Suddenly it’s all right to write about the things most of us can’t afford. Not so long ago I was criticised for being too elitist because I only ever wrote about expensive cars, rare wines and Michelin starred restaurants. I was chided for bragging about my frequent overseas jaunts down the sharp end of the aircraft. Embittered hacks even wrote to newspapers unjustly accusing me of being, among other things, the ”king of the freeloaders ”. This could have caused permanent psychological damage had a kindly local chief of one of the world’s leading airlines not put things into perspective. ”My dear chap”, he said, ”the reason we always upgrade you and put you as far forward as possible is that you look first class. It would be an embarrassment to our airline if anyone saw you flying in economy and this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you write for the country’s largest circulation newspaper.” So there you have it. It’s not my fault. I just happen to exude style and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
Fortunately I’ve never had a problem with pissing people off by writing about the really good things in life. In fact, that’s all part of the attraction of the job. There are few things more satisfying than smugly announcing to desk-bound colleagues that you have to go to Florence for a few days for a gourmet festival, particularly if the suntan from the recent car launch in the South of France still hasn’t faded. It helps to sound a little peeved and to emphasise the word ”have ”; as if you were saying you ”have ” to walk your great aunt’s maltese poodle and isn’t it a bore? But all that’s about to change.
Having pretty well dominated the exclusive lifestyle writing market in quality mainstream journalism (I’m not referring here to the ”gush ” magazines who will publish anything in return for a freebie) for the past four or five years, I have now been joined by at least three new publications who have decided that elitism is no longer politically incorrect and want to muscle in on my territory. The Mail & Guardian have just bought out a Leisure supplement, Business Day are shortly to give us something with the delicious title ”Squander” and Financial Mail are also going to be telling us how to spend money as opposed to how to make it in a new publication. More will undoubtedly follow as the news that there are now 700 ultra rich South Africans of assorted colour gradually permeates the craniums of the advertising execs.
The fact that they have taken so long to catch up with what the Sunday Times has been doing since the launch of its award winning Lifestyle section is the only real surprise. The PC view that it was insensitive to write about expensive things like foreign holidays when so many of our people could barely afford to put food on the table seems to have suddenly faded. Good old commercialism has prevailed and people involved in newspapers have finally realised that anyone who might be offended by an article about Ferraris a) probably can’t afford a newspaper and b) probably can’t read anyway. So it’s chocks away and let’s all join the mile high club. Or is it? The first problem is that we’re all after the same advertisers, so how big is the cake? The second, and much more lifestyle-threatening problem, is that all sorts of strange people are now going to expect to be upgraded on aircraft, given suites in the world’s leading hotels and fawned over by maitre d’s in top restaurants. Maybe it’s time for me to move into struggle journalism and rail against the capitalist lackeys who schmooze the champagne socialists.