A scandal even greater than The Salt Path!
Also, my billionaire escapades in France, some telly, Dennis goes swimming, and Jamie Laing's metamorphosis from MIC posh boy to budding national treasure...
A MAJOR scandal dropped while I was away, and I’m not talking about The Salt Path HAHA. No, what I’m referring to is the leaked easyJet email. Did you see this? Oh, it’s magnificent. It turns out - surprise surprise - that easyJet is running a racket whereby staff at the gate are promised £1 for every bag they take off a passenger and shove in the hold. It’s a commission, essentially, on the fee that passenger is then stung. Absolute GITS.
I flew easyJet from Gatwick the week before last. I was late to the airport and forgot I had my Rod Stewart water bottle* in my rucksack, full, which meant I had to wait 20 minutes for the security people to rifle through my bag and check it wasn’t something even more alarming than a Rod Stewart water bottle, then I needed to dash through Boots and also get a coffee before I murdered someone. All of which meant I ended up at the gate late, juggling my small wheely suitcase, my rucksack, several papers, and a scalding coffee.
(*This is a bottle I received a couple of years ago when I went to a Rod Stewart gig at the O2 with my friend Katie, who’d bought VIP tickets which included a tote bag with various goodies in it, like a metallic water bottle with ‘ROD STEWART VIP’ written on the side. Whenever I take mine to a gym class, I try and hide that bit.)
Ahead of me at the gate was a woman checking passports with a face like a storm cloud, making everyone force their bags into that metal contraption. One man dropped his rucksack into it, whereupon she glared at him and said it had to go in ‘a bit more’. So he nudged the rucksack down with his foot, it went in easily, and everyone in the queue laughed at the stupidity of the procedure. I was starting to get quite panicked at this point. My wheely bag would definitely have fitted but I could easily have been caught out by the weight of it, and my rucksack was also now 93 kilos what with all the Boots miniatures I’d just bought.
It was only when I was perilously close to the front that I remembered I had speedy boarding, and decided to limbo under the cordon into the other queue, burning my hand with coffee in the process. The man checking the passports at the front of the speedy boarding queue wasn’t even bothering to look at our bags.
So, easyJet are operating a racket, but the ordeal of the above made me think about the other scandals that are operating at the airport this summer. Because it’s not just easyJet. There are PLENTY of them, including but possibly not limited to:
Why is airport parking so madly expensive? No matter where you’re flying from, it’s now around £100 a week, isn’t it? Whether you’re in long-term parking OR you do fancy meet and greet and simply hope you’ve booked a firm which doesn’t double as a drug dealership, it’s still minimum about £100 a week, or at least it seems to be this summer.
Why do different security queues have different rules? Shoes on! Shoes off! Belt on! No, sorry sir, belt off in this one! Laptop out! Madam? Madam? MADAM! Please keep your laptop in your bag. Yes, that’s right, for some unfathomable reason, your laptop needs to be in your bag at this queue but your Kindle has to be out of it. And your phone and sunglasses may look especially threatening and need a separate tray entirely. It’s always a gamble, picking a security queue. The good news is Gatwick (and maybe others, but I don’t know about them) is now operating a policy where you no longer have to take your liquids out of your bag and risk revealing your holiday tube of Canesten to the self-important businessman who’s flying on the 7.35am to Geneva in front of you. The bad news is this means you forget things like full water bottles because you don’t rifle through your bag until it’s already going through the X-ray machine. I thought I’d have to drink the entire thing last week but the security woman simply made me follow her 20 metres or so, holding the Rod Stewart water bottle as if it was a dirty nappy, to a place where she could drain it and hand it back.
Are Boots miniatures the biggest con of all time? When I flew to Spain last month, I cleared security and immediately headed to Boots because I needed ‘a few bits’. Shampoo, conditioner, face wash, sun cream, bug spray and so on. Not much, just a few essentials. When I got to the till, it turned out I owed £60. SIXTY pounds. Alright, I’d thrown in two bottles of Piz Buin sun cream, and Piz Buin aftersun, and a big can of bug spray because I HATE being bitten, and some Rennie, and a packet of Nurofen, I think. But still, you can rack up quite the fee with those dinky little bottles, can’t you?
Why is Pret roughly 64 times the price at the airport? An egg mayo sandwich in Pret is, what, three quid or so? Or probably more now. I remember the days when it was £1.99. Better days. Happier days! An egg mayo sandwich at the airport, however, will cost you around £97. A coffee? That’ll be a further ninety-six pounds please. I sometimes think that after the parking, and the Boots spree, and the coffee and the airplane snacks, I’ve already spent all my holiday money. MUSTN’T grumble when it’s very spoiled to be going away at all, I know, but, cor, airports have us over a barrel.
Why are the loos so far away? There are some loos at Gatwick (you may know the ones, upstairs beyond the Pret in departures) which you might as well reach by Megabus they’re so far away. Last week, when I was in a rush, I walked all the way there only to discover there was a queue, so I huffed and puffed and walked the whole way back again. Although it did add several thousand steps to my step count, so every cloud.
Why does Stansted not have enough seats for its actual number of passengers? I think this whenever I fly through Stansted. HUNDREDS of people milling around, but not enough seats for them. I honestly think those poor tired, lice-ridden people arriving at Ellis Island in the 1900s probably had a happier time of it than anyone who has to fight their way through Stansted’s departures area these days. Top tip: the Stansted Wetherspoons has a slightly hidden upstair bar, which I only recently discovered, and there may be seats up there. (It comes to something when a bar at Wetherspoons is a ‘top tip’, I know, but that’s Stansted for you.)
Why does my plane always land at the furthest-away gate? You land, you have a passive aggressive tussle with the person behind you as you reach for your suitcase in the overhead locker, you wait a further several hours to actually get off, and then you realise you’ve landed at Gate 978 and it’s a mile or so to reach passport control. What I tell myself, as I walk as fast as I can, trying to overtake all the dawdlers, is that a few steps after a flight may at least act as a preventative against DVT.
Why is it always my plane that involves taking a bus from the plane to the terminal? This is even more irritating than having to walk a mile to passport control, I agree.
Why do those automated passport gates work for everyone else and not me? I step in, place my passport down on the correct page, hold it patiently, wait for the little camera to move three foot upwards because I am a giant and whoever was in this booth before was clearly four foot tall, suddenly remember to remove my sunglasses from my head and then, after several attempts, I’m still sent to the booth manned by a human being with a long queue snaking back from it. Others sail through and are probably already home by the time I’m cleared to go. No idea why. It’s always an enormously enjoyable mystery at the end of a 10-hour flight.
Why is my bag last at the baggage carousel? Beats me. But what would a holiday be without a little frisson of excitement at this stage, as you watch everyone else collect their bags? Also, be thankful if it emerges at all. Some years ago, when I went to Kenya one New Year, Egypt Air lost my bag and the local Masai thought it would be funny to dress me up as a Masai warrior for New Year’s Eve. There are photos of this, but I don’t think they ever need to see the light of day.
Pictures of the week
An email dropped a few months ago. Would I like to come to the South of France, to Antibes, to be precise, to look at a new property development by the British billionaire John Caudwell? You know, the Phones 4u guy. Business class flights would be laid on; I’d be given a personal tour of this multi-million pound project. As it happened, I was thinking of going to the South of France for a long weekend to stay with a friend, so I thought, why not? I’d pay for my own flights, thank you very much, but because I’m a nosy parker I was quite intrigued to see inside the new apartment block for billionaires. What do billionaires have in their houses, these days? Panic rooms? Bullet-proof shower screens? Cashmere carpets? (Years ago, I interviewed a hedge funder who had cashmere curtains in his bedroom and I’ve worried about the moths ever since.)
Caudwell bought the place a decade ago and has been tarting it up in the meantime. It’s called Le Provençal, and - in estate agent parlance - it’s something of an icon. It was originally a hotel, built in 1926 when fashionable sorts started flocking to Juan-des-Pins, and Antibes became hip. Scott Fitzgerald drank (and drank) at the bar, as did Hemingway. Charlie Chaplin had an affair there; Churchill staggered from his room to the beach and back; Ella Fitzgerald sung to admirers from one of the hotel balconies. Everyone went, until it fell into decline in the 1970s. Long story short, Caudwell entered the picture a decade or so ago, bought it and has been transforming it into 41 apartments ever since. These apartments start at €4.5m, but you’re looking at €40m plus if want one of the three penthouses on the roof.
Well, it’s something alright. A nice French woman called Laetitia showed me around one hot afternoon last week, while dozens and dozens of builders scurried around us, clutching drills, fiddling with light fittings, because it officially opens to its new owners next month. You can probably imagine certain aspects of it - marble kitchen surfaces, marble bathrooms, vast windows overlooking the Cote d’Azur, immense wine fridges, ‘Egyptian limestone’ flooring, very thick entrance doors that look like they’d withstand a medieval battering ram, the hushed purr of air-conditioning in every room. Sadly no furniture or art to gawp at yet because the billionaires haven’t started moving in. Various of the apartments have private pools, even the ones on the roof. There are private lifts up from the carpark, so if you’ve parked your Bugatti in one spot, you don’t have to walk miles to your apartment door.
But then there are the funnier, fancier bits. A few of the apartments have ‘show’ kitchens. Literally one kitchen for the billionaire to pretend to use, and another ENTIRE kitchen behind it where their staff will actually knock up dinner. There are separate entrances for the help, ‘so your staff, they can be completely transparent,’ explained Laetitia. There are monogrammed dumbbells in the gym, a playroom for billionaire children to play in with a polished wooden climbing frame, and a 16-seater cinema with vast leather seats, which residents will be able to book to screen films. Or, mused Laetitia, perhaps for a piano recital, because a potential buyer she was showing round recently said that his daughter plays the piano, and suggested that it might be nice to wheel a Steinway in there for her to perform to others. Hmm.
They’ve sold a third of them so far, and you have to be vetted before you’re even allowed in to have a look. Security being an issue now in this part of France, with burglaries of big villas on the rise, billionaires are apparently flocking. Laetitia showed a billionaire around a few weeks ago who’d been burgled nearby only four days before and said he now wanted the security of a protected apartment.
Without wishing to sound ungrateful, I’m not sure they’re absolutely for me. The South of France, I reckon, should be pine forests and bare feet on the beaches and long lunches with glasses that are smeary with oily fingerprints by the end of them. It’s the sound of cicadas, and strolling up to the boulangerie in the morning for a bag of croissants and une baguette, s’il-vous-plaît, and maybe a slightly sunburned shoulder by the evening. You can’t hear a cicada in this building because you’re in your air-conditioned cocoon, although the views of the Med aren’t bad. But if you have a spare €40m knocking about, worth a thought?
Anyway, after that, I shifted half an hour or so inland from the coast and stayed for a few days with a friend in a house just outside a town called Tourettes-sur-Loop, which was HEAVEN. Endless croissants; bit of work from the sun bed (honest); crisps and canard in the evening. One morning, I wandered up to the town, bought a croissant, a coffee, an orange juice AND une baguette, and I got change back from a €5 note. Four euro something for all that! Not to be all ‘in London, a coffee alone now costs about four quid’ but, in London, a coffee alone does now cost about four quid!
Recommendations of the week
The Picasso Museum, Antibes. Bit of a niche recommendation, this, as it’s not that easy to nip here from, say, London or Wiltshire. But if you’re anywhere near Antibes in the next couple of months, I can’t recommend this place more highly. It’s small, filled with drawings, paintings and ceramics (oh, the plates!) which Picasso mostly created during a stay in the area in 1947. According to the blurb, it was a particularly joyful period for old Pablo because he’d recently found out his young girlfriend was pregnant (he was 66; she was 26), so there are lots of naked, buxom women with almost cartoonishly rounded breasts, frolicking fauns and plenty of still lives featuring fish. And the ceramics really are fabulous. But the whole thing is lovely, and also quick. I did it in 45 mins or so. But get there EARLY because the Tripadvisor reviews feature endless moaning about being made to queue outside in the heat in the afternoons.
The Waterfront - Has anyone else watched this oddly addictive series on Netflix? I started watching it recently because Lucy Mangan in The Guardian said it was ‘Dawson’s Creek for grown ups’, on the basis it was created by the guy who also wrote Dawson’s Creek, Kevin Williamson. It’s definitely not great art, this series, about a rich family who essentially own a whole fishing town on the coast in North Carolina, and land themselves in a spot of financial trouble. It’s also quite violent in parts. But it’s one of those things you’ll be hooked to for a few nights and then almost instantly forget. And don’t we all need one of those, every now and then?
(Incidentally, I take every TV review Lucy Mangan writes quite seriously and last week she tore into Lena Dunham’s new series, Too Much, which is also on Netflix. V anticipated this series, because Dunham was behind it, but having watched the first few episodes I slightly agree with Lucy. And I’m a bit sad about that as I LOVE Megan Stalter in the excellent Hacks, which I’ve banged on about here before. Anyone else watched Too Much yet? Should I persevere to the end?)
Nonsense Jolliness of the week
Dennis and I were in Whitstable for the weekend, and both of us were VERY BRAVE about getting in the sea. I am usually really feeble and take nine hours to sink into the cold. But it was bliss, apart from the odd moment when Dennis started swimming out and out towards the horizon and I worried he was going to be carried away by a rip tide. I *think* the scum is seaweed-related and definitely nothing to do with Southern Water sewage. Or at least that’s what I told myself.
PPS. I interviewed Jamie Laing, busiest man in Britain (?), for You Mag on Sunday, because I’m interested in his metamorphosis from posh boy in Made in Chelsea to budding national treasure. It’s a label some people may dispute, but I think his successful and honestly v funny podcast with his wife, and his spell on Strictly, and his £2.2m run for Comic Relief, and his hanging out at Buckingham Palace etc is turning him into that, maybe? And now he’s announced a Disney+ fly-on-the-wall series. It all feels a long way from the time I interviewed the whole MIC cast in a London hotel suite for Tatler (in 2012), and we had to apologise and I think pay quite substantial cleaning charges to the hotel as all their fake tan turned the bedsheets and bath MUD brown. Read the You mag interview HERE.
PPPS. SORRY another video but proofs of The Year Of The Dog landed on my doormat last week, which was very exciting. PRE-ORDER IT HERE. Obviously, given The Salt Path fandango, it’s quite a dicey time for those of us with memoirs coming out soon (!!!), but the good thing is Dennis can’t read, or write, and certainly can’t instruct a defamation lawyer.
£1 is not a lot though is it? Could you offer them £1.50 to NOT put your bag in the cage? Or how about introducing the idea of tipping the stewardess? Keep them hanging to the end of the flight for the £1.50. Maybe even £2 if you get your paper cup of warm ish PG tips with a smile along with not putting your bag in the hold?
I had to use assisted boarding last year (wheelchair, fast track everywhere, platform lift to plane, you get the picture, bliss), and the lovely man who looked after me told me that lots of people have no need whatsoever for assisted boarding but request it anyway to avoid the boarding horror. And they have to take anyone who applies just in case….. should I be sharing this?