More Ways To Spend It

The last time I wrote about the How To Spend It supplement in Mrs. Pop’s Financial Times, I made a predictable assault on the easy target of high-end luxury goods. Clearly the editors read this blog, as they seem to have stopped aiming the glossy sheet merely at multi-millionaires, and have factored in the ridiculously rich as well. Several items featured in today’s edition will cost you less than four figures (the Gentlemen’s Tonic Mayfair Shaving Set is just £150, for example), and the cost of telling the time is down too – while last December’s featured timepieces showcased a £1.6 million wristwatch from Jaeger-LeCoultre, this month’s Bell & Ross rose gold Power Reserve Watch (on an alligator strap – this watch was hunted) is almost given away at £14,300.

Help for those burdened by cash

But what the September issue lacks in preposterously lavish material goods, it more than makes up for with unblushing pretension. First up is a Q&A interview under the moniker The Aesthete, with literary and talent agent Caroline Michel, whose “clients include Jeanette Winterson and Simon Schama”. Impressed? I was, once I’d googled the latter and found out who he was. You don’t know? He’s a university professor of art history and history, you moron.

What was the last thing that Ms Michel bought and loved? “A pair of early-19th-century French naïve flower paintings, after being driven mad by the desire to own a Van Gogh when I was at the recent exhibition at the Royal Academy.” One does get driven mad by the desire to own a Van Gogh, doesn’t one? Drives one absolutely fucking crazy.

Unnecessary Stuff

Do you ever worry that you might one day become fabulously rich, and then have no idea what to spend all your money on? If so, help is available. The Financial Times publishes a glossy supplement every month just in the time for the weekend with the no-holds barred title How To Spend It. Here are some of the highlights of last Friday’s issue.

A set of six Fortnum & Mason Royal Velvet crackers for £500 (“contain luxury accessories”). An Atelier winter coat, from £1,100 up to £2,880 for the rose-trimmed design (is it just me, or is that the most hideous fucking garment you’ve ever seen in your life?). A tube of anti-ageing cream called Pure Alchemy Cellular Radiance Serum for £19.99 (“really seems to work,” according to the FT, so if you meet one of their hacks who claims to be 40 but looks 18, that’ll be Lucia van der Post). A Jaeger-LeCoultre Hybris Mechanica à Grande Sonnerie, part of the Coffret 55 set (otherwise known to you and me as ‘a wristwatch’), starting from £1.6 million. Tsk, like it's too much trouble to ask a passer-by what time it is.

Also available, should you be feeling flush, is a Salvatore Ferragamo python bag for £2,009 (not just the python getting gouged there). An 18ct Jackie O gold cuff for £15,000 that looks like a gaudy kids’ fancy dress item. Or you can follow in the tyre-tracks of a bloke called Tarquin (even within the context of this magazine, you have to feel sorry for any poor bastard called Tarquin), who goes ice driving in Finland for £900, plus £433 per night in a luxury log cabin for six. Thirteen quid for a Romeo Short Churchill cigar seems like a relatively bargain way to watch your cash go up in smoke.

Best of all is a six-month course of counselling for male business executives who are going through a mid-life crisis. It costs between £6-12k from a company called Overton Smith, run by two sympathetic women who “have no formal therapeutic qualifications” (hey, who needs them?). The magazine interviews one of the company’s clients, a 54-year-old named “Dennis”, who went for help when he realised that he was unhappy being “surrounded by unnecessary stuff. I started questioning the purpose of my life. I realised materialism isn’t as important as relationships and quality of life.”

What, you mean the answer doesn’t lie in owning a pair of 8 grand cufflinks from Wartski? I’m going to have to use up my 10-week Alpine ski lodge timeshare slot all in one go to recover from that monstrous revelation. Note to self: don’t forget to take off your £1.6 million watch before you climb into the mountain-view hot tub.