BLACK BOOK BLUES
Tatler, the glossy monthly, has just published its latest list of 'hottest dates. A.A. Gill knows
from experience how it was compiled
THE LITTLE black book. The very idea just screams Terry-Thomas: cads with bril- liantined tonsils whinnying, 'We-e-ell, hello. You look as if you need rescuing.' The little black book: it's just so travelling salesman, so gin 'n' It and would-you-cash- a-cheque-landlord, so two-tone horn, two- tone shoes and two-tone morals.
The very idea that a modern man would have a separate secret address book devot- ed solely to sexually available women doesn't bear thinking about — a sort of beddable Yellow Pages, a nationwide directory of dollies who like to say yes (they had to be dollies). 'You're going to be in Sheffield?' the Terry-Thomas type would say to an innocent friend. 'Let me see, there's Lillian . . . no, too developed for you. Susie . . oh, Susie. No, no, too advanced. Greta, possibly . . . Aha, perfect: Janet. Sweet Janet — nurse or hygienist or something. Made for you: easy handling, cheap to run, a perfect blonde beginner's model. Just say you're a friend of Uncle Terry's and you're in.'
When I was 13 I wanted a little black book more than I wanted a passport. A lit- tle black book was a passport. Now, 30 years later, I know that it was a fantasy, like most of the things that promised to make manhood fun, like knock-out drops in Martinis and sports cars with ejector seats. Little black books never existed. Vir- tually all the men I've ever known would have trouble finding a single number of a girl who'd sleep with them in their address books, including the ones they were mar- ried to, let alone a Michelin guide to inter- continental totty. The little black book was a fairy story, a fairy story of such stacked, well-built political incorrectness that it is amazing anyone ever dares mention it in mixed company.
But this month, the Tatter has not just mentioned it without the prophylactic irony of inverted commas, it has printed one. Of course, in a nod to the times and the majority of its readers, it's an equal opportunity directory — dollies and dons, a list of the 'top 200 dream dates'. As an amusing taste of the Tatter's sleepy subcon- scious, let me tell you that Frank Johnson, the editor whose slim but elegant unattached organ you are now clutching, is one of them. He's accorded the winning sobriquet, 'the thinking woman's bran muffin' (isn't bran muffin an act of gross indecency? — maybe that's Gran muffin). Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Carl Gustav's barely legal daughter, is also included. So if you're ever passing through Stockholm, give her a bell. Just say Uncle Terry sent you.
Now you may think this is all either risi- ble or socially divisive and sexually exploitative, but it's enormously popular. There are a lot of people who want to be included on such lists, and even more peo- ple who want their daughters to be includ- ed. I know this because I write for the Tatter, and although I have had nothing to do with this compendium I have helped compile earlier versions. They're hell: hys- terical, howling, stitch-inducing purgatory. We'd sit up till the wee small hours dredg- ing up names. 'Lord Splot and Feather?' `He's a poof."He isn't.' Of course he is. Wore eyeshadow and feather boas at Wellington.' Put him in anyway. Maybe he's undecided.' Who's Geraldine Play- away?' God knows."Oh, she's Tracy, the sub-editor's flatmate. Ugly as sin, poor as St Francis, amusing as boils, smells like the Ganges, but she's depressed and Tracy said it would cheer her up if we included her.' Ralph Switchfitting?"0h, I've had him.' So have I."You too? Anyone here not had Ralph?' I had his father. Smallest willy in the House of Lords."Ah, just like Ralph. Put him under inherited titles.'
Actually, finding the names wasn't hard. It's really just a Bond Street frock shop's mailing list. The little blurbs, like estate agents' particulars, were the worst bit. What can you say about 200 young people who between them haven't done much more than pass a couple of exams and spent their gap years in Thailand? 'Gor- geous', 'charming', 'handsome', 'leggy', `muscular', 'glamorous' come round like stations on the Circle Line. 'What can I say about Bunnie Plumb-Shuffler? Gorgeous?' `He's hideous.' How about rugged?' `We've got three ruggeds in the Ps already.' `Rough-hewn, then.' Because social intro- ductions, like obituaries, have to be craven- ly nice without losing sight of veracity, there is a subtle code to the entries. 'Legs up to the armpits' means flat-chested, `strong, silent type' means takes anti- depressants or was kicked in the head by a horse, 'sporty' means the table and bed manners of a whippet, 'witty and amusing' is ugly and drunk, `aristocratic' means works outdoors, 'entrepreneur' means blown inheritance.
Why anyone who isn't on the list or relat- ed to someone who is should want to read this middle-class version of a Mayfair phone box is something of a mystery. But then that's the great, enigmatic allure of glossy magazines. They put us on first- name terms with people we've never met and wouldn't dream of meeting, hundreds of them, noteworthy because they run shops or design loo-roll-holders or breed rabbits or like rabbits or just happen to exist in photogenic surroundings. All of us know more about people we have never corporeally clapped eyes on than we do about the real people in our real address books. It's only a very small step further to make a party list of people whose singular claim to our attention is that no one has agreed to go out with them.
Out of the black book's 200 entries a composite picture emerges: a young person of either sex who is probably the aspira- tional model for many 18-to-30-year-olds and many of their mothers, a privately edu- cated university graduate who does some- thing sporty involving horses, water or wheels, who did something daft in a desert for charity, who has roots in the country but lives in the city, who is vain and boister- ous and about to settle into a career of granite probity. You might find this Iden- tikit young person insufferably priggish or nostalgically heartening, given the alterna- tives, but that's the pleasure of it. It's a construct, as realistic as a Hamley's model railway and as useless, a toy world full of toy boyfriends and girlfriends to either tie to the track or send back home to Swindon in the rush hour. I'm not on the list — too witty and amusing. I doubt if Terry-Thomas would have made it either.
A.A. Gill writes for the Sunday Times as well.
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