China’s “city of the future”

The cartoon strip that summed up an era

The archive of Alex comic strips, which have been axed by the Telegraph after 34 years, stands as a “social document of the past four decades”, says Robert Bathurst in The Oldie. Five days a week, writers Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor “poked fun at, and in many cases anticipated every Big Bang, Boom, Crash and Crunch” through the eyes of Alex Masterley: a materialistic, status-obsessed and “wholly unreconstructed” boomer banker. “We were doing jokes about subprime mortgages for about a year before it crashed in 2008,” says Peattie. “It was what people were telling us.” When Alex first started in 1987, the City was a mixture of “public school boys, ex-military and East End traders”, says Taylor. Today, the traders have been replaced by machines, and everyone has “at least two degrees”.

Not being City people – “if you drive a Porsche, you can’t laugh at people who drive Porsches” – Peattie and Taylor have relied on informants to tell them about the latest scams, “as often as not, over a long lunch”. One of these moles, former broker Malcolm Graham-Brown, paints a “Bacchanalian picture of City life” in the 1980s: “Lunch was a proper part of the business day. You’d slide away from your desk at about 11.30 or 12.” At the stockbrokers James Capel, there were “10 magnificent dining rooms and a butler”. Alex, he says, was “an absolute legend – the first thing you turned to in the paper”. The rest of the news was all “Greenham Common and the Miners’ Strike”, which made Alex’s materialism shocking, and funny. Soon, Peattie and Taylor heard that bankers were copying the outrageous behaviour in their cartoons. “We’re not satirising,” they realised. “We’re just giving them ideas.”

Many of Donald Trump’s tariff numbers seem to have been plucked out of thin air, says Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. Which made me wonder what I’d slap a levy on if I were given “carte blanche”. I’d start by putting 29% on wooden forks. “I would rather eat my salad with my pen.” Same for paper straws, the “utensil equivalent of a chocolate teapot”, with an extra 5% for “general smuggery”. It’d be 666% on dimmer switches – “unless you’re hosting a 1970s swingers’ party, only a weirdo wants to dim their lights” – and I’d slap 12%, “plus an extra 5% for every subsequent mention”, on people using the phrase “circle back”. Anyone wearing “athleisurewear” can have 55%, and woke movie remakes – Sex and the City without the sex; Snow White and its AI dwarfs – would get 20%, “plus a further 1% per diversity box ticked”. Finally, it’s 99.9% plus VAT (“Value Added Twittery”) on Ed Miliband.

Elites are good for us all

If there’s one thing today’s elites hate, say Ian Leslie and James Marriott on The Ruffian, it’s being called elite. In their book Born to Rule, authors Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeves recall interviewing a former senior partner at a corporate law firm, sitting under an enormous portrait of himself in his £7m house in Bloomsbury. When they asked if he considered himself a member of the elite, this chap was so furious he practically kicked them out of the house. It never used to be like this. In Who’s Who and on Desert Island Discs, people used to gladly talk about their love of “Tolstoy and ballet and Chinese ceramics”. Today, everyone dilutes their highbrow tastes by emphasising how normal they are. Saying your hobbies include walking the dog and listening to Taylor Swift helps hide the fact that you grew up in a massive house and have an aunt who took you to the opera.

The problem with this is the trickle-down effect it has on the culture. Lord Reith, the first director-general of the BBC, was unapologetic about showcasing highbrow material. His mantra was: “This stuff is brilliant, it’s the best stuff, therefore we’re going to try and give it to as many people as possible.” Today, because the elites who run all the big cultural institutions are terrified of being seen as elitist, it’s more like: “This stuff is really hard to understand, therefore don’t worry about it and have something worse.” The people who already like and enjoy high culture either don’t get to see it or, when they do, get lectured about how colonialist and evil it is. And those who don’t – but who might well love it if they were exposed to it – have to settle for lower-brow fare. No one benefits.

🎶🏝️ When Isaiah Berlin appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1992, he “didn’t compromise”. He chose only classical music – no throwing in a Beatles song to “mix it up”. And rather than dressing a choice up with some fluffy emotional story – “this track reminds of some beautiful evenings with my friends” – he just laid it out straight: “This is here because it’s the greatest work of classical music ever written.” Listen here.