No life
Class struggle
Toby Young
0 ccasionally, friends of mine ask why this column is called 'No life'. I'm engaged to a beautiful woman, I'm solvent and in good health and, judging from what I write in the column, I seem to have an awful lot of holidays. Shouldn't it be called 'Mid life' instead? Well, in order to reassure you sceptics out there, I think it's time to let you in on a little secret. After this you'll be in no doubt about just how miserable my life is.
Believe it or not, I've never been on Concorde. Okay, that's a joke, but to my mind it's a real deprivation, not least because it looks as though I'll never get the chance to do so. Following Air France's decision to ground its entire Concorde fleet, it's probably only a matter of time before British Airways follows suit. Super- sonic air travel is one of the last, crumbling remnants of the jet set and, with its pass- ing, that coterie of international players has almost faded from the world stage. The end of Concorde is as serious as the decommissioning of the Queen Mary or the closure of Studio 54 — it's one more nail in the coffin of the leisured class.
The way things are looking I won't ever be able to tell my grandchildren I once sat next to Joan Collins. Now I'm perfectly aware that those lucky enough to have been on Concorde claim it's not all it's cracked up to be. If I had an air-mile for every time I've been told how uncomfort- able it is I'd probably have enough for a free flight by now. But this is just a bit of one-upmanship on the part of those admit- ted to the club, a way of differentiating themselves from the wannabes on the other side of the velvet rope. The opportunity to pour scorn on this exclusive perk is one of the privileges of flying on the silver bird.
For instance, I was recently told by a fre- quent flyer — a high-ranking executive of an American corporation — that if it wasn't for Concorde's speed he'd always cross the Atlantic in first class on a British Airways Boeing 747. How I'd love to be able to say that! However, it would be dou- bly fraudulent in my case since I've never been in first class either. The most I can boast of is having been in Upper Class on Virgin, and then only once. Usually after boarding a Virgin flight I turn right, walk past Middle Class and take my place in Working Class alongside all the other plebs. The reason Virgin bumped me up to Upper Class on that occasion was because I was writing a travel piece for the Sunday Telegraph and it occurred to me that British Airways might be prepared to stick me on Concorde in return for a plug in The Spec- tator. It was a long shot but I was planning to come to New York anyway and this was probably my last chance to join the super- sonic club. Consequently, I called the BA press office last week and asked if there was anything they could do. A woman said she'd get back to me. Of course, the moment I put in the request I began to get jittery. What if the plane went down some- where over the Atlantic? I asked my friend Sebastian Shakespeare, editor of the Evening Standard's 'Londoner's Diary', if he would set up an annual prize in my hon- our if I was killed. 'What should I call it?' he asked. 'The Toby Young Memorial Prize for a journalist who has shown a com- plete disregard for his or her own safety in pursuit of a massive freebie?' That sounded about right, I told him.
The woman from BA called back and told me that in the light of Concorde's recent troubles the crew had decided not to allow any journalists on board for the time being.- This turned out to be a stroke of luck since the flight I'd wanted to get on was diverted to Canada after some of the passengers thought they could smell fuel in the back of the plane. This reminded me of a treatment I once wrote for a film called Concorde 13. It was set on 31 December 1999 and concerned the fate of a group of jet-setters when the Concorde that was tak- ing them to- New York for some glam- ourous party got caught in a snowstorm. They got diverted to Bangor, Maine, and had to spend Millennium Eve in a Holiday Inn. Needless to say, this exposure to how the other half lived turned them all into much nicer people.
I ended up travelling economy on a Vir- gin flight packed with leery British men determined to drink every last drop of alco- hol on the plane. The experience did not make me a better person.
Petronella Wyatt and Leanda de Lisle return next week
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