y life as an aspiring clubman
Oscar Humphries dreams of long lunches at the Garrick 1 f I had a Who's Who entry, it would state that I am a member of the Grouch° Club. This membership was given to me by my godfather who didn't know his godson had turned into a cheque-bouncing bounder. I did not choose the Grouch°. The Grouch° — unwisely, I think — chose me. I thought I was a member of the Pug Club — a rather snooty organisation. Friends of mine bought a pug and found the Pug Club harder to join than White's. They needed to be proposed then seconded so I offered to do the latter. 'Oscar Humphries isn't a member of the Pug Club, but he says he's one', came the letter back. I must have forgotten to pay my dues or perhaps I didn't send in the right forms.
Like most interesting people, I Google badly. I am therefore too nervous to join any serious clubs. Even my Annabel's membership application remains, as it has done for nearly two years, only half filled in. I just can't stand rejection whether it's from women, cash machines or clubs.
The gentleman's club has survived New Labour and the smoking ban — it has even survived ladies. With gentlemen everywhere turning into politically correct metrosexuals, these kinds of clubs are all the more precious. My problem is a common one — and it is because I'm a little common that I have this problem. All the clubs I'd want to join won't have me. White's, Brooks's and the Turf are bound to blackball me. I thought Blackball was a pirate but apparently it's something that's done to people like me and sounds deeply unpleasant.
None of my friends who are members have offered to propose me and whenever I bring it up they change the subject and start talking about property prices — my least favourite subject. Tradition dictates that the member who proposes someone whose admission to the club is unsuccessful should resign at once, and leave the country in disgrace. I love the fact that these clubs don't have wireless internet, or gyms in their basements, and that you can receive letters there and reply to them on club stationery. The Garrick Club could be a runner although I can almost hear a pantomime chorus of 'Oh no it's not' from its members. It has the prettiest tie — soft pink and pistachio as worn by Kingsley Amis and John Betjeman. They seem to look at brains before pedigree. But ideally I'd like clubs to ignore both these things and let me in anyway. Despite the mediocre boarding-school lunches and the bores by the bar, gentleman's clubs hold huge appeal. They represent an escape from the now. In a world where lunch takes ten minutes at Pret, it's nice to know that there are still places where lunch can take hours and drift imperceptibly into dinner.
There is a book at White's Club where prospective members' names are written down. One such unfortunate was, like me, not quite a tad egg' but certainly not a 'good egg' in the Etonian sense. Underneath his name someone wrote simply 'I don't think so'. They'll never let me in. I might just about get into the Reform or the Carlton but I will always be looking across the road at Boodle's cursing the folly of my youth and my Australian passport. There is hope — an unsporting and ungentlemanly alternative. These institutions have back doors.
Some of London's smartest clubs have reciprocity with clubs in far-flung and obscure corners of the earth where club rules are more 'flexible'.
The Royal Bachelors' Club in Sweden has reciprocity not only with that bastion of Nigerian high-society, the Ikoyi Club in Lagos, but also with Brooks's and Boodle's in London. My brother was given membership to the Edinburgh Arts Club which, it would appear, is desperate • for young members. Ignoring his total ambivalence about ,E the visual arts, the club has • given Rupert the keys to both • the Garrick and the Chelsea Arts Club — a nice place to • drink yourself to death. My plan is to find a club where the average age of the membership is in the high eighties. As the members' bar empties they will, I hope, jump at anyone under 60 regardless of character. I thought the Rand Club in Johannesburg might like a little of our currency. It is twinned with Buck's Club, the Hurlingham Club, and again the Garrick which is obviously incredibly promiscuous. I'm sure the doorman at the Garrick dreads the days when members of the Manila Country Club arrive for lunch. Gentlemen's clubs thrive in Australia — a country where gentlemen are few and far between. I'd heard that the Melbourne Club had 'a relationship' with White's, something I'd like to have too. I called White's to check and was told, curtly, that White's didn't `do much in the way of reciprocation'. No doubt I'd ruin White's — turning it beige with my mediocrity. If the establishment ever makes room for me, I promise I will blackball with the best of them.
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