Supper Club
5 October 2009
By the now the autumnal number of Finch’s Quarterly Review should have arrived at your house – if you can’t find it ask the butler if he has come across it, I daresay that it has been purloined for by the servants’ hall. Get him to wrest it from cook, instruct him to give it a quick iron and have him bring it up with your afternoon Lapsang.
If you care to glance at the front page you will find that we have chosen to descend from our usual lofty Parnassian heights to dirty our hands in the grubby mire of British domestic politics. We are nearing the end of the British party conference season and it has been an interesting time, I was even roused from my languor and called from my day bed by the Daily Mail to comment on the most important issue to emerge from the Labour Party Conference: Lord Mandelson’s choice of timepiece – a Patek Philippe annual calendar Ref .5146. In choosing this virtuoso example of Swiss watch making Mandelson has once again demonstrated his unerring grasp of the realities of politics: an annual calendar is a lovely watch, but it is expertly pitched just below president Sarkozy’s Patek, a perpetual calendar, and our own dear Charles Finch’s Patek Philippe, an annual calendar chronograph.
The only other story to come close in terms of significance was The Sun newspaper’s declaration that it is no longer supporting the Labour party, an announcement that has prompted much debate at the global HQ of Finchcorp. Parochial though British electioneering may be, it is the responsibility of a paper of record, such as Finch’s Quarterly Review undoubtedly is, to chart a course for our readers across this difficult and treacherous political terrain. So, which political party deserves the support of Finch’s Quarterly Review? There can be no doubt that during the next election the voice of FQR will prove crucial in determining the future political course of this country and it was to discuss this that the founding triumvirate of FQR gathered for a plain working supper at Marks’Club.
It was an interesting debate. Tristram, our man at the Queen’s Park farmer’s market, represented the readership of the Manchester Guardian. I represented the readership of Messrs Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. And Charles…well Charles announced that he was off to Number 10, doubtless to assign a few movie stars to the Labour Party campaign or see if he could arrange some more horological tie ups between his clients and the government…I quite like the idea of ‘The Ministry of Culture Media and Sport brought to you in association with IWC and Kevin Spacey’.
Any way, debate raged back and forth over the Martinis and the fruit punch and I was forced to my fallback position of promising my support to the best dressed politicians and given that I don’t think that there has been a political leader of any sartorial significance since Jeremy Thorpe, I am at best what you might call a floating voter.
Charles surprised me by announcing that he thought young Osborne, or Boy George as he has been dubbed by our political pin-up Lord Mandelson, had much to recommend him – I think that he is a little like the cleverest boy in class who always puts his hand up first and bursts with impatience to get the right answer out, however since publishing a sweet picture of him at Bullingdon point-to-point in the current number of FQR I have to admit he is growing on me.
Talk of course turned to Cameron and I fear that I might have been a little too grudging in my praise of the man who is likely to be our next leader, because I think either Charles or Tristram asked ‘don’t you think there is anything genuine about David Cameron?’ And before I could stop him, the cynic in me answered ‘Oh yes I do, I am sure that he genuinely wants to be Prime Minister.’
Happily at that moment we were called downstairs to the dining room for our dressed crab and lobster Thermidor.
