Totally Tatler

Before I go anywhere with this I think it is worth mentioning that my work experience would find better linguistic summery were the words switched round. I’m not entirely sure why and perhaps you’d need a linguist to explain the way syntax affects the mind, but I think ‘experience work’ provides a more fitting description of my last three weeks. Now, arguably I had too much time on my hands if I was able to sit about and mull this question over, but in the brief moments I got when I wasn’t eyeball deep in the upper-class twit social scene it would always strike me that all the work experience I had ever done had been more about work and less about experience. Before anyone thinks of commenting and saying, “but Ed, this doesn’t make sense, you are there to experience work, and thus working provides you with the experience of doing work and therefore your work experience of course involved the process of you experiencing work” I know all of this, and am seriously considering the possibility that I have suffered some sort of mental health meltdown.

Week One:

I arrived at the bastion of high society fashion that is Vogue House on that first Monday with absolutely no idea what to expect, I had been told to watch the Devil Wear’s Prada, but instead had stayed up till the small hours watching America’s Wildest Police Chases (AWPC) and the Mint. One of the things I love most about AWPC is that the presenter is always mincing about in front of a team of swat guys apparently involved in shoot out, whilst calmly explaining the dangers faced by the police from law breakers. I was going to take a leaf out of his book, put myself in the firing line, get noticed and above all get some experience of what it was ‘really’ like.

The first assignment I was given was to ring around the gentry of Sussex and ask them questions about the county and why it made them tick. I was quietly getting on with this task of speaking to people, mostly with at least two surnames;

“Well, I don’t know exactly, but the totty’s really top hole”

“And who throws the best party’s?

“The Norfolk’s, there’s always plenty of scantily clad totty there”

when I came across someone I vaguely knew. The problem was he was about the last person in the world you would want to ring up with a list of half-baked questions about his local area. As famous for his crushing insults as he is for consuming gull’s eggs and Dom Perignon for breakfast, Nicholas Soames is a truly fearsome man to irritate. The conversation went a bit like this:

Hello Mr Soames, it’s Ed Hammond here. I’m ringing from the Tatler to ask…..

WHAT!! What are you doing working for that horror show boy?

Well, um, I’m so much working as doing work experience, and anyway they wanted me to ask you some questions about Sussex and what it is like to live there.

(It is worth noting that he is the MP for Mid Sussex, see more here www.nicholassoames.org.uk)

No, I don’t want my name anywhere near it.

Not at all?

No, and don’t ask me again.

Ok, what about a little anecdote about the county, come on you must have a good story to tell?

Listen Eddie, you’re marvellous, really a splendid boy, but I’m not being put in that magazine. Is that all?

Um yes, I suppose so.

Right, come shooting with me next weekend. Good luck with Tatler, you’re a marvellous sport. Bye

Hangs up

Bye.

My top lip was covered in sweat, and I had gone a sort of damson colour, but luckily my editor had an idea of who I been speaking to and came over offering a comforting hand on the shoulder and a, “was that really unpleasant for you?”

Researching the Sussex feature took up most of the week, and was actually a very good way of learning a lot of completely pointless trivia about a place I used to reside in. It also gave me a good lesson in the value of following leads. A nice man who owned an organic Cheese shop near Worthing told me that he had heard through a friend of a friend of a friend that Sussex was the UK swinging capital. A few phone calls later and I had my very own membership to a swinging/swapping group on the south coast, an invite for the following Saturday, which I could maybe squeeze in after my shooting, and rather too much information on the practices of sexual dissidents of Sussex. Why is it people who do things others see as a bit offbeat are always so keen to talk about it, where as people who do seemingly normal things often behave like the security of the nation depends on their diffidence when questioned?

Week Two:

I played a little game with the press over the weekend, so I started the week in very high sprits. I figured if I completely misrepresented myself the paper would be powerless to misrepresent me, turning up draped in gold seemed like a great idea on the day, less so since.

I had to get into the office early on Monday as I was going out on a photo shoot with the actor Rupert Friend. I was twitching with excitement as I had been told I might get to play with Keria Knightly’s boyfriends hair. In the car on the way over I was briefed on the questions I wasn’t to ask him

Which of Keria’s body parts do you like the most, tits or arse? (I’m not sure if this was supposed to be a joke)

Are you and Keria planning on wedding?

Does Keria eat? Ever?

I got to be a proper little fashion boy, it was fabulous! Tried on a pair of rather fetching gold brogues, steamed some shirts, and even got a bit of a grooming by the make up artist. Didn’t get to ruffle Mr Friend’s hair.

My big project for the week was to find out as much as I could about a man called Naim Attallah, a one time society high roller who had gone off the media radar in the late nineties. As a person he wasn’t the most interesting of research subjects, but going through the archives of the magazine provided a fascinating insight into how little the cream of British establishment has changed over the last twenty five years. The same people who were snapped partying by Tatler in the eighties are still being snapped today; they just look older and occasionally have offspring in tow.

Week Three:

Not such a good start to this one. What with all the shooting and swinging the weekend got away from me and it was Wednesday before I scraped myself back into the office. The last three days flew by; it was a shame in a way because I was really getting mighty efficient at asking agents which dress their clients were wearing at a certain award ceremony. My work experience had allowed me to experience what it would be like to work in the weird and wonderful world of high society, and had done exactly what it said on the expensively designed packet.

The last job I was given involved finding out who wore which kind of corduroys and what the trouser said about the person. Top of my list was The Hon Nicholas Soames, who wears butter-wash medium wale cords, offset with salmon pink socks.

2007-02-06