WEEKEND COLUMNISTS Would you recognise me if you met me? Those of you who read this column in the FT Weekend Magazine complete with an illustration by James Ferguson, rather than online, will presumably be expecting a largish woman with red hair in a blue suit.
I am not good at recognising people at the best of times, and struggle even more than usual when they come from a completely different walk of life to my own. Take a recent visit that I made to the BBC. I had agreed to appear on Jeremy Vine’s radio show to defend bankers’ bonuses (you owe me, Lloyd Blankfein). My new assistant, Observant Olivia, pointed out that I was going to be appearing with a lady called Karen Jennings from the trade union Unison, and sent me a link to a biography and picture of Ms Jennings. Small photos on my BlackBerry are not especially clear, but I noted that she seemed quite attractive and had blonde hair. Arriving at the BBC, I spotted an attractive lady with blonde hair. “Hello,” I said, marching up to her and grasping her hand, “I am Mrs Moneypenny!” “Er … hello,” she said. I swiftly ascertained that this was not Karen Jennings. “I am not going on The Jeremy Vine Show,” she said, “I am nobody.”
This was a shocking admission. Nobody is nobody, by definition, I told her sternly. And far from being nobody, she turned out to be one of the minders of another prospective Jeremy Vine guest who was sitting nearby, a clean-shaven young Canadian. I asked him if he was there to argue for or against bankers’ bonuses. “Neither,” he replied. “I am on the show because I hold the Guinness World Record for doing the Rubik’s Cube.”
I took this at face value for a few seconds until I realised it was an unlikely story. First, how does that make good radio? And second, I noticed that his minders were trying not to laugh. One of them offered me a CD with a picture of the young man on the front, from which I gathered that he was called Michael Bublé. I promise you, I have never heard of Michael Bublé. He did sign the CD for me, and now I have started to notice him on billboards announcing a world tour in 2010. I must clearly stop spending my weekend evenings reading The Economist and get out more.
I might add that I nearly didn’t recognise Jeremy Vine, either. A radio presenter known for his wardrobe of brightly coloured shirts, on this occasion he was wearing an astonishingly smart suit – rather a waste considering that no one other than his studio guests could see it. Off air, I interrogated him about his choice of clothes. Perhaps he had dressed up for me? Sadly not. He was filming for Panorama later on. Karen Jennings was beamed in from another studio, so I never did see what she looked like.
The last person of the week that I (almost) failed to recognise was someone I knew. He is a banker on gardening leave (which, like bonuses, is less common than it used to be), and had spent 10 days at the Mayr Clinic in Austria, after which he weighed 34lbs less than when I had last seen him. I was delighted to run into him again and very pleased that I had been seated next to him for dinner. Delight turned to alarm when the starter arrived: a goats’ cheese tart with a salad garnish. He immediately shared his views with the rest of us that the garnish would encourage unhelpful bacteria, leading to bloating and flatulence. We all left the garnish. The main course arrived and he pronounced on that, too. By the time the chocolate pudding showed up, I didn’t bother even reaching for my spoon. What is it with these people? Find your salvation if you must, but don’t ruin my shoot dinners. I already knew that the sausage rolls at next day’s elevenses would be completely off limits. If this chap brings his dietary advice to many more shoots this season, my friends may have trouble recognising me.
