The return of the martini
Mad Men: revived a taste for cocktails
Good news. The martini, once a staple of American corporate life, is making a comeback, says Stephen Whitlock in The Daily Telegraph. The three-martini lunch featured regularly on expense accounts until the 1970s. Then, during the 1976 presidential election campaign, Jimmy Carter railed against the "$50 martini lunch", which he saw as a wasteful, tax-deductible vice that could only be enjoyed by rich businessmen. His rival, Gerald Ford, wryly defended the three-martini lunch as "the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and snootful at the same time?" (Can you imagine a politician brave enough to say that these days?)
But Ford lost and, as Whitlock says, in came a period of modern-day Puritanism that transformed the corporate climate into one in which no one dared order anything stronger than a Diet Coke during office hours.
Now, once again, executives can be seen perched at lunchtime bars drinking the odd martini. The reason? The cult TV series Mad Men, about the Madison Avenue of the early 1960s, in which drinking and smoking are compulsory for all. "I have definitely heard and seen a reaction to Mad Men and the serious drinking they do," says David Kaplan, proprietor of Death and Company, a fashionable East Village cocktail bar where a martini costs $13. "The idea that your drink says something about you is coming back."
Hollywood big spender sells up
Nicholas Cage is the kind of big spender Shirley Bassey used to sing about, as the Daily Mail puts it. Among his purchases over the years are a £300,000 Lamborghini Miura, which used to belong to the Shah of Iran, a jet, two yachts, two Bahamian islands, a pair of albino King Cobra snakes, a collection of shrunken animal heads and a dinosaur skull worth £167,000.
He's also bought eight houses in America, including two in New Orleans and Dean Martin's former mansion in Bel Air (complete with a 1955 Jaguar parked in the billiard room); an 11th-century castle in Bavaria; a regency house in Bath and, two years ago, for £4.75m, Midford Castle, a Grade I-listed folly near Bath. But now Cage, who owes £3.5m in back taxes, is selling up. The Schloss in Bavaria has already gone. So too has the house in Bath, and the folly's on the market. What a pity. He spent his money with style. What's more, he spent a lot of it here.
The Duchess is right to wear fur
Animal rights campaigners have criticised the Duchess of Cornwall for wearing a rabbit fur stole while touring Canada. No one who is anyone wears real fur any more, said a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, adding: "Rabbits, like seals, are social loving animals and have their own niche in the eco-system and don't look particularly fetching when reduced to lining or trim."
What nonsense. Rabbits are a nuisance and even the most dedicated animal rights campaigner can't argue that there's a shortage of them. Ask anyone with a garden. I think we should commend the duchess for splashing out on a charming-looking piece of rabbit fur.
Tabloid money... the £310 per person whip-round for the EU
• The costs of belonging to the EU will work out at £310 per household next year, says Fraser Nelson in the News of the World. "If someone knocked on your door doing a whip-round for Brussels, how much would you give? Exactly. This whole thing is a con – taking money no one wants to give. Taking power no one ever agreed to give up." In a few years' time, it's perfectly possible that the majority of Brits will want out.
• But could we survive outside the EU? We could do better than that, says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. A new publication, Ten Years On – Britain Without The European Union, describes how an unshackled Britain would thrive as an independent nation. "Threats of a trade boycott are just bluff." As net importers, other European countries need our markets just as much as we need theirs. The book, published by the Taxpayers' Alliance, says that with our economy liberated from EU waste and fraud, the potential savings would be immense. We would stop subsidising the Common Agricultural Policy, saving British taxpayers £10bn a year, and the Common Fisheries Policy (£3bn). And we would be free to trade "toe to toe" in world markets without the EU meddling in everything from immigration to the amount of water used to flush toilets.
• At Christmas "everyone goes a bit bonkers", says Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun. We "buy things we don't understand for people we don't like. And then we uproot a tree and put it in our sitting room. But the most bonkers thing of all is our penchant for Christmas decorations… It's all such a lot of tosh that I was not at all surprised to see this week that someone is selling a diamond-encrusted tree decoration for £82,000. I'll tell you something else that won't surprise me. Someone will take leave of their senses and buy it."
