying I dont give 100 per cent when
I play for my club team, but when
you play for the national team, its
like it activates some extra part of
you, a part of you that is not there
when you play for the club.
AC: So how much do the fans have
an effect on you when you play?
MB: A lot. Not so much opposing
fans booing you, but when you play
for your team at home and your
fans chant for you and youve got
a couple of nice moves or are on
a good momentum, it really helps
to keep you going. It gives you
extra strength.
AC: Do you think that both here
and in England with football
still meant to be a working-class
sport that the gap between the
players and the fans has grown
too big? You make so much money,
you are all so famous and fted,
the gap has grown, people cant
identify like they did?
MB: I think it has changed. Before, I
think fans used to really love players,
really love them, whereas now it is
more that they love the club, and as
soon as the team loses then everyone
turns on the players because they
say we are so well paid and stuff, but
the players want to win too. It is just
that when the result is not what they
expect, they get angry with you, like
we didnt try, like we dont care like
they do.
AC: Would you have been a
footballer if the money had
not been as it is?
MB: Denitely.
AC: Is money important to you?
MB: Money is important to everyone.
But I would have been a football
player even before all this money
started to go around. I love football.
I loved it always. I liked volleyball
too, on the beach. Beach volley.
AC: Mens or womens?
MB: Mixed! Men and women
vs men and women. [Laughs.]
AC: Did you always think
you would be famous?
MB: I always knew I was good at
football, and I knew I would be a
footballer, and I knew that footballers
get famous. So yes, I always knew.
AC: Do you remember a specic
moment when you thought, Wow,
Im good?
MB: After the Juventus game in
Coppa Italia. I scored two goals. I
never thought I could score against
Juventus and I scored two!
AC: What changed after that?
MB: I was a bit more condent.
Before, I thought it was a dream, and
after that it became reality. I always
wanted to be a footballer and I knew
it would be my career. But before
that game they were just words,
and after that game it was a fact.
AC: I noticed when you took
your shirt off you had a Jesus
tattoo. Are you religious?
MB: Yes, I am.
AC: Catholic?
MB: Yes.
AC: I also noticed a while back
you tweeted about trusting no one
except your family. Do you mean
that? Do you think nobody can
be trusted apart from family?
MB: If you have your family, you
also have God.
To see more from Mario Balotelli,
visit pumafootballclub.com
Mute point:
Italys Leonardo
Bonucci averts
Balotellis heated
celebration aimed
at the media after
his goal against
the Republic
OfIreland at
Euro2012,
18June 2012
195
JULY 2014 G
ART
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TONY KELLY
From the erotic metaphysical poetry of
John Donne to the slack-jawed awe of
a Scarlett Johansson article, many men
are rendered helpless by the opposite
sex. A man faced with a beautiful
woman will do anything to impress her,
photographer Tony Kelly an obsessive
observer tells GQ. He illustrates this in
his rst book, Tonys Toys, which focuses
on diminutive Action Men interacting
with the 38-year-old Kellys favourite
models. [It] depicts the imbalance in the
relationship between man and a beautiful
woman, says Dublin-born Kelly. It
reminded me of going to Ibiza as a teen-
ager. I saw this fat wealthy Russian man
carrying his girlfriends clutch. There was
a mixed look on his face of both pride and
desperation as they strolled along the port.
She was 40 years his junior, very tall. But
how can he walk next to this woman who
is 3ft taller than him, carrying her handbag?
I remember thinking hed lost all his power.
He lost his machismo. Everything.
The limited-edition Tonys
Toys, 39, is out on 15 June.
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197
There is
something in the
CHARACTER of
Michel Platini
that just
DOESNT INVITE
EMPATHY
inBritain
at least
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Once adored for his
skills on the pitch, he
isnow feared and even
loathed for his actions
of it. Uefa president
Michel Platinis reign
has been plagued by rumours of
political inuence and corruption in
connection with Qatars World Cup
bid. Here, GQ examines the sports
dethroned king
STORY BY ROBERT CHALMERS
Very important
president: Uefa boss
Michel Platini attends
the opening ceremony
of the Gulf Cup Of
Nations competition
between Bahrain and
Oman, 5January 2013
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Following his discharge by South Africas
leading cardiologist, Dr Leonard Steingo, a
spokesman explained that Platinis sudden
blackout was merely a side effect of inuenza.
How would we have remembered Michel
Franois Platini had he left us that night?
Concerning his playing career at Nancy, Saint-
Etienne and Juventus, the tributes would
have been generous and expansive. Most
ex- professionals I spoke to, including Pel,
consider him to be one of the greatest players
of all time.
Michel Platini, in Pels words, is the only
Frenchman who would have got into the Brazil
team of any era. He was fantastic. His shooting,
his passing, his touch on the ball, his instinct in
front of goal; he was tremendous.
Platinis great weapon, according to the
legendary sports writer Hugh McIlvanney, was
that sudden, electrifying surge that swept him
through the demoralised ranks of the other side
and into their penalty box, where the brilliance
of his nishing made him as welcome as an
assassin. Fearless, impudent, superb in the air,
he was the executor of free kicks which remain
indelibly marked in the collective memory.
There is a curious affection normally
bestowed on retired stars by the rest of the
football family. This phenomenon is remarkable
in that just as the passage of time imbues the
names of serial killers such as Jack the Ripper
with a certain romanticism even footballers
once loathed for their uncompromisingly
robust approach to the game are forgiven
for everything once theyve left the sport.
Their sins become intrinsic to their folklore:
whether its Diego Maradona, with his com-
bustible temperament and pragmatic attitude
to the rules of the game; Eric Cantona, with
his swift and instinctive reaction to heck-
lers; or, to go further back, Leeds Uniteds
feared enforcer Norman Hunter (To say that
Hunters technique sometimes strayed close to
the boundaries of legality, David Lacey of the
Guardian once wrote, is like saying that Bill
Sikes was a decent man who had his moods).
And yet there is something in the character
of Platini, now 57, that just doesnt invite
such empathy in Britain at least. To criticise
Platini publicly in France, according to Philippe
Auclair, writer for the Blizzard and England
correspondent at France Football magazine,
is a bit like walking into a Greenpeace con-
vention wearing a T-shirt decorated with the
slogan dolphins are bastards, or informing a
youth that the innocent girl of his dreams has
an inch-thick dossier at the local STD clinic.
In this country, by contrast partly because
he never signed for a club side in England
Platinis gifts as a player have sometimes
been under-appreciated. This tendency has
been exacerbated by his subsequent career
as a football administrator, rst as an aide
and personal adviser to Fifa president Sepp
Blatter in the Nineties (Platini himself joined
Fifas executive committee in 2002), then as
president of Uefa, a position he secured in
2007 and still holds. English football fans,
having seen their nation repeatedly snubbed
by the sports world governing body, will not
quickly forget the humiliating rejection of
their 2010 bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
Most have little affection for anybody at Fifa,
least of all a committee member who arrives at
meetings looking as if he has been forced into
a suit against his will and has just had two free
dinners, neither of which was quite to his taste.
Even as a player there was a curiously
unathletic line to Platinis gure, and today this
ungainliness somehow heightens a demeanour
that can appear nothing short of surly.
The indifference is mutual. Read through
Platinis cuttings le, and there is one assertion
that appears in almost every article. It is most
commonly expressed as, Michel Platini has
no hatred for the English or, There is not
the vaguest hint of Anglophobia. It recurs
so frequently that you begin to ask yourself
why. Could you imagine writer after writer,
for example, taking the trouble to emphasise
that Sir Bobby Charlton, say, has absolutely no
problems with people from Denmark?
One leading gure in French football circles
who, like many I spoke to for this article,
wished their comments to be unattributed,
begs to differ.
Sepp Blatter, he told me, is a pragmatist.
He has an understandable problem with
the English, given the sustained criticism of
Fifa business practices by the press there.
Platini, I feel, has a deep-seated hatred of the
English, the origins of which I personally fail
to understand.
The distinguished French writer and broad-
caster Jean-Philippe Leclaire, a former editor of
LEquipe magazine, wrote the denitive biogra-
phy of Platini: unauthorised but informative,
articulate and even-handed in its treatment of
the man. Why, I asked Leclaire, has so great an
artist proved difcult for Anglo-Saxons to love?
I think, the author replied, because he
has never sought to ingratiate himself with
anybody. And yes, he denitely feels a kind
of... distance from English football.
Hatred?
Well, hatred may be too strong a word.
He knows that he was elected president of
Uefa in the face of opposition from the major
federations of northern Europe, particularly
n the evening of 9 July 2010,
Michel Platini took what some
onlookers assumed to be his nal
breath. He was in Johannesburg
and dining, ttingly enough for
this gourmand and patriot, in a
French restaurant called La Pigalle when
he collapsed at his table. Witnesses feared
that the president of Uefa, who was rushed
to hospital, had suffered a heart attack.
Dark victory: Michel
Platini lifts the European
Cup at Brussels Heysel
Stadium after Juventus
beat Liverpool, unaware
that, prior to kick-of,
39 people were killed
after a wall collapsed
following a clash of
fans, 29 May 1985
200
MICHEL PLATINI
JULY 2014 G
the English. And by nature Platini is a complex
man. He isnt a benign, avuncular gure like
Pel. He had little contact with English clubs
and, when he did, the biggest game was the
European Cup nal at Heysel in 1985. (Where,
as few will need to be reminded, 39 supporters,
the majority of Juventus, died while trying to
retreat from advancing Liverpool fans.)
Platini won a French league title with Saint-
Etienne in 1981, followed by (among other
honours) two Serie A champions medals and
that 1985 European Cup with Juventus. He was
top scorer in the Italian league for three years
in succession. Platini scored nine goals as he
led the French national team to win the Uefa
European Championship in 1984. Had a Dutch
referee not ignored a shameful assault by West
Germany goalkeeper Harald Schumacher on
French defender Patrick Battiston in the sem-
inal of the 1982 World Cup, and had Platini
not been carrying an injury in the same com-
petition in Mexico four years later, he might
have added at least one more champions medal
to his collection.
He struggled to sustain his record for success
as manager of France, but led the national side
to a 19-match unbeaten run before they were
disappointingly eliminated from the 1992
European Championship. No matter: once a
player leaves the game, Platini asserted, life is
always going to prove less challenging.
When you have played football at the
highest international level, he proclaimed,
everything in life seems easier afterwards.
I am, he continued, very rarely mistaken.
I work on instinct.
Platini made that declaration to Le Sport
magazine in 1987, shortly after retiring as a
player. Twenty-seven years on, following a
string of unremarkable business ventures and
an administrative career that never elicited
the respect he generated on the pitch, the
Frenchman might wish that he had tempered
his optimism.
Had he not survived that night, four years
ago in South Africa, his eulogies would
have been far simpler to compose than they
would be today. So many inconvenient issues
would have been avoided. Crucially, Platinis
obituarists would not have had to confront the
sustained criticism of his decision, in December
2010, to support Fifas gift of the 2022 World
Cup to Qatar: a decision widely regarded as the
most extraordinary and calamitous blunder in
the governance of the post-war game.
On 23 November 2010, nine days before
that vote, Platini attended a private meeting
at the Elyse Palace, at the invitation of then
president Nicolas Sarkozy. The Uefa heads
parallel position as a member of Fifas executive
committee meant that his vote was one of 22
that would decide the venue of both the 2018
and 2022 World Cups. The rst was destined for
Russia. Where the latter was concerned he was
widely believed to be in favour of the USA bid
(At the beginning, he told LEquipe in March
of this year, I had envisaged voting for... the
USA). Also invited by Sarkozy that day was
the then Qatari crown prince [now emir] Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
Sarkozys enthusiasm for cultivating lucrative
business links with the Qataris had never been
a secret. Nine days after the Elyse meeting,
Platini voted for Qatar, a wealthy emirate
smaller than Wales where, in the relevant
months of June and July, temperatures rou-
tinely exceed 50C.
Platini has conrmed that the Elyse Palace
meeting took place.
When I arrived, he told LEquipe in March,
Id assumed that it was going to be just me and
Sarkozy. I saw the people who were there and
I suspected that Mr Sarkozy might want me to
vote for Qatar. I am not so dumb that I wouldnt
pick that up. But he [Sarkozy] never asked me
explicitly. His eventual vote, he emphasised,
was of his own volition.
In a World Cup, Platini remarked, referring
to the competition in France in 1998, which
he co-organised, what remains in the public
memory are goals and the emotions players
bring to the eld. Nobody will ever remember
how a World Cup has been organised. In reply
to which, with reference to Qatar 2022, you can
only say: good luck with that.
Historically, Fifas governing body is con-
sidered by few to represent a model of ideal
practice. So numerous, detailed and grotesque
have been the exposs of the culture of
nefarious deals, brown envelopes and opulent
hospitality provided in exchange for favours,
that new revelations serve only to dull an out-
siders capacity to be shocked by anything the
organisation overseen for the past 16 years
by Blatter might do in the future.
Guido Tognoni, a former member of the Fifa
executive, has described the organisation as
morally bankrupt and akin to a maa. This
organisation, he added, is rotten to the core.
Fifa is emblematic of sport gone to the bad.
Platini worked with Blatter for many years,
and the credibility he brought the controversial
Swiss administrator was crucial to the success
of the Fifa presidents rst electoral campaign
in 1998. In recent years, the two mens mutual
regard appears to have dwindled to something
more closely resembling rivalry.
Speaking at the March 2014 Uefa confer-
ence in Kazakhstan, Platini declared that he
alone was capable of defeating the 78-year-
old Swiss national in the 2015 Fifa presidential
election. There is no suggestion that Platini has
ever been a beneciary of the kind of nan-
cial chicanery that Blatters best efforts have
somehow failed to eradicate, but his admission
that he voted for Qatar has had a number of
unwelcome consequences for the head of Uefa.
The grotesque publicity that has been gener-
ated by the Qatari project would have troubled
anybody, let alone a man of Platinis known
moral sensibility. In ve days last August alone,
44 migrant construction workers on sites related
to the 2022 project were reported to have
died from workplace accidents or from heart
attacks. Well-sourced stories about conscated
passports and squalid living conditions
He is one of those men that you swear you
are going to say no to and yet, when you
lookinto his eyes... the word yes slips out
JACQUES SGULA, MICHEL PLATINIS FORMER PUBLICIST
Tall order: A statue
ofZinedine Zidane
head-butting Marco
Materazzi ispolished
in Doha, Qatar (the
sculpture has since
beenremoved), as
the worlds media
(including France
Football magazine
and the Guardian)
continue toscrutinise
Fifas decision to
host the 2022
World Cup there
201
G JULY 2014

have helped depict what is no less than a
form of modern slavery.
In July 2012, rattled by a series of scandals
involving committee members Jack Warner and
his Qatari friend Mohamed bin Hammam (and
other affairs too numerous to list here) Fifa, at
a meeting in Zurich, appointed Michael J Garcia
to lead an investigation into its own malprac-
tice. Garcia is a one-time vice president of the
American branch of Interpol, former attor-
ney for the Southern District of New York,
and a veteran counterterrorism prosecutor.
By March 2014, owing to retirements and
resignations from the Fifa board on grounds
ranging from the honourable to the opaque,
only 13 of the original 22 who voted for Qatar
remained. Garcia, who had by then devel-
oped a keen interest in the emirates bidding
process, showed up at Fifas executive meeting
in Zurich. There, he demanded to question
members who had taken part in the original
vote, among them Platini. Reliable sources
suggest that certain committee members were
ercely lobbying to have Garcia removed from
the case. This faction did not enjoy the support
of the former Juventus star.
I would condemn any possible attempt
to derail the investigation, said Platini.
I want the process to continue to the
very end.
The Uefa president is a man who, even
his enemies concede, has an instinctive
loathing of bribery, match-fixing and
criminality in general. Where Platinis
own dealings are concerned, the worst
failings appear to represent no more than
unfortunate coincidences. For example, in
January 2012, his son, Laurent, was appointed
chief executive of Burrda, a sports-kit company
that is part of the portfolio of the Qatar Sports
Investments group.
It is, equally, a matter of record that the
anthem for the Europa League competition was
commissioned from a little-known composer,
Yohann Zveig. Uefas website is expansive on
the qualities of Zveigs tune. The site is less
voluble concerning the composer himself,
who has been commissioned to write music
for other prestigious Uefa events such as the
annual Ballon dOr ceremony. Mr Zveig is intro-
duced merely as French and not, as he has
also been known, as the husband of Platinis
daughter, Marine. (Pedro Pinto, chief of press
for Uefa, informed me that their relationship
has now ended.) It is not suggested Platini had
any involvement in Zveigs commissions.
Platinis detractors sometimes forget the good
he has done. If the only innovation hed ever
achieved was the outlawing of the handling
of back passes by a goalkeeper (for which he
campaigned tirelessly) football would have a
reason to be grateful to him in perpetuity.
But the Frenchman has also opposed the
introduction of technology to the game: the
one development that would most deter the
offer of inducements to players and ofcials.
He has defended this position with a perverse
resolve that would have done credit to King
Ludd. Platini has complained about the expense
of installing goal-line technology; he also feels
that video technology would interrupt the ow
of the game and potentially iname tensions
on the touchline.
The Uefa presidents enthusiasm for employ-
ing extra ofcials to police the penalty area is
not shared within the game. He has pioneered
and championed the Uefa nancial fair play
regulations which, put in their simplest terms,
seek to impose punitive sanctions on clubs
which spend more than they earn. Though
admirable in principle, his original plans to dis-
qualify clubs from European competitions and
impose huge nes have proved highly prob-
lematic to implement in the face of existing
European law and the guile of wealthy owners.
So what if the temperature in Qatar, in June,
might reach levels potentially hazardous to
both players and supporters? Move the tour-
nament to the winter. How to handle the
seismic impact that such a switch would have
on other competitions? Well deal with that
when it arises. (Potential targets for disruption
include: the Winter Olympics, the Champions
League, the Europa League, the European
Championships, the World Club title and the
group stages for Euro 2024; there are also
possible complications for the Confederations
Cup, scheduled for Qatar in June 2021.)
The threat of legal action from (reputedly
livid) rival bidders for 2022 (Australia, Japan,
South Korea and the USA), who were explicitly
mandated to submit proposals for a tournament
in the early summer, may prove harder to
ignore, but any such court cases are likely to
be delayed pending the outcome of Michael
J Garcias investigation. One undeniable
truth resonates from Platinis history: a micro
manager he is not. Platinis modus operandi
is always the same. Have the big idea often
a romanticised, idealistic notion trust your
instinct and move on, leaving the minutiae to
others. Its a pattern that recurs not just in his
football administration, but his life.
M
ichel Platini, unlike many of foot-
balls greats, was not propelled into
the sport by nancial need. He had
a comfortable upbringing in Joeuf,
a small town 192 miles east of Paris, where his
mother, Anna, ran the Bar des Sportifs. His
father, Aldo, was a teacher and football coach.
Platinis older sister, Martine, completed her
studies and went into banking. The familys
origins were in Piedmont, northern Italy. As a
young man Platini seems to have been overin-
dulged in a style that only Italianate families,
especially when dealing with an only son, ever
quite seem to achieve. From the beginning, his
critics would say, he was spoiled rotten.
On the eld, his sense of entitlement was
facilitated by his prodigious ability, evident
long before he joined his first major club,
Nancy. The problem with the outside world,
Platini once remarked, was that I have to
weigh every word. On the pitch, I just had to
say, Listen you tosser, stop pissing around and
give me the ball.
He was still at Nancy in 1977 when he
married Christelle Bigoni, then a student of
ecological science, to whom the footballer
awkward, solitary and unsure, by his own
admission, before they fell in love has
remained devoted. Two years later, he signed
for Saint-Etienne. In the early Eighties, he
suffered the double blow of learning of an
alleged affair between Christelle and his French
international team-mate Jean-Franois Larios
(the Platinis reunited and are still together)
and prosecution for receiving undeclared
cash payments from Saint-Etiennes caisse
noire, or slush fund.
Platinis case was one of many scruti-
nised by a judicial investigation into the
books of Saint-Etienne between 1976
and 1982. The player testied that he had
agreed a salary with the then Saint-Etienne
president Roger Rocher, but had also
received 880,000 francs for which he had
signed receipts. Platini took the 880,000 francs
because he understood it was the only way in
which the club could meet his requirements
of one million francs net per year; he has
always maintained that he knew nothing of
the so-called slush fund nor of the debatable
provenance of the money.
Platini was later given a presidential pardon.
The investigation, which continued into and
beyond his time at Juventus, is described in
detail in Jean-Philippe Leclaires biography.
Michel Platini, the judge told the player, at
one point in proceedings, you can begin by
taking your hand out of your pocket. I am in
charge here. Now return to your seat.
As Leclaire remarks, Platini was ill-suited to
the passive role of the accused. This man who
had [by then] received the Lgion dHonneur
from [former] President Mitterrand, now found
himself being scolded, lectured and mocked
by a man in a black robe who appeared to
expect him to grovel. Fidgeting on his chair and
increasingly ill at ease, Platini had no choice
but to grin and bear it.
How do such memories inform his current
ardour for nancial transparency in football?
There can be few men outside the world of pol-
itics whose actions and words offer so many
seeming contradictions as Michel Platini. His
Either you say football must
be clean or you recognise
that deals get done. Some
peopleare disappointed
inMichel Platini
JEAN-PHILIPPE LECLAIRE, BIOGRAPHER
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customary vagueness and apparent incon-
sistencies are such that, as one journalist
remarked, contemplating them becomes
maddening, after a while.
Strident even as a young man in his
condemnation of malpractice in sport, and a
virulent critic of clubs who employ too many
foreign players, his principles did not prevent
him from leaving Saint-Etienne for Juventus, a
club whose record is not unblemished when it
comes to unorthodox dealings with match of-
cials. Once in Turin he bonded with Paolo Rossi.
The Tuscan striker had recently completed a
two-year ban relating to illegal betting at his
previous club, Perugia. It was a charge that
Rossi, a matinee idol among swindlers, as
Platini called him, always denied.
Football, as Platinis former publicist Jacques
Sgula once observed, is full of paradoxes.
So why, Sgula asked, should we be sur-
prised that Platini, the hero of this national
farce, should be, at the same time, the spoilt
child and the dethroned king; the white knight
and the prince of darkness; the [masculine]
star and the [feminine] starlette? Meet Michel
Platini, the most loved and most hated of all
French champions.
The seductive power of Platinis physical
presence, and his ability to charm both men
and women, is confirmed by all who have
known him.
Sgula is 80 now and no longer works for
the ex-footballer. Hes one of those men, he
wrote in his 1989 memoir, that you swear
you are going to say no to and yet, when you
look into his eyes... the word yes slips out as
though somebody else had said it.
Platini, according to Sgula, was capable
of inspiring in others (including the publicist
himself) an impulse he dened as take me
to the ends of the earth. This is the title
of a love song recorded by, among others,
Charles Aznavour. He captivates you, the
publicist explained, so that you want to
give everything up, just so you can follow
him. Im not a homosexual or a football fan,
but in our professional relationship I expe-
rienced that fascination. With time, that
stupefying charm gave way to friendship. But
not to communication. Sheathed in mistrust,
paralysed by his entourage, Michel barely
listens, and never [fully] engages. A man is
no more a star to his publicist than he is to
[his] butler. But Platini, Sgula added, still
bewitches me.
The Uefa president has long been a
campaigner against drug abuse. Many have
wondered quite what inspired his distaste
for such indulgence. His only known contact
with suspected drug users is peripheral in
the extreme and dates back to 1991 when,
having retired from the game, he had moved
his family back to Nancy. When Platini was
absent on business, he and Christelle had his
former Nancy and French international team-
mate Olivier Rouyer sleep over at the house
to protect their children, who had been the
victims of a kidnap attempt. In early 1991
Rouyer, who has become one of the few promi-
nent ex-professional footballers to come out as
gay, and Jacques Brzezinski, chairman of Nancy
FC from 1989-90, were arrested in connection
with an investigation by the local drug squad.
Both were eventually freed.
Again, there is no suggestion that Platini was
in any way complicit in such alleged activities,
but quite how he wound up being associated,
however remotely, with the whiff of perceived
scandal may point to a lack of judgment or
scrutiny when it came to his circle of friends.
Where Platini was concerned, Jean-Philippe
Leclaire wrote, describing this period in his
biography, a convergence of delicate affairs
convinced him that Nancy was not the haven
of serenity he had sought when he left Italy.
He quit the town at the end of 1991.
Close friends describe Platini as incredibly
shy. And yet he spoke, in the Eighties, of
fronting a TV show where he would interview
subjects including Mikhail Gorbachev and the
Pope. I went to the Vatican, he told one inter-
viewer, to talk to the Pope about my idea.
This project came to nothing, possibly because,
as Platini explained, you are not allowed to
ask the Pope any questions. But King Hassan
II [of Morocco] had already agreed. The
footballer, who can come over as disdainful
and somewhat supercilious on the small screen,
wound up talking to high-jumpers.
Several aspects of his character, I suggested
to Leclaire, seem hard to reconcile with his
CV. For instance, how does a man of principle
get himself embroiled in a horrible mess
like Qatargate?
Well, said Leclaire, lets not forget what
[Tony] Blair and the English did to bring the
Olympic Games to London [referring to the
impact of the prime ministers support for the
London 2012 bid]. Either you say football must
be completely clean and above board [not,
most would argue, a bad starting position] or
you recognise that realpolitik exists and that
deals get done. I think of Platini as a bit like
the Barack Obama of football. He was elected
to Uefa with the idea that he could make a real
difference. Then he encountered the realities
of the situation. Like Obama did. Some people
are disappointed in Platini. Some people are
disappointed in Obama.
You say hes like Obama, I said; another
analogy might be Gollum.
I have never been especially close to Platini.
But I have had the opportunity to observe him
close up over a long period of time, and I think
Platini is... how he appears.
All I see are contradictions, I said.
Well he is full of contradictions. You could
call him a sensitive killer. He can seem cold on
the exterior, but hes highly sensitive inside. I
think Heysel was very important in shaping his
life. I believe that was really a pivotal moment
for him.
He told LEquipe in 1987, You know, at
Heysel, its a terrible thing to say, but I never
thought of the dead.
Why? he was asked. Because you didnt
know there were any?
Oh, I knew. [After the game, according to
all sources, not during play.]
So why not?
You need to ask a psychiatrist, Platini
replied, about that one.
In an article published in Paris Match
shortly after the nal, Platini said, I scored
the winning goal and if I appeared to make a
celebratory gesture it was more an expression
of rage, in the heat of the moment.
There are images of Platini smiling broadly,
stripped to the waist and brandishing the
trophy in front of Italian supporters.
Before Heysel, Leclaire told me, he
thought nothing bad could happen to him
on the football pitch. Then he got back to the
hotel and saw the bodies on TV. He realised
that football could resemble war by other
means. This is a man who always refused to
sing the Marseillaise before a game because
he believed songs about weapons had no place
on a football eld.
Two-and-a-half years after Heysel, he gave
an interview, in Libration, to the novelist
and lm-maker Marguerite Duras. Duras, not
known for her knockabout sense of humour,
was then a highly respected woman of
letters. Its not easy to place Platinis meeting
in a British context, but it was rather as if
Wayne Rooney had decided to confide in
Jeanette Winterson.
There is one exchange in which Duras
invites the player to contemplate the thought
processes of a racehorse.
Duras: But do they [horses] experience
the kind of passion that we have been talking
about? Or is that a uniquely human thing?
Horrible bosses: Disgruntled FC Sion
fansprotest against footballs headmen in
2012 after they were disqualied from the
EuropaLeague for elding ineligible players
Continued on page 225
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FASHION
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Shirtby Peneld,
60. peneld.com.
Sunglasses by Next,
13. next.co.uk
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FASHION
Shirtby Edwin, 107.
edwin-europe.com.
Trousers by Emporio
Armani, 325. armani.
com. Shoes, 26.
Sunglasses, 13. Belt,
18. All by Next. next.
co.uk. Watch by Boss,
150. hugoboss.com
207
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FASHION
Shirt, 50. Trousers, 125.
Both by Ben Sherman.
bensherman.com.
Sunglasses, 13.
Watch, 25. Both by
Next, 13. next.co.uk
209
Shirtby Marks &
Spencer, 27.50.
marksandspencer.com.
Trousers by Marc
Jacobs, 300.
marcjacobs.com.
Sunglasses by Next,
13. next.co.uk.
Watch by Boss,
150. hugoboss.com
JULY 2014 G
FASHION
Shirt by Karmakula,
55. At Topman.
topman.com. Trousers,
22. Sunglasses, 13.
Watch, 25. All by Next.
next.co.uk. Belt by
Polo Ralph Lauren,
75. ralphlauren.com
211
Shirtby Marks &
Spencer, 27.50.
marksandspencer.com.
Sunglasses by Next,
13. next.co.uk
JULY 2014 G
FASHION
Shirtby Scotch & Soda,
72.95. scotch-soda.com.
Trousers, 22. Belt, 18.
Both by Next. next.co.uk.
Shoes by Rivieras, 50.
rivieras-shoes.com
Production
Grace Gilfeather
Hair Kristen Shaw
at Jed Root
Fashion Assistant
Holly Roberts
Model Nick Wilson
at Select
GQ stayed at the
Mr C Hotel, Beverly
Hills. mrchotels.com
213
MONEY HEALTH 2014 NEXT GENERATION
JULY 1, 2014
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WIRED Money is back to
showcase the bold thinkers and
companies reinventing money,
banking and finance. Speakers
already announced include:
Dave Birch
Global ambassador,
Consult Hyperion
Shakil Khan
Angel investsor & founder,
Coindesk
James Glattfelder
Complexity scientist
and author
Brett King
Founder & CEO,
Moven
Annette Heuser
Executive director,
Bertelsmann Foundation
Lee Sankey
Design director,
Barclays
Physical money will soon
be abandoned. Dave
Birch will explore what
will replace it and how.
Shakils Khans CoinDesk
is a news-and-analysis
website for all things
relating to bitcoin.
James Glatfelder is calling
for a richer understanding
of the interactions that
comprise the economy.
Bret Kings company
Moven has been dubbed
the worlds first fully
downloadable bank.
Annete Heuser envisions
an international credit-
rating agency which would
redefine sovereign ratings.
Barclays has embraced
onlinebanking. Lee Sankey
is headof its Innovation and
Customer Experience arms.
JULY 2014 G
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EDI TED BY PAUL HENDERSON
Park life: England Under-21 manager Gareth
Southgate at St Georges Park, Stafordshire
MANAGEMENT OF BODY & SOUL
GQ goes scouting at the
St Georges Park training
complex. Is this English
footballs biggest asset?
HOW ENGLAND
WILL WIN THE
WORLD CUP
*
215
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Green grass of home:
The indoor pitch
at St Georges Park
gets year-round
use, whatever the
Stafordshire weather
throws down
Ball control: Gareth
Southgate says its
key that his U21
sidecan now train
with the senior team
Footballs
coming home
The situation before
St Georges Park was
like a club not having
atraining ground, says
Dan Ashworth, director
of elite development
for the FA, discussing
the diference SGP
has already made.
Its a home for all the
England teams. Now
we have the benet
ofRoy [Hodgson] and
theseniors training
at the same time as
the Under-21s; theres
integrationbetween
theteams.
England U21 manager
Gareth Southgate
echoes this theme.
When you turn into
the driveway you feel
that youre part of
the England football
setup. When I played
for England, we would
have been at Burnham
Beeches; you never
sawthe U21s, the U18s.
There wasnt that feel
that you were part of
something bigger.
Attention to detail
Football might be an
unpredictable, insanely
complex game, but it
always comes down to
matters of millimetres.
A key exponent
of this philosophy
is Dave Reddin,
SGPs new head of
performance services.
Reddin is known for
his involvement in
the England rugby
teams 2003 World
Cup success and Team
GBs at London 2012.
With responsibility for
sports science, medical
performance analysis,
physiotherapy and
psychology at SGP,
Reddin has a big job,
but hes an inspiring
gure who will take
it in his stride. The
goal Ive got from a
performance-services
perspective, he
explains, is that in the
long term St Georges
Park and England
football practice
becomes recognised as
the best in any sport.
1
2
SPORT
Why English football has
grounds for celebration
Since it was opened in October 2012 by the
Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, St Georges
Park part of the Football Associations
330-acre, 105 million state-of-the-art training
complex just outside Burton upon
Trent has been used by all 24 of
Englands mens and womens
football teams and been visited by
many of Europes top teams. It
comprises two hotels, eleven
full-sized outdoor pitches, a
three-lane sprint track sponsored
by Michael Johnson, an exact replica
of Wembleys pitch, an indoor pitch
plus a court for futsal (ve-a-side with
A-levels beloved by Spain and Brazil), a
hydrotherapy suite with an underwater
treadmill (identical to that used by Mo Farah),
walls covered in motivational quotes, a
massive medical centre, banks of gym
equipment, and accompanying technology
to monitor every last fast-twitch muscle
movement that takes place on the premises.
As well as a base for all the national teams,
SGP will also serve as a centre of
excellence, forging better contacts
with clubs and disseminating a
coherent view of how the game
needs to develop nationally,
a message backed up by the
thousands of coaches who will
undertake courses here. However,
the only real measure of its
long-term success will be if it leads
to an upswing in the fortunes and style
of the England mens senior team. The
105m question, therefore, is can SGP help
deliver England the World Cup in 2022 or
earlier (we wouldnt complain)? Here are
seven reasons why it just might...
Raised to slay the dragon of disappointment at the sports
highest level, St Georges Park is the multimillion-pound,
all-age proving ground for our future national heroes
216
LIFE
JULY 2014 G
Top spin: State-of-
the-art gym kit will
steer English teams
in the right direction
Discover
Englands DNA
Cynics will scof
PrivateEye already
hasa column dedicated
to pillorying the overuse
of the phrase but
all senior staf at SGP
seemcertain that
discovering Englands
DNA ie, the type of
football that England
teams play at every level
is key to success.
Weve got to
establish what is
important about
playingfor England,
what makes it a unique
experience, explains
Southgate. We have
to produce players
that are elite in every
aspect of the game
psychologically,
physically, tactically.
England needs
tohave a way of
playingand a way of
winning, adds Reddin.
In my experience
thatsa long process
buthopefully its
something that I can
help accelerate.
Better penalties
Already sick of being
labelled the penalty
guru by the media,
Reddin takes pains
to point out hes not
working with the
seniorsquad on spot
kicks this summer in
Brazil. That task has
instead been entrusted
to British Cycling and
Team Sky psychiatrist
DrSteve Peters.
Nevertheless, Reddin
will be looking at all
aspects of psychology
relating to teams
in thefuture and
inevitablythis will have
to cover penalties.
Theres a need to
ensure that the players
have the technical
capability and the
psychological skills to
deal with that unique
situation, he says. If we
go all the way back, we
have to say that some
of those teams and
individuals werenot as
well prepared as they
shouldhave been.
JohnNaughton
Improve coaching
That era of coaching
and performance
all being about
heart and guts is
receding rapidly,
says Reddin. We
have got tobelieve
that wecando better
thanthat.
A key reason for
SGPs existence is to
raise the standard
of coaching at every
levelof the game.
Football is the
only subject we still
teach by shouting at
our children, adds
Southgate. The
mind-set of coaches
isdenitely moving
away from get it
forward as quickly
asyou can. The
key with what we
do with the teams
is thecoaches and
making sure we have
the right quality of
people, because the
facilities alone will
not win anything, but
it does give you a
catalyst for change.
Join the space race
Because astronauts
lose bone density after
long periods of time in
zero gravity, Nasa tried
to develop a machine
to re-create the efects
of gravity in space.
It involved building
a giant treadmill
into which fearless
researchers were
zipped and a complete
vacuum created.
It was an absolute
failure, says SGP lead
physio Paul Williamson.
People were getting
hernias, having their
bits pulled down, the
suction was too great.
Then one of the sons
of the researchers said,
Why dont you reverse
the ow? It could help
rehabilitation. And
thats where this anti-
gravity treadmill was
born. Now England
players can get on the
treadmill and have
body weight removed,
allowing them to get
a full cardiovascular
work-out with greatly
reduced impact.
SO,
CAN WE
WIN IT
IN 2022?
Yes, I absolutely
think we can win
theWorld Cup in
2022, says Reddin.
Everyone tends to
overestimate whats
achievable in the
short term, but eight
years is a long time.
If you think of the
inuence that the
EPPP (Elite Player
Performance Plan)
could play over that
length of time, if
youthink about the
amount of change
going on at the FA
at the moment and
the real benets of
St Georges Park
andthe staf that
were bringing in,
that starts to look
like a realistic
timeframe.
Now, whether
you actually win it
ornot is another
matter, but what you
can say is that over
that period of time
we should be in a
position where
werecapable of
winning it. JN
3
5
7
6
4
Pulling power:
Resistance equipment
builds the players
endurance and strength
Ination busting:
Anti-gravity training
may sound like hot air,
but its a serious aid
to injured players
Get the clubs onside
The way the season is
set up means we dont
want the same things
as the clubs at the
sametime, says Reddin,
of the conicting
demands of club and
country. Its also true
that we dont have the
players for a long time
before internationals,
so that means you have
to work extra hard to
engage with players to
make them feel part of
something all year, not
just when theyre picked
for the team.
We invited U21
club coaches to come
here for a day to meet
Gareth and watch
the U21s train, says
Ashworth. We had
more than 60club
coaches here. They
watched them train
then came inside, talked,
shared ideas andwent
on to watch the U18s
play against Croatia.
That really helps break
down barriers with
the clubs and improve
communication.
217
G JULY 2014
Skip jumps with
lightdumbbells
20 reps/30 reps
Stand tall with feet
hip-distance apart, light
dumbbells in hands. Breathe
in as you squat to parallel
maintaining a long spine. As
you breathe out, explode up
into a star jump, landing with
your feet just wider than
shoulder-distance apart, feet
and knees aligned. Do a small
jump to return your feet to
hip-distance apart in a parallel
squat ready for your next rep.
Glute stretch
Lie down, knees bent,
feet at on the oor,
and cross your right
ankle over your left
knee and draw your
left knee towards
your chest. Press
down through the
back of your right hip
to intensify. Hold for
60-90 seconds, then
repeaton left side.
Stretch for hamstrings
Lying on your back,
knees bent and feet
at, hook a strap or
towel over your right
foot and straighten.
Then slowly pull your
right leg up vertical
until you feel a gentle
stretch. Straighten your
left leg and ex your
right foot to intensify.
Hold for 60-90 seconds
breathing continuously.
Repeat on left side.
Stretch for adductors
(in your inner thigh)
Sit upright, legs
straight. Open legs as
wide as possible and
ex feet. Breathe out,
pull in abs and hinge
forward from the hips,
pushing your tailbone
out, until you feel a
gentle stretch. Hold for
60-90 seconds.
For more information,
visit jonathangoodair.
com or homehouse.co.uk
These high-intensity, whole-body exercises
will not only improve agility, explosive power
and core strength, theyll also increase lean
muscle mass and fat burning. Aim to go all
out and complete each round in as fast a
time as possible while maintaining good
form and taking only a short recovery
time between sets. Jonathan Goodair
PERSONAL TRAINER: HIIT #3
Go hard or
go home!
HOME
STRETCHES
Circuit breaker:
Toget the most
outof this trio
oftesting tasks,
complete them as
quickly as you can
Dothree rounds at three minutes each, with no
more than one minutes rest between rounds
High lateral jumps
witha45 degree twist
10 reps/20 reps
Standing with feet shoulder-
width apart, ex your knees
and hips slightly and jump as
high and as far as you can to
the side, turning through 45
degrees and landing on the
balls of your heels, then lower
your heels as you begin your
next rep. If youre feeling
condent, attempt jumping
over a box or bench. Try to
eliminate any pauses
between jumps.
Squat with single
overhead press
15 reps each arm (with a
suitably challenging weight)
Stand tall with feet shoulder-
distance apart, with one
handholding a dumbbell at
shoulder level, the other hand
on your hip. Breathe in as you
squat to parallel, maintaining
a long spine as you lower
yourself down. As you breathe
out, pull in your abdominals
and stand up tall, pressing the
dumbbell overhead. Breathe
in as you begin your next rep.
218
JULY 2014 G
LIFE
P
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What is it?
A stress-busting,
cardio-based
boxing class using
freestanding punch
bags. Lasting one
hour, Fight Klub
combines traditional
prize-ghting
combination work
with circuit-style
stations, including
burpees and
push-ups.
Why try it?
Because youve had
an arduous day and
youd rather let the
punch bag take the
strain than your mind.
Expect your tness
levels to rise and that
lingering mufn top
to make way for a
toned torso.
Who is it for?
The gym junkie
whoneeds a regime
redux, because
stepping out of your
regular routine will
not only reinvigorate
your enthusiasm for
exercise, but also
open your eyes to
new ways to train.
How much is it?
Free to 37 Degrees
members, or 20 for
a guest pass, which
gives you access to
the rest of the gym.
Its expensive, but
how much can you
know about yourself
if youve never been
to Fight Klub?
Lee Stobbs
Sessions available on
Tuesdays at 7.30am
and 7pm, Thursdays
at 7pm, Fridays at
12.15pm and Sundays
at 10.30am. 2b More
London Place, London
SE1. 020 7940 4937,
thirtyseven
degrees.co.uk
Fight Klub
at 37
Degrees
Get the lowdown
on the newest
combat-inspired
work-out
Fitness
trends
explained
When do you
startyour day?
What is your
breakfast of
champions?
Do you exercise
at dawn or dusk?
What is the
most important
decision you have
made in your
professional life?
Are your best
decisions based
oninstinct or
information?
What is the best
piece of advice
youve ever
beengiven?
How do you get
thebest from
yourteam?
When do you do
your best work?
When does
yourdayend?
What is the
secret of your
success?
BALANCE
How to tackle your day
Usually at 6am when Im
withEngland. I either go for
a run or go to the gym.
Denitely at dawn. Its either a
4km run outside the team hotel,
or intervals on the treadmill in
the gym, along with some
power-weights circuits.
Both I trust my instincts, but
based on accumulating as much
information as I can. Sometimes
the pressure of time means you
cannot prepare like that, so then
its over to instincts and trusting
your philosophy.
You have to inspire them with
a vision for where you are going;
build good relationships; create
belief; and support them when
the tough times come.
I am a morning person, but I can
usually sustain a consistent level
through the day. Finding space
tothink is important.
Hard work, be open-minded,
never stop learning and treat
others how you would want
to be treated yourself!
There are two really to leave
teaching in 2000 and join Leeds
as academy manager. Then to
leave Leeds and become the
head of elite player development
at the Rugby Football Union in
2007. Both decisions directly led
to the role that I have now.
Trust that the score will take
care of itself. Its a concept
based on a leadership book by
an NFL coach called Bill Walsh,
who led the San Francisco 49ers
to three Super Bowl titles. It has
some great leadership and
team-building messages in it.
A very ne line no team
or person wins all the time,
but those who prepare best
and maintain a high level of
concentration and commitment
usually win consistently.
What separates
winners from losers?
In camp its full-on till late, but
I dont burn the candle at both
ends! How do I relax? Exercise.
Take a timekeeping
lesson or two from...
Stuart Lancaster,
England rugby
union head coach
England play three Tests against
NewZealand on 7, 14 and 21 June.
In camp, Ill have poached or
scrambled egg and ham.
The number
of people
inthe United
Kingdom
whodevelop
malignant
melanoma
each year
1
3
,
3
4
8

Saucony Kinvara 5
Boston-based brand
Saucony has always
had a cult-following
among serious runners,
but its latest shoes
might just convert the
masses. With a reduced
heel-to-toe drop,
ProLock lacing and
even greater comfort,
the Kinvara leads where
others follow.
105. saucony.co.uk
219
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Field of dreams:
GQs Sex Shrink
givesTantric tips
foralfresco loving
SEX SHRINK
A winning outdoors position, if you
wouldbe so kind
TF, by email
As ever, yab-yum (in which you are
cross-legged and she sits in your lap) is the
Tantric pose perfectly suited to this: intimate,
tremendously lling for her, long lasting.
Ideally, your beach goddess will be milking
your member with her pussy and whispering
in your ear every last detail of why last night
was so explosively incredible. Plus, it is
easily covered by a long, oaty dress.
If, however, youre blessed with a more
discreet location, consider standing dancer,
based on a pose in the Kama Sutra: she
stands with her back to a wall, you enter her
and she wraps one of her legs around your
waist tightening her and taking you more
fully inside her. For the deepest version of
this, hook each of her knees into the crooks
of your arms such that her booty is level
with your hips and entirely open to you. Its
not subtle, but it should be intense, fantastic
and fast for you both.
Remind me about the O-spot, oh Goddess.
BJ, by email
You are dismissed. The O-spot is a ridiculous
neologism from a man desperate to inject
women with specially oxygenated blood.
Having named his procedure the O-shot,
he then needed a term for the area at the
opening of the vagina into which he was
injecting it. On the one hand, San Diego-
based Dr Wood claims that the G-spot doesnt
exist (he has quite clearly never met the right
woman); on the other, he is charging the
credulous 1,000 a shot. Regrettable.
Ive been advised to buy her some
glassware. Your wisdom on why, which
type and how to master it, please.
SH, by email
You were well advised. Technically, youre
asking about borosilicate glass (a composite
eight- to ten-times stronger than the regular
kind), which has numerous appealing
qualities: the slippery, almost liquid nature of
its surface when it is slicked with lube; the
unforgiving rigidity of its form; its aesthetics;
heck, its cleanliness... it wins on most fronts.
Where to start? There is much pleasure to
be had from a simple S-shaped article, such
as the Artisan Glass Wand (60. At Coco De
Mer. coco-de-mer.com). The S-curve makes
it ideal for regular, consistent G-spot
stimulation: angle it such that the end
presses on her G, then simply and slowly
maintain and release the pressure for a
fantastically diverting addition to any
handwork or head. For a truly expert,
Master the methods
ofsuperior seduction
This month, GQs Tantric
tutor Rebecca Newman takes
the teasing outdoors, glories
glassware and reminds us
why the G-spot is no myth...
220
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JULY 2014 G
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A few months into joining the tness
cult that is CrossFit, I noticed an
interesting side efect: my hand jobs
were suddenly spectacular; my arm
no longer got tired in the middle of
polishing the pole. This new forearm
strength also extended to doing
myself, AKA making friends with
Mrs Palmers ve.
One CrossFitting couple told me
that right after their work-out is when
they most felt like doing it. One day
they couldnt wait, and started doing
it in their car in the CrossFit car park.
When the next class ran a 400-metre
warm-up right past their vehicle, they
had to stop what they were doing
and duck.
Exercise in general makes you
better in bed, and the more push-
ups you can do, the better you
can lift yourself of someone when
youve had too much to drink. Dr
Cindy Meston, a sex researcher at
the University of Texas in Austin,
SEXERCISE
by Anka
Radakovich
SEX LIFE
Fat = Floppy
In a study of obese
men who sufered from
erectile dysfunction, a
third were able to restore
the lead to their pencil
by losing 15 per cent
oftheir weight through
diet and exercise.
According
toa recent
study, porn
accounts for
30 per cent
of all data
transferred
across the
web... more
than Amazon,
Twitter
andNetfix
combined.
3
0
%
long-lasting vault to pleasure, you may
wish to consider the Dual Textured Glass
Dildo (pictured above. 130. At Coco De
Mer. coco-de-mer.com).
The options it affords are various and
inviting. Let us set the scene. Shes in the
bath, hair swept up, one foot swinging over
the edge. Carefully, place the Dual in the hot
water to warm and lean down to kiss her.
Next, run one hand through the suds to rest
on the tight round of her breast, feeling the
nipple stiffen under your touch. Now reach
lower, closing shut the lips of her vulva
between your ngers, tight enough that you
pinch her clitoris between them. With your
other hand, push her chest back such that
her upper body is pinned to the enamel.
Tease her with your ngertips until you
deem her ready. Now pick up the Dual, cover
it in a silicone lube and slide the bulbed end
just inside her. It will intensify the sensations
as you continue to work her clitoris,
offsetting the external stimulation with
glorious internal ones. Either maintain it
just inside her, or move in a few inches to
maximise pressure on her G-spot. (Again,
think either continued pressure or rocking
the bulb of the toy rst powerfully, then
more gently; the G-spot tends to respond
better to pressure than to vibration.)
Now, have her kneel and bend over. Keep
the Dual where it is, while you lightly warm
up her ass with long at licks either side of
her spider. As she is trembling beneath you,
remove the dildo from her pussy to hold its
other end (with the ascending-size bumps)
against her knot, kissing and licking her ass
cheeks and upper thighs until her spider
relaxes and takes hold of the rst segment.
Pause. The hardness of the glass can take a
moment to get used to.
Now, angling the curve of the dildo
downward, slide more of it inside her.
Reach down and move her whole sex
steadily from side to side a giddying and
marvellous addition that will run tremors
through her spine. Finally, when she cant
stand it any more, remove the toy and
using still more lube take her from behind.
She will be more than ready for access at
either entry point. If tradesman, know that
her arousal levels will be such that all you
need do is take her at a measured pace,
stroking the whole length of her with your
cock, gripping her hair to pull her head back
slightly and arch her back. If the front door,
you may consider keeping her butt happy
with a well-lubed, well-manicured thumb
pressed against (or just inside) her.
Doing Kegel exercises
on a regular basis will
improve control over
your ejaculation, give
you longer-lasting
erections and more
intense orgasms.
Simply squeeze
your PC muscles
(pubococcygeus),
the same ones you
use for stopping the
ow of urine. Start by
squeezing for three
seconds, doing three
sets of 15 reps. As you
improve, squeeze for
up to 30 seconds. They
work best when done
every day. It takes a
couple of months, but
you will then notice a
change in the intensity
of your orgasms.
Warm up with our three hot work-out tips
1
Kegels for
greater pleasure
2
A book
at bedtime
3
The
towel lift
Sexercise, The Hottest
Way To Burn Calories,
Get A Better Body,
And Experience
Mindblowing Orgasms
by Beverly Cummings
(Quiver, 12.99) includes
highly erotic and
challenging positions
that work every major
muscle, including the
one in your trousers.
Try the spirit of
ecstasy position: your
partnersits on your lap
with her back towards
you as you move her
arms up and down,
working your upper
back and shoulders,
while you insert and
shebounces up and
down on your home-
gym member.
For more advanced
muscle building, place
a towel over your half
chub or full erection
and squeeze enough
to lift the towel. Hold
for ve seconds. This is
a variation of the Kegel
exercises and just as
efective, except you
cant do it anywhere.
Try doing this 20
times a day. Build up
to more repetitions
and longer squeezes
as you get stronger.
As you get better at it,
you will become a two
toweller; eventually,
you will be able to lift
aduvet. AR
conducted a study of sexual
responseand exercise. Onegroup
were hooked up to machines
measuring sexual arousal while
watching a porn video and exercising
on a stationary bike for 20minutes.
The other group exercised and
watched a travel video. The study
found that while exercise alone did
not produce sexual arousal, adding
sexual stimuli to the mix caused
moreblood ow to the genitals.
Thelesson here: watch porn, get
on anexercise bike and get it on.
Exercise in the presence of an
eroticstimulus somehow prepares
thebody for sexual arousal,
Dr Meston says.
Yoga has some great sex benets
as well, involving the same techniques
used by Tantric sex practitioners.
Try some breathing exercises before
sex to completely relax yourself,
and during sex to breathe into an
orgasm. Practising deep breathing
will give you stronger and harder
orgasms, say tantrikas, or Tantric
sex masters. Breathe in without
pausing, then relax on the exhale,
advises Dr Joseph Kramer, founder
of the Orgasmic Yoga Institute in San
Francisco. The idea is to put both of
you in the moment.
And doing this could result in a
surprise: a yogasm.
221
G JULY 2014
P
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F
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a
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p
t
o
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S
t
y
l
i
n
g

H
o
l
l
y

R
o
b
e
r
t
s

M
o
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e
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G
e
o
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g
e

a
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F
M

L
o
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o
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G
r
o
o
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T
e
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C
a
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u
s
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N
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a
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K
i
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h
l

s

LIFE
CYCLING
Get on track
Sir Chris Hoy has taken his
spinning success and built
his own bike brand for road,
city and track. Saddle up!
When he turned his hand to racing in the
velodrome, Sir Chris Hoy was so successful
he became an eleven-time World Champion
and picked up seven Olympic medals. It
should come as no surprise, then, that having
turned his attention to making bikes, they
have garnered excellent reviews. His road
and city range are great, but his track bike,
Fiorenzuola named after the Italian venue
where he won his rst World Cup medal
is exceptional. Light, strong and track-tested
by the man himself single-speed riding
has never been better.
Fiorenzuola Track
Bike byHoy, 750.
At Evans Cycles.
evanscycles.com
Essential street style for the urban cyclist:
Commuting in the summer doesnt have to be an embarrassment of
sweat-soaked Lycra. Thanks to smart technical fabrics and stylish
tailoring, riding to work has never looked or felt better.
Jacket, 300. Hoodie, 160.
Shorts, 120. All by Rapha.
rapha.cc. T-shirt by Sunspel,
55. sunspel.com. Shoes by
Pearl Izumi, 230. madison.
co.uk. Bike by Fofa, 550.
fofabikes.com
222
ROD LIDDLE
JULY 2014 G
I
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LIFE ADVICE
Ask Dr Rod
Dear Dr Rod,
My girlfriend has left me for another
man. The thing that I nd especially
slighting is that he is more than double
her age she is 28, and this new man is
54. It seems to me inconceivable that
this age gap will work and that within
a very short space of time she will nd
him boring and probably right wing. In
a longer space of time she will probably
need to feed him and give him bed
baths etc. What should I do just let
time take its natural course, or continue
trying to persuade her what a terrible
mistake she has made? Because I do
want her back.
Saul, West Monkseaton

RL: Well, youre not getting her back,
Saul, so piss off. And I have to say your letter cheered me up more than I can
possibly explain, although if I tell you that I am 54 you might begin to grasp my
approximate position on the issue. It is excellent news that lithe young women are
prepared to get jiggy I believe that is the modern phrase with men in what we
might euphemistically call middle age. And they have good cause to be attracted to
us: we are less vain, for a start, and imbued with the wisdom of ages. Also, given the
appropriate medication, were extremely satisfying lovers, able to delay our own
climax for lengthy periods of time, or indeed perpetually in my case. So your ex
and long may she remain your ex has chosen well. What should you do? Id start,
Saul, by learning to count.
Dear Dr Rod,
My girlfriend is pregnant, and thats
sort of OK. I mean were not well
of, so life might be a struggle for a
while, but never mind. The thing thats
getting me down, though, and costing
money needlessly, is the foetus-
fanaticism. Shes just three months up
the duf and has so far paid for four
photographs of what we are assured is
our unborn child. It could be a spider,
or a whale, or a spilt cup of cofee,
or an x-ray of Chris Huhnes brain
its just an indeterminate blob, of no
interest to man nor beast. And yet she
buys these absurd photographs and
shows them to everyone, no doubt
expecting them to say, Ooh, hes got
his dads nose, hasnt he? assuming
it is a he when it doesnt have a nose,
or anything else, at all. It makes me
worry very much what shell be like
once the creature is actually born.
Robert, Monmouth
RL: Ah, yes, worry you should.
Sounds like shell be one of those
awful My Child First! harridans
who thinks because shes been clever
enough to give birth that she and
her ghastly brat take precedence over
everybody else in the known universe
(including, of course, you). You can
see them every day of the week,
bullying their way into the best seats
on public transport, jumping queues,
breast-feeding wherever it causes
most disquiet, such as outside a
mosque or in Whites club. Its
self-obsession and narcissism taken
to remarkable extremes. I suppose you
could bribe one of the technicians to
replace the next photo with one of a
monkey, or a satanic imp with 666
on its head. That should dampen her
enthusiasm.
For to-the-point answers to lifes
whys and wherefores, share your
burning issues with GQs agony
uncle, Rod Liddle, at:
askdrrod@condenast.co.uk

Email us your
letters for Dr Rod
Dear Dr Rod,
Ive been dumped by my boyfriend and now hes
slagging it around with some South African girl
named after a football team, Chelsea or West
Ham, I forget which. Anyway, he is parading this
slapper all over the place. Thing is, his family are
quite snooty big houses, dogs, half German etc
and I cant believe that they would approve of
the new girl on the block. Should I use his family
to prise him back, stressing that my lineage goes
back centuries whereas hers dates from about the
opening of the rst McDonalds in Johannesburg?
I quite liked him, you see, even if he is a ginge and
not hugely bright.
CB, Mayfair
RL: Tell you the truth, I think youre well off out
of it, love. Do you want to spend every Christmas
traipsing about a dank Scottish moor while your
father-in-law holds a conversation with some
bracken? Nah. And the appeal to snobbery wont
work. Your exs bro copped off with the daughter
of a ight attendant and the family didnt seem
to mind. Get over it all and nd a nice merchant
banker called Piers.
Dear Dr Rod,
My boyfriend is a member of UKIP and I am
black. My worry is that he is going out with me
solely to deect any possible accusation that
he is a racist so he can argue for an immediate
end to immigration with impunity. What do
youthink?
Melissa, Broxbourne
RL: Yes, probably youre right. Its a sort of
extravagant version of the some of my best
friends are black thing, isnt it? Id stick with
him though if they ever get in power he
might be useful to you.
223
G JULY 2014
Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World
(Dylan Jones, GQ.co.uk, October 2013)
Are You Ready-To-Wear Rock?
(Dylan Jones, September 2006)
Men Of The Year: The Clash
(Dylan Jones, October 2003)
MORE
FROM GQ
For these related stories, visit
GQ.co.uk/magazine
Continued from page 52
big boots... and, sooner or later, I thought, he
is going to notice me.
Sid was almost a meta Ramone, the perfect
fusion of US and UK punk, a colour- by-number
renegade, one part Roxy, one part CBGB.
When youre young, the famous are differ-
ent. As you get older you quickly realise that
theyre unnervingly like normal people, with
all the same banal fears and anxieties (only
with rather more engorged egos and expecta-
tions), but in ones youth the famous have the
capacity to become unwieldy icons. Vicious
was one such star. Punks might have pub-
licly eschewed the trappings of celebrity, but
they were still stars to 17-year-olds like me
(they were still stars to themselves, if truth be
known), particularly if they happened to be a
Sex Pistol. Especially if they were a Sex Pistol.
Id had brushes with fame before: Adam
Ant once spilled my pint as he pushed past
me on his way to join the Ants on stage at
the 100 Club; a year earlier Id helped a roadie
for Generation X at the Nags Head in High
Wycombe; and the man who played drums
on Johnny Wakelins In Zaire (no, I dont
remember it either) apparently lived three
streets away from my mother.
But this was different. This was Sid Vicious,
a genuine angry and none too bright
young man with a penchant for violence. Of
course Id heard that he was a bit of a jerk
(now and then he had the misfortune to come
across as the Fonzs stupider cousin, usually
when he opened his mouth), but he was still
the bass player and I use the term advisedly
with the most notorious bunch of neer-
do-wells in the Western world. And he was
standing four feet away from me.
The ght continued apace. It never occurred
to me to try to interfere; in my eyes this would
have been tantamount to suicide, and this
particular Slit looked like she could punch
and kick her way out of any altercation, even
with a Sex Pistol she certainly looked like
she could knock the living daylights out of me.
Suddenly it was all over, and Sids eyes
turned in my direction. Oh my God! Surely
he would suss me now, I thought (I was doing
a lot of thinking that night). Surely he would
see that I was nothing but a poseur, an art-
school plastic punk whod only recently
thrown away his Tontos Expanding Head
Band albums (which I would have to buy
again at great expense years later), and
his ares (which I wouldnt).
My fear was palpable. Would he see me for
what I was, pick me up by the lapels of my
black leather (OK, OK, plastic) jacket, spit in
my eye and throw me against the wall, snort-
ing in disgust while condemning me for once
owning the wrong Jackson Browne LP? Would
I have an extraordinary tale to tell the next day
at college, or become a news item in the tab-
loids? (Foul-mouthed punk rocker Sid razors
Chelsea art student in nightclub toilet!)? No. I
wasnt famous you see, just another paranoid,
spotty 17-year-old with a silly haircut, blank
expression, and an inated sense of his own
importance. He didnt know me from Adam
Ant. Having extricated himself from his oppo-
nents clutches the great Sid Vicious simply
marched past me and went on his merry (read:
tired and emotional) way, to see the Ramones
nish their set. He didnt even look at me, let
alone pass judgement.
As I made my way back to my seat, my
near-death experience made the Ramones
cartoon shenanigans seem suddenly almost
childish, and if not childish then at least old-
fashioned. That night we had all been given
miniature versions of the Gabba Gabba Hey
placard that Joey Ramone would often bran-
dish during their sets, which we had spent the
early part of the evening waving manically in
the air, thinking we were all terribly cool. At
the time it seemed like enormous fun even
though they were misspelt Gabba Gabba
Hay but as soon as I got back to my seat
and picked the placard up again I felt any-
thing but cool. As I held it aloft, waving it
along to Today Your Love, Tomorrow The
World, I caught a glimpse of a kohl-eyed
punkette, who was looking at me as though I
had just expressed a deep fondness for Eddie
And The Hot Rods or Jilted John.
F
or me, Fritz, the punk wars were
over. And with them the Ramones.
As we bid farewell to 1977, the
Ramones were suddenly part of the
past, although their richly tinted truncated
buzzsaw anthems would forever dene the
early years of punk. Especially for Bono.
This was the best punk-rock band ever,
because they actually invented something,
said Bono, shortly after Joey Ramone died
in 2001. There were great bands like the
Stooges and the MC5, but I think that they
were still blues bands. The Ramones were
actually the beginning of something new.
They stood for the idea of making your
limitations work for you. They talked like
they walked like they sounded on stage.
Everything added up. That takes an extraor-
dinary intelligence to gure out.
When I was standing in the State Cinema
in Dublin in 1977 listening to Joey sing and
realising that there was nothing else [that]
mattered to him, pretty soon nothing else
mattered to me. If they remind me of any-
thing now, its that singular idea. It travels
further and deeper than the baggage of pos-
sibilities you pick up along the way.
This was a really important moment,
because suddenly imagination was the only
obstacle to overcome. Anyone could play
those four chords. Thats why hip-hop has
taken off, because you dont have to be a
virtuoso, you just have to have great taste.
You have to be able to hear it more than you
have to be able to play it. Suddenly, the grasp
becomes more important than the reach.
Suddenly, a bunch of kids from the north
side of Dublin who would never have had a
chance to get on the musical merry-go-round
watched it stop for just long enough to jump
on. We were a band before we could play. We
formed our band around an idea of friendship
and shared spirit. That was a preposterous
notion before the Ramones.
Bono spoke to Joey a couple of days before
he died. He wasnt able to say much, but just
told him that the band were thinking about
him. He was indomitable to the last minute.
A doctor wanted to put a tube down his throat
to help with his breathing, and Joey wasnt
having any of it because he didnt want his
voice affected, because he had some solo gigs
coming up. He was ghting it off and fearless.
I
f you walk down to the Bowery today,
looking for CBGB, youll nd in its place
an outpost of John Varvatos, the US
fashion designer. In keeping with his
brands rocknroll image, much of the clubs
interior has been kept as it was, with its black
ceiling and walls covered in grafti, while
the store is decorated with rock memorabilia
a drum kit, guitars, posters etc and sells
vintage vinyl records and audio equipment.
Varvatos quite rightly says that if he hadnt
taken the space over, it would have been
turned into a bank or a deli, and that he is
trying to keep the spirit of the club alive. Its
a tribute to what CBGB meant to America and
to the world... not a mausoleum.
The Bowery might be succumbing to the
kind of gentrication that is enveloping every
part of lower Manhattan, yet if you nip into
Varvatos store you can hear I Remember
You pouring out of the in-store speakers,
defying anyone to argue.
I mean, you wouldnt want to argue with
a Ramone, would you?
224
Pel Is Not Just The Greatest Ever Player. Hes
MuchMore Than That... (Robert Chalmers, May 2012)
Sir Alex Ferguson On Managing Manchester United
(December 2008)
You Can Call Me A Fascist If You Like. I Know Who
I Am: Paolo Di Canio On Football And Politics
(Robert Chalmers, December 2007)
MORE
FROM GQ
For these related stories,
visitGQ.co.uk/magazine
JULY 2014 G
Platini: Well, horses, yes, they can race. And
of course they have the benet of wearing
blinkers. We cannot wear blinkers.
Duras: So you are all...
Platini: We are all what?
Duras: I am not quite sure how to put this.
Platini: Horses?
Duras: No. I just said horses because I like
horses a lot.
If a football writer had talked to him like that,
Platini observed, Id have left him hanging
from the dressing-room wall.
And yet, once Duras broached the subject
of Heysel, Platini appeared receptive in a
way that might have eluded him in a more
orthodox interview.
I became a man that day, he said. I made
the transition from a world where football
was sport, to one where football was a form
of violence. At some point, you have to put
away your childish toys. That was the day,
Platini said, that I became a man.
Eric Champel of France Football was with the
player in the dressing room after the 1985 nal.
Heysel, Champel told me, is like a kind of
cloud that always follows him around. It has
become [in his mind] a kind of stain on the
peak of his career.
Champel is far from unsympathetic to
Platini. Speaking of an interview the Uefa
president gave to French television in early
2014, he recalled, Platini said that when he
saw the Qatari minister there [at the Elyse]
he received a powerful subliminal message
that it might be an idea to change his vote;
that is to say that he recognised that he was
inuenced. There is something fundamentally
very honest about him. You could sense that
Platini was ill at ease, and that he felt he had
made a major mistake.
Champel, together with his France Football
colleague Philippe Auclair, has done more
than any other reporter to expose the curious
intricacies of Platinis conversion to the cause
of Qatar 2022, to the point that I imagine the
Uefa president may have come to regard the
pair as having entered into a job-share as his
Moriarty. What next, I asked Champel, for
Platini? For years, given his loyal support for
the current Fifa president, it was assumed that
he would succeed Blatter. That development
now seems far from certain.
I think Platini, today, is learning about the
mysterious processes of power, Champel said.
And the need for compromise. I think all of
this is troubling him greatly. I believe that
Michel Platini is closely and sincerely bonded
both to Uefa and to club football and that he
has a genuine desire to democratise football.
I am not sure that he has the diplomatic skills
to shape the world game.
If there is one noun you wouldnt apply to
him, I suggested, it might be diplomat.
Correct.
Its funny, I told Champel, that hes never
bothered to learn decent English. Youd have
thought, if you were regularly at receptions
with a mixed group of people from Korea, East
Africa, the USA and Japan, say, it could be...
...Quite useful? Yes. Its just ridiculous
that Platini hasnt made the effort to speak
reasonably uent English, Champel said. It
wouldnt have to be perfect. And then, of
course, you get something like the interview he
gave to Martin Samuel. You read that, and you
think well, this guy is just not t for ofce.
Champel was not the rst source to refer to
Platinis seminal meeting with Samuel, who
writes for GQ and the Daily Mail, and whose
interview with Platini appeared in the latter
publication in May 2013. Platini has since
added to his PR team the talent of London-
based former CNN anchor Pedro Pinto, whose
professionalism is likely to ensure that such an
article, which exposed Platini to mercilessly
effective scrutiny, will never be repeated.
Platinis encounter with Samuel is perhaps
the most excruciating example there will ever
be of the Uefa presidents unfortunate reluc-
tance to trouble himself with minutiae or, as
others might put it, to do his homework. The
British sports writer does not afford Platini
the kindness of correcting his broken English.
A typical exchange goes as follows.
Samuel: One of the people who you have
got in charge of nancial fair play is Jean-Luc
Dehaene. He was in charge of a bank that
needed to be bailed out 5.18 billion. How can
he be telling a football club, this is how you run
your football club?
Platini: What do you want I answer?
Samuel: Just an answer, how?
Platini: OK. I miss a penalty one day and
I score a goal the day after.
Samuel: Its a bit bigger than that, Michel,
come on.
Platini: OK. It is not an answer. But he is
at the beginning of the procedure and we will
see at the end of his contract what we can do...
But he was prime minister of Belgium with big
success. OK, he lost one goal, he is not a bad
player because he lost one goal.
Samuel: His bank lost 9.73bn.
Platini: OK, two goals.
Samuel: Johan Lokhorst is also on it [the
Uefa Financial Control Panel]. He was a director
of Lotus Bakeries. They were 22.9m in debt.
Platini: Perhaps because they know how to
make debts they will be better at the nancial
fair play.
The Frenchman is characteristically frank
about his decision to declare, in public, his vote
for Russia and Qatar.
Everybody know my vote and nobody
disturb me and I have no problem of corrup-
tion... nished. You can imagine, when you
have 15 bids... we come to see you, Mr Putin
wants to see you, Mr Cameron want to see
you, the Queen wants to see you; OK. I say
dont break me the balls. Stop. Is why always I
want to announce my vote, then I am free and
nobody comes to disturb me. All your friends
come. Stop. Let me in peace.
Invited to contemplate the nightmarish
prospect of a legal challenge from Australia
and others, should the competition be kept
in the Emirate, but moved to the winter,
Platini remarked: You have nothing to say
to me. I am not the boss of that. I think it is
better to play in the winter. In summer, good
luck in 60 degrees or if you can stay inside, I
dont know.
The feeling of most people I spoke to is that
Platini is not likely to wind up as president of
Fifa in 2015, even if that institutions history
has taught us that almost anything is possible.
I think he is aware that, were he elected Fifa
president, he wouldnt be able to reverse that
culture, said Champel. Platini has an instinc-
tive understanding of people. Hes intuitive
in life, as he was on the pitch. That may be
enough at Uefa. But it isnt enough at Fifa.
There, you need other qualities.
Such as?
A broad strategic vision. Fluency in at least
one of the languages that Platini has not taken
the trouble to master.
In March of this year, Platini declared that
any decision he makes about running for the
presidency will be postponed until October, and
who knows what turbulence and misfortune
may await in the meantime. But turbulence and
misfortune, as this passionate and uncompro-
mising football ambassador has demonstrated
many times, hold no terror for him.
You know, Platini once said, you get used
to being pissed around. In the past I couldnt
bear it if people didnt like me. But now Ive got
to a point where, the more people hate me, the
happier I am. Because that means that, at the
very least, I have some importance to them.
And that, Platini added, is where football
has brought me.
Continued from page 203
225
G JULY 2014
A
Aigle aigle.com
Alexander McQueen
alexandermcqueen.com
Alfred Dunhill dunhill.co.uk



B
Ben Sherman
bensherman.com
Berluti berluti.com
Bollinger Champagne
champagne-bollinger.com
Boss hugoboss.com
Bottega Veneta
bottegaveneta.com
Breitling breitling.com
Burberry burberry.com


C
Calvin Klein
calvinklein.com
Canali canali.com
Cheaney cheaney.co.uk
Corneliani corneliani.com

D
Daks daks.com
Diesel diesel.com
Dior Homme dior.com
DKNY dkny.com
Dolce & Gabbana
dolcegabbana.com
Dsquared2
dsquared2.com
Dune dunelondon.com
E
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GQ INTEL

The idiosyncrasies of World Cup supporters
Taking the measurements of the GQ world
Vital STATISTICS
BRAZIL
Nickname: Seleo (The Selection)
Characteristic fan trait: Peppering their crowds
withscantily clad dancing girls (left)
DEATHS CAUSED BY FAN VIOLENCE LAST YEAR: 30
NUMBER OF TICKETS ALLOCATED:
906,433, 57 per cent of all those available
NATIONAL LUCKY NUMBER: 13
DATE OF THE FINAL: 13 July
NUMBER OF WORLD CUPS IN WHICH THE NATION
HAS PLAYED: 19, more than any other country
STAGE REACHED EVERY TIME: At least the last 16
SIXTH TITLE? Possibly. Theyre 3/1 favourites,
and all four World Cups that have been held
in South America have been won by South
American teams
GRUDGE MATCH: Argentina
UNITED STATES
Nickname: The Stars And Stripes
Characteristic fan trait: Dressing as outlaws
SPOT THEM: Wearing star-spangled bandanas
YEAR IN WHICH THE AMERICAN OUTLAWS
SUPPORTERS GROUP WAS FORMED: 2007
NUMBER OF CITIES NOW WITH CHAPTERS:
More than 100
TICKET ALLOCATION: 125,465. The US will
send more visitors to the World Cup than
any other nation
CHANT: One superpower, theres only
one superpower
NUMBER OF CAPS WON BY WINGER LANDON
DONOVAN: 156, the most in the tournament
GRUDGE MATCH: Iran (The feelings mutual)
PORTUGAL
Nickname: Os Navegadores (The Navigators)
Characteristic fan trait: Weeping
PROPORTION OF FANS WHO HAVE ADMITTED
TO CRYING AT A GAME: 80 per cent
ITEM OF CHOICE FOR HURLING AT BAD
GOALKEEPERS: Chicken. Seriously (Frango,
the Portuguese for chicken, also means
goalkeeping howler)
TOP SCORER: Cristiano Ronaldo with 49
ODDS OF RONALDO BEING THE TOP SCORER
OF THE COMPETITION: 14/1
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: Fans are unlikely to see
bore-draws. They went a record 16 World Cup
games without a draw between 1966 and 2006
GRUDGE MATCH: Spain
JAPAN
Nickname: Samurai Blue
Characteristic fan trait: Arriving en famille
NUMBER OF WINS IN THE PAST SIX ASIAN CUPS:
Four, turning it into a sport for which relatives
gather together
NUMBER OF CONSECUTIVE WORLD CUP
QUALIFICATIONS: Five
POLITENESS LEVEL: High. In Japan you can
reserve your place in a queue for tickets using
sticky tape on the pavement
HOW THE JAPANESE GET ROWDY: Having
qualied, they stormed into Tokyos Shibuya
crossing and stayed there even after pedestrian
signals turned red. Unprecedented anarchy
GRUDGE MATCH: South Korea Benjie Goodhart
IRAN
Nickname: Princes Of Persia
Characteristic fan trait: Being predominantly male
THE GLASS TURNSTILE: Women arent allowed
to attend football matches in Iran, so it is
socially difcult for them to go
ATTENDANCE AT IRAN VS QATAR QUALIFYING
MATCH: 100,000, the largest for that stage
of the competition at this World Cup
FINAL SCORE: 0-0
0-0? Fans miss Ali Daei (retired from the
national team in 2006) who, with 109 goals,
is the highest-scoring international player ever
ODDS ON THEM WINNING: 1,500/1 at
some bookmakers
GRUDGE MATCH: USA
NETHERLANDS
Nickname: Oranje
Characteristic fan trait: Touring the locale in caravans
NUMBER OF CAMPER VANS SOUTH AFRICA
HAD AVAILABLE IN 2010: 150
NUMBER BOOKED BY NETHERLANDS FANS:
120 (the remaining 30 were broken down)
LENGTH OF THE RESULTING CONVOY: 6km
SPOT THEM: Orange headdresses, orange ip-
ops, orange clogs, orange wigs, cheese hats.
They embrace their teams colour like no other
QUE SERA SERA: 27 per cent of Dutch fans have a
pre-match good-luck ritual, the lowest in Europe
CHANT: Hup, Holland, hup! and
Viva Hollandia!
GRUDGE MATCH: Germany, of course!
POINT AT WHICH THEY EAT THEIR BOCADILLOS:
45 minutes into the game
SUPERSTITION LEVEL: High 68 per cent
of fans follow good-luck rituals
SEEMS TO WORK: They are the reigning
champions, and are currently ranked No1
in the world
ON THE OTHER HAND: They only scored eight
goals on the way to lifting the 2010 trophy,
an all-time low for victors
GRUDGE MATCH: Brazil, their rival to be the
best team in the world
SPAIN
Nickname: La Furia Roja (The Red Fury)
Characteristic fan trait: Taking foil-wrapped
bocadillosandwiches to games
AUSTRALIA
Nickname: The Socceroos
Characteristic fan trait: Holding impromptu
micro-festivals
NAME OF THE MAIN FESTIVAL CAMPSITE:
Fanatics HQ
WHO PLAYED THERE AT THE 2010 WORLD
CUP: Powdernger, Electric Mary and
Fatboy Slim
REQUIRED ATTIRE: Anything in green and gold
ACCURATE GENERALISATION: Many of the
large travelling support will often cheerfully
admit to knowing very little about football
TICKET ALLOCATION: Currently 45,803,
more than any other nation relative to
population size (apart from Switzerland)
GRUDGE MATCH: The Poms
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