The New Sheridan Club: What's Happening in the Club and the World of Vintage Matters and Retro-Manners

29^th July

Booze Probed

The New Sheridan Institute for Alcoholic Investigation has been busy this month. On Monday 26th July, our Drinks Correspondent Mr Bridgman-Smith (see his exhaustive Martini monograph in our Essays section) and I stepped boldly into the subterranean grotto that is Purl, a rather Dickensian-style bar in Marylebone, London. They take the Victorian thing far enough to plan to give their establishment the full Dickensian Christmas makeover this winter, and are even planning to make up their own purl—which was a Victorian drink of mulled ale flavoured with bitters and spiked with brandy, whisky or gin, and sometimes with sweetened milk added. However, the drinks list by and large couldn’t be more contemporary, specialising in what has been called molecular mixology (after “molecular gastronomy” the roots-up science-based approach of chefs like Heston Blumenthal and the man behind the movement Harry McGee). The idea is to rethink from first principles how the flavours (or indeed the whole experience) of a drink are delivered to the recipient.

We had time to inspect two examples. Mr Hyde’s Fixer Upper is a blend of rum, cola reduction and orange bitters: sounds normal enough, but the blend is served in a flask that has had smoke pumped into it (see picture) and then served to you in a bucket of dry ice. The dry ice is just for Gothic effect but the smokiness has a distinct impact on the flavour, a flavour the intensity of which I imagine you can control by how long you leave the flask infusing before you uncork it.

The other drink we tried was their Champagne and Caviar: not real caviar (fish in cocktails is probably a no-no) but small pellets of mango and pine purée mixed with sodium alginate (extracted from brown algae). A syringe is used to deliver drops of this into a glass of calcium carbonate, which causes a gel skin to form on the beads of purée. On the tongue this does indeed have the consistency of salmon roe and bursts in the same sort of way.

The crazy guys from Purl also top drinks with flavoured foam and use liquid nitrogen to make the coldest martini in the universe. Drinks are around £7–9 and the venue is at 50/54 Blandford Street, London W1U.

Then on Wednesday the Club sank to new lows of depravity when five Members attended a sherry tasting at Gordon’s Wine Bar by Charing Cross station in London, an event that kicked off at 10am. David Hollander, Anton Krause, the Ultan of Arbracchan, Parson Woodforde and myself all somehow arranged to be there and endured seven sherries, each with an accompanying tapas course before finally staggering away at 4.30pm (well, I did—some of my fellow clubmen decided to cleanse their palates with some more booze…).

Sherry still suffers a bit of an image problem, not just its association with aged aunts gripping a glass of QC at Christmas, but also the assumption that it is an aperitif and nothing else. A part of the mission is to persuade people that sherry is good with food.

For me the greatest revelation was the pairing of Manzanilla and oysters, the very dry, fresh, acidic, sea-salt tang of the sherry balancing perfectly with the maritime ozone rush of the shellfish. White anchovies in vinegar were also served with the Manzanilla, and again the sherry cut right through. Manzanilla, like the pale dry fino that followed, is created by allowing a natural “flor”, a cap of yeast, to form on the surface of the wine in the barrels. This keeps it from the air and, along with the practice of keeping the liquid topped up as it evaporates, creates a pale, light, fresh wine. With the progressively darker and more intense sherries, a process of oxidation takes place (in time the protective flor naturally breaks down, allowing the air in), adding what seemed to me an aromatic and astringent flavour reminiscent of varnished wood (something you would recognise if you are a fan of sherry-cask-aged malt whisky). The earlier sherries we were given were made exclusively from the Palomino grape, but some of the later ones also had some Pedro Ximenez in the mix, right up to the sweet, sticky, almost tar-black Pedro Ximenez La Cilla which was served with manchego cheese and chocolate-dipped loops of deep-fried dough. More pictures here.

The event was highly informative and extremely good value. I gather that the Sherry Insitute is keen to subsidise such events, especially promoting sherry as a food wine, so if you would be keen to attend something similar email me so I can gauge the hunger for it.

Membership Passes 300

A hearty huzzah goes out to Miss Faye Duffy who recently became our 300^th active Member. (In fact, more people that that have joined, but we do lose a few each year to impecuniosity, fleeing the country or the inexplicably lure of the training shoe. And in case you’re one of the last 25 or so whose Membership numbers are over 300—or indeed Mr Mark Gidman, the holder of card no. 300—note that over the years some of the numbers have been unassigned, most likely because a card was made up with a certain number but spoiled or damaged and not used.)

Here’s looking forward to the next 300.

The Newest Member?

The Committee would like to congratulate Grace and Harry Iggulden on the arrival of Gwendolyn Matilda. We are not sure if this means she automatically inherits NSC Membership, like British Citizenship. I think some time poring over dusty ledgers is called for. (As if it weren’t always…)

NSC Boffins Earn Their Stripes

There have been a number of academic gongs received among our number recently. Miss Minna has recently acquired the letters MSC after her name, in the field of librarianship. Meanwhile Compton-Bassett was handed a well-deserved BA in War Studies from the University of Kent and Oliver Lane has been awarded a BA, also in War Studies, by Wolverhampton University—and has been accepted by King’s College, London, to embark on a Master’s. What a bunch of clever clogs, eh?

Mrs Downer Wins Tea

You will recall that in July’s Newsletter we ran a competition to win tea for two at the National Liberal Club, kindly offered by food writer Ronald Porter, who believes the NLC offers the best value tea in town. I am pleased to announce that the winner was Mrs Rachel Downer.

23^rd July

Rare Films Delight and Mystify Members and Guests

Thursday 22^nd July saw our second film night in three weeks, this time a reprise of Cally Callomon’s earlier bill of documentaries, repeated so that some friends of his own could see it. The theme was the eccentric, the outsider. One was a Yorkshire TV film from 1982 concerning a travelling knife-grinder, probably one of the last in the country, After earlier exploits in his life travelling the world, working in a South American silver mine, as you do, he returned to Blighty but continued to travel, at first doing farm work and then learning the trade of knife-grinding. He travels on a bicycle with a tent, camping for the night in all weathers, cooking on a fire and reading by candlelight. His bike converts into a grinding wheel (the vehicle is “heavy but well balanced” the narrator tells us) and with the money he earns he buys tea, tobacco and meat—it’s true we never see him eat vegetables and he takes about a tablespoon of sugar in his tea, and yet he is hale and hearty at 70. He does like a drink and nips to the pub most lunchtimes, though again the narrator insists he does not drink to excess. He pays no taxes but never troubles the state, never sees a doctor. The police “know him”, so it’s all right. He wouldn’t have it any other way, considering himself a millionaire because he has all he wants. Cally told us that when he showed the film at an outdoor festival once, he realised after a while that one woman in the audience was weeping: she revealed that as a girl she remembered the same man passing through her village every year. Then one day he stopped turning up and, as she grew older, she began to think that she had imagined him altogether. The film was vivid reminder that life really had been like that. (Cally says he thinks that one day the man just dropped dead: undoubtedly how he would have wanted to go.)

The second film, made in the 1970s, was altogether more sinister in tone and looked at an eccentric family living a secluded life on a patch of woodland in greater London somewhere. The father and his two sons are all knowledgeable about machines, seemingly scratching a living repairing engines and the like. One son prefers steam power (believing that it will come back because Britain has reserves of coal but not of oil; he well be proved right). The father claims to be building a boat, and they certainly have a good supply of machining and metal-working equipment in their clearing. (It makes you realise that you assume someone living outside of society must be getting back to nature, so all this machinery and blacksmithing comes as a surprise, though it does lend a hellish flavour to the sinster encampment. The father does hunt for game birds, but he uses a shotgun rather than anything bucolic like snares.) There are two daughters also, who seem to keep house. There are hints of incest and one daughter certainly dreams of escape; in one scene she is at the wheel of a burned-out bus, fantasising about driving away. They have a battered piano and a pipe organ and father and at least one daughter can play. Every family member seems full of opinions and theories, many of them barking mad. We wonder what happened to the mother.

There was a good turn-out for the event of about 24 people: about as may as the room can comfortably hold. Cally introduced the programme with his thoughts on “the English media’s need for our ‘eccentrics’ to be pre-packaged” and explained that these films actually showed why outsiders really were likely to be outside: because more often than not they are disturbing rather than loveable. Many thanks to him for a fascinating show and one we are unlikely to see anywhere else.

21^st July

Sun Gods Smile on Bronzed Olympians

Those who have been with the Chap Olympics (or the Chap Olympiad as it seems to be these days) will know that it has always changed from year to year. From the beginnings as a ramshackle guerrilla gathering in Regent’s Park, to the Hendrick’s-powered sponsored affairs in Bedford Square (some would say a little too corporate), to the, erm, ramshackle guerrilla gathering on Hampstead Heath (with the highly mystifying directions) to the current return to Bedford Square Gardens under the Bourne and Hollingsworth banner, the syle and emphasis has shifted even as the throng grows ever larger. However, one thing has remained consistent: it always rains.

But the latest celebration of sporting endeavour, on Saturday 17th July, broke fiercely with tradition—the weather was delightful. Spectators lounged, Pimms was quaffed, burgers sizzled on the smoky grill, all in the golden dappled light of a perfect summer’s afternoon.

I sensed a few more tweaks from last year. There seemed to be more tables and chairs laid on and, although I was asked to open my bag at the gate, I did not not see the mass confiscation of drink on the threshold that took place last year. (Of course, there were a large number of hipflasks and hollow canes being deployed, but this is only to be expected.)

In case you don’t know, the event consists of a series of silly games, intended to test the players’ style, panache, savoir faire and devious inventiveness. Athleticism is frowned upon while cheating is admired. The most striking development this time was the appearance of a stage, a raised platform upon which the games took place. I assume there had been complaints that it was hard to see what was going on in the past unless you were in the front rank of the mob that formed around the action. Now we had neat rows of seats along the ringside. Of course from a Health and Safety point of view it was an Accident Waiting to Happen: let’s get loads of drunk people, make them totter around on broken bicycles while hitting each other with umbrellas. On a raised platform. (At least they thought better of that pit filled with poisoned spiked around the edges…) The subject of spikes reminds me of the last event of the day, the steeplechase where contestants semi-blindfolded by rubber animal masks carried other contestants on their backs while trying to jump over picket fences that had been mostly arrange upside down so that their grounding spikes pointed upwards. What could possibly go wrong? Miraculously, as far as I know no one was hurt apart from a cut that Farhan sustained to his finger during the (at times quite vicious) umbrella jousting. But it did all make me wonder if Gustav had any kind of insurance in place… A full report with several hundred daguerreoptypes will appear in the August Newsletter. In the meantime, see the photo album.

8^th July

Good Fortune Smiles on July Club Night

The talk at our latest Club Night was perhaps particularly appropriate in the current economic climate, dealing as it did with How to Increase Luck in Our Lives, delivered by Eugenie Rhodes. (I think there were quite a few coves in the audience who had recently been relieved of gainful employment and may well have been asking themselves this very question.) When examining why it was that some people seem to have all the luck (Kirk Douglas, for instance, seemed forever to be making inexplicable decisions that turned out to save either his career or his life), Ms Rhodes did not seem to rule out genuine luckiness, in a cosmic sort of sense (this is someone who takes stockmarket tips from the faeries, don’t forget). However, the bulk of her discourse focused on how we can, in a way, make our own luck. As Helena Rubinstein once said, “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.”

Ms Rhodes went on to look at the roles played variously by preparation (Warren Buffet spends huge amounts of time absorbing information, even allegedly interviewing car park attendants in companies he’s thinking of investing in), persistence, (“The harder I work, the luckier I get,” Samuel Goldwyn once said), observation, boldness and readiness. There is also the matter of perspective—we may already by may be luckier than we realise, but perhaps tend to focus on the unfortunate rather than the fortunate in our lives: so you could become luckier at a stroke simply by looking at things in a different way. The discourse prompted much lively debate around the Club for the rest of the evening. Many thanks to Eugenie for her efforts.

Scion of Hallamshire-Smythe Dispatched to Belgium

The Scion of Hallamshire-Smythe, pipe-smoker, stalwart of The Tashes and all-round Good Egg, has had to flee the country, presumably hounded by creditors, furious husbands and/or the friends of someone he killed in a duel. A slave to the dairy industry, he used to be good for a wheel of cheese or two for a Tashes prize, but now peddles some sort of heavily processed yoghurt drink, I believe.

Anyway, he claims that his company, a kingpin in the global Military/Industrial/Dairy Complex, requires him to relocate with his family. We wish him the best of British luck in the daunting land of moules frîtes, chocolate and insanely strong beer (hmm, doesn’t sound too bad, actually).

The good news is that this was all a delightful excuse for a knees-up, so a troupe headed down to the Dover Castle, the pub in Weymouth Mews that has become a traditional home for the Club, though I can’t remember why, exactly. On this occasion it proved highly inappropriate as it turned out to be shut (for “staff training”, we later discovered), so we decamped to the nearby Stag—nothing much to recommend it apart from its being open and not very far away, and indeed we found ourselves heckled incoherently by children from a first floor window as we sat outside.

Most bizarrely of all, as we relished our drinking-up time a car screeched to a halt where we sat and a dapper gent, unseasonably dressed in a buttoned-up overcoat, jumped out and asked if we wanted to buy any cigars. He had “just got back from Cuba” and “had loads in the trunk”. (“Trunk”? Was he deep in an American gangster fantasy? Did he have a shooter inside that overcoat? Was trying to muscle in on the Fitzrovia cigar racket? Had he mistaken me for Pedro “The Humidor” Diablo?) Personally I suspected that if the stoogies were legit then he wouldn’t be pandering them on the fly to bibulous fops after closing time. No, he’d be selling them on eBay like a respectable person. (Actually, I’m told you aren’t allowed to sell tobacco on eBay, so don’t try it, kids.) I particularly liked the fact that he described them as “starting at” £20 each—and going down from there.

I could see Chris Choy was tempted but in the end we all declined. We drained our glasses and H-S and his young (and in some cases rather long-haired) chums headed off to Ronnie Scotts for some of that modern “jass” music I’ve been hearing about. No good will come of it.

Film Night Celebrates Historic Duel: Satisfaction Received

Thursday 1^st July saw the latest in our burgeoning new run of film screenings, when Mr Anton Krause presented The Duellists, the 1977 Ridley Scott adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s story about a pair of Napoleonic officers who fought a series of duels over some 30 years. The tale itself was based on a true story, and Scott was clearly at pains to represent the events and their milieu with as much historical accuracy as possible—indeed the realism of the duels themselves is doubtless what appeals most about the film to Mr Krause, an expert in such matters. The film was actually shot on a meagre budget, which meant that there were some minor costume inaccuracies to do with specific uniforms, but overall the standard was high.

Mr Krause took particular delight in explaining to us how the evolving fashions for duelling weapons were faithfully represented. The initial fights used the European shortsword, essentially “a needle on a stick”, as Mr Krause put it; with no cutting edge your strategy was simply to skewer your opponent, something that the insanely pointy weapon could do so surgically that duellists might walk away from a bout and not realise at first that they had been run through. A later duel fought with sabres, by contrast, was long, bloody and clearly exhausting, until the duellists could scarcely lift their heavy blades. Towards the end the duels turned to pistols, including a final fight where the combatants scurry round some woods firing at will like some team-building paintball excursion.

We had a good turn-out and once again I was pleased to see total strangers wandering in for the fun. We chatted afterwards and I sensed they might not actually join the NSC, but it was a good opportunity to spread the word.

22^nd June

Club Member To Pedal for a Good Cause

Cally Callomon (who, you may remember, curated a Club Film Night recently) is one half of a crack duo of velocipedists who will be cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats on a pair of 1885 penny farthings, to raise money to help families who are riven by the curse of addiction in their ranks. The pair will set off on 18^th August this year, and expect to complete their journey in 18 days, stopping at B&Bs and vowing to sample at least one local cheese and one local beer every day. Mr Callomon will be taking his 50-inch fixed-wheel Grafton Silent Compound Roadster, while his companion Mr John Malseed (in truth a veteran of the Veteran Cycle Club) will be trusting his behind to a Victor Roadster 52-inch fixed-wheel Ordinary Bicycle—and will in fact be racing it the very day after the epic journey, in the three-hour Knutsford race that happens once a decade and attracts some 80 penny farthings.

For more about the challenge they are calling Toe-to-Head (“cycling the length of the UK on tuppence ha’penny”—which is true when you think about it), to pledge your sponsorship, and to track the pair’s progress, keep a weather eye on their website.

Matthew Howard Treads Lightly Through Eastern Civic Turmoil Hotspot

Fingers were crossed and buttocks clenched as Committee Member Matthew “The Chairman” Howard launched into his talk, The Big Siam: Oriental Excess in the East Indies, at our monthly meeting for June. Billed as the Second Lady Malvern Memorial Lecture—after a P. G. Wodehouse character who penned a book entitled India and the Indians after the briefest of stays there. The first Lady Malvern lecture was Mr Howard’s own The Manners And Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Revisited), extensively researched over two weeks in the Sinai Peninsula and two days in Cairo, and his latest pronouncements were just as well grounded, offering an analysis of the life and culture of the Thai people, based on a fortnight’s holiday.

Mr Howard’s experiences were presented as those of a naif innocently wandering into a den of iniquity (although he did have Mrs Howard there to keep him out of trouble)—from his assumption that the crowd of red-shirted demonstrators were Manchester United fans, to the cheerful acceptance that this Louis Vuitton luggage must be genuine, to his gentle curiosity over exactly what the young lady was going to do with that ping-pong ball… The chief lessons seem to be that luxury is available in the Orient but at a price that can be alarmingly high, in both pecuniary and moral terms.

It’s always touch-and-go as to whether our high-tech audio-visual system will actually work, but on this occasion it did us proud, which was just as well as the guts of the talk lay in the succession of visual punchlines—the snap of the plane that jetted him to Siam was an old BOAC kite; the contrast between the Thais’ heart-felt reverence for their king and the Sex Pistols’ reinterpretation of our own Queen’s image—for which reason, I am not really able to print an essay version of the talk this time, though you can see some of the slides well enough in the relevant set on the Club flickr page.

Many thanks to The Chairman for his hugely amusing oration.

22^nd May

Wild Romance of the Roaring Twenties Revived on the Silver Screen

Our Film Night this month was curated by the Earl of Essex and showcased the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. The film takes place one sweltering summer in 1920s upstate New York, following struggling bond salesman (yes, really) Nick Carraway as he takes a house for the season across the water from his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom. Nick’s neighbour turns out to be super-wealthy Jay Gatsby, who had a fling with Daisy when he was a poor army officer and has never got over her. Daisy scarcely seems happy with her philandering husband, but will she respond to Gatsby’s suggestion that she leave Tom for him? We never exactly find out where Gatsby’s new-found wealth comes from, though the suggestion is that he is a bootlegger; in any case the suggestion is that new money is never as good as old money—and a world better than no money (“rich girls don’t marry poor boys”, Daisy sums it up). And whatever factors are involved money vincit omnia.

The main feature was preceded by two short documentaries, collections of period footage showing what the 1920s “flapper” scene was like. I have to say that without these, one might have wondered just how realistic the party scenes in The Great Gatsby really were—but there were bang on. On top of this, Essex gave us a spoken introduction, both to the concept and significance of the flapper and to the main film. Some of this knowledge will be reproduced in the June edition of the Club Newsetter.

After the screening Essex gave a prize (in this case the DVD we had just watched) to the best 1920s outfit in the room. Which was won by my wife. All entirely above board, I assure you. Many thanks to Essex for organising the event.

Messing About In Boats

I don’t know who originally hatched the idea of a group trip to Oxford on the weekend closest to St George’s Day—it’s organised through the Chap Room rather than an official NSC thing—but we’ve been doing it for five years now. There isn’t so much flag waving these days (cross of St George in our case, Isle of Man flag in Rushen’s if he’s around), but one thing that has so far never changed is the weather—considering the deluge that’s characterised the May Day weekend, it’s amazing that the previous one was so sun-kissed. I think this proves categorically that God is an Englishman.

Anyway, we assembled, as tradition dictates, at the Turf Tavern, a splendid ancient alehouse tucked away down a maze of alleyways. After a few sharpeners we proceeded to the Magdelen Bridge Boathouse and stripped them of five of their punts. They never seem to bat an eyelid when a bunch of fops in tweed, blazers and boaters descend, but I guess this is Oxford.

The picnic site that we now regard as ancestral is by what’s known as the Rainbow Bridge. We go there, rather unromantically, mainly because it’s near to some public conveniences but it allows for an eventful trip, nosing our way through the winter’s fallen branches (a part that always reminds me of Apocalypse Now—particularly the way the native canoes filled with painted savages part to let us through as we approach the corpse-strewn lair of the now insane Senior Sub), and then there are the dreaded rollers. Fortunately my punt came equipped with Laurence, who took great delight in pulling the punt over pretty much single-handed.

Senior Sub himself is now resident in Oxford, which oddly means we see even less of him on the punt picnics. In the past he has managed to pop by, shadowing us by bicycle as we poled along. This time he was part of a play that had a matinée performance, so he wasn’t present at all, though by chance we did bump into him coming out of a cake shop. However, our escort was there again, in the form of Mr Henry Ball and chums. I’m hoping that, as the years pass, the crowd following us from the bank will grow until all of Oxford appears to watch balefully as we glide by.

The return journey is always more eventful on account of the exotically high Champagne levels in the blood. Laurence tragically slipped while punt-hauling and rolled around in goose poo for a bit. And every year someone falls in—this time Rupert stepped up to the plate (see the front cover).

After that it was back to the Turf for thousand more ales and then Oblivion… St George would been proud. More pictures on Flickr.

9^th April

Club Discovers Its Place in History of Clubland

April’s meeting was a hearty and—for at least the third month in a row—encouragingly packed affair. It’s always good to see so many new faces, guests and first-timers. At this rate we may need to find a bigger venue.

Our guest speaker was Mr Seth Thevoz, delivering London Clubs 1870–1910, a version of a talk he previously unleashed at the Institute of Historical Research last summer. He told how the London club scene rose from the coffee houses, enabling often middle class men to have a taste of luxury in the form of the well-located and appointed town house that was their club’s premises. At the tradition’s heyday there were hundreds of clubs in London, the best known ones centred around Pall Mall and St James’s—“Clubland”.

Although the club houses were in some cases surprisingly small, the political importance of some clubs could be huge. In the days before actual membership of political parties, membership of clubs with particular political leanings was the nearest thing. But the connection with political developments goes further. At the outset just one in 15 men had the vote, and each new reform would bring a club for the newly enfranchised (who were often shunned by the established clubs, presumably as suspicious arrivistes).

In time there were clubs for women too and a surprising number of mixed clubs. The latter actually declined, partly because of Oscar Wilde’s downfall: when, after the scandal broke, it became known that both he and his wife were members of a mixed-sex club, it heavily dented the reputation of both that club and co-ed clubs in general. By the 1920s there were very few clubs admitting men and women; it wasn’t until the 1970s that mainstream clubs, heavily in decline and in need of any boost they could get, started to allow women in.

Seth treated us to various cartoons (Wife to club-loving husband: “What do you mean by coming home at his hour?” Husband: “Everywhere else was closed”) and anecdotes, such the one about F. E. Smith who used to stop off at the National Liberal Club every day on his way home from Parliament to use the lavatories. When finally accosted by a porter who asked him if he was actually a member of the club he replied, “Good God, you mean it’s a club as well?” This joke has been told substituting many clubs and sometimes a different central character, but was apparently a reference to the brown tiles in the Liberal Club.

Many thanks to Seth for his engaging and informative oration.

31^st March

Bells Ring Out For First Club Wedding

On Saturday 27th March a momentous event took place on the Isle of Man—Juan Waterson (aka Viscount Rushen) married Helena Perry (aka Lady Windermere). This is arguably the very first Club Wedding, in the sense that the bride and groom began courting through the NSC, both being Members when they met. Huzzah! A full report will be in the April Newsletter; in the meantime you can see a full dageuerreotype album at the Club Flickr page.

Time Traveller Saves Tweed Industry

From BBC website

Makers of the Harris Tweed have been overwhelmed by the level of interest in their “timeless” cloth by fans of the cult television show Doctor Who. Matt Smith, the 11th doctor, will wear a traditional Hebridean hand-woven jacket in the new series. Since the outfit was revealed in July, interest in the fabric has risen.

David Reid, a director of Harris Tweed Textile Manufacturing Ltd, said the choice had created a “massive opportunity” for the industry. Smith's jacket is a vintage 1960’s piece made of genuine Harris Tweed. The particular weave is now set to be revived and is likely to be marketed to Doctor Who fans after the new series, which begins in April.

Mr Reid said tweed manufacturing, the biggest private sector employer in the Hebrides, had been struggling in recent years. “We've been deliberately trying to market Harris Tweeds to younger people and in one fell swoop we've seen this. We’re absolutely delighted to be associated with Doctor Who in this way.” Mr Reid added that the “magical” cloth was ideal for the Time Lord because it had “romance and spiritualism” running through it.

Reid said his company, which employs about 20 people on the Isle of Lewis and works with about 50 weavers, was creating new, lighter, softer cloths in response to the recent interest, to appeal to younger people and women. Islanders hoped to see an influx of visitors wanting to see where the tweed was made.

Western Isles MP Angus MacNeil said: “This exposure represents a serious opportunity for Harris Tweed. A marketing campaign to generate equivalent interest would cost millions of pounds; there is a strong chance that we need to be ready for a dramatic rise in orders.”

He added: “The endorsement by Dr Who shows that Harris Tweed is timeless and can be worn anytime, at any age and in any galaxy.”

18^th March

Likenesses on Offer to Members

Two new Members, Mr and Mrs Craig Fraser, have made an interesting offer. “My wife and I are both quite accomplished artistes,” he writes, “and I was thinking that if any members of the New Sheridans wanted a pencil portrait or an acrylic portrait done, my wife and I would be more than happy to oblige. All we would need is a photo in the exact position the member required and we could throw something together in a nice small portrait, probably in the style of those regency thumb paintings they handed around to snatch a suitor.” So if you’re looking to land yourself an eligible spouse this could be just the ticket.

You can see here a couple of samples of Mr Fraser’s work (left) and that of his wife (below). Mr Fraser says that for a small portrait there would be no charge, though if you wanted a larger work in acrylics then something could be arranged. If this interests you, you can contact the Frasers at Craigfraser84 {at} hotmail.com.

7^th February

Gentleman Dissected At Club Night

The Club’s February meeting was an upliftingly well-attended affair; included in the throng were a number of guests, including a French photographer who had covered the Chap Olympics for Le Figaro, and also a couple of groups who just happened to be in the pub and were curious as to what was going on upstairs.

Our guest speaker was Mr Robert Brook, delivering a talk On Being A Gentleman, one which he had previously given last September at Interesting ’09, a symposium of, well, interesting discourses that sounds like a whole year of NSC Turns rolled into one. (Mr Brook has no prior connection with the Club; a friend of mine knew him and had heard about his speech.) His talk was really an exploration of the manifold meanings that the term can have: is a gentleman defined by birth, by behaviour, by dress? Then there is the obituary term—“yet he remained, above all, a gentleman”. The term can mean that despite having none of the appearance, manner, lifestyle, background or circumstances of a gentleman there can be an aspect of one’s personality that makes one one. Meanwhile someone else can mire themselves in all manner of shady dealings and frankly blackguardly behaviour, yet remain a gentleman precisely because of his appearance, manner, lifestyle, background or circumstances.

There was no real conclusion to all of this: it was really a celebration of this peculiarly English concept (Mr Brook gave examples of foreign observers who, in attempting to define the gentleman, seemed to accept that England was the spiritual home of the idea). Our speaker clearly felt that gentlemanliness was an ideal that very much still had a place-indeed that the 21st century had a strong need for it. He suggested that the people in the room were doing good work in keeping it alive, though he also commented that he was glad he could see the exit, so who knows what he really made of us? All in all a splendid and thoughtful talk and our gratitude goes to Mr Brook for taking the time to deliver it to us.

9^th January

Rapier-Like Performance From Mr Krause

At our January meeting Mr Anton Krause treated us to a lecture on Duelling For Dummies: The European Sword in Personal Conflict. Mr Krause, as you may remember, was one half of the pair who demonstrated Bartitsu, the Victorian walking-stick martial art, at our last summer party, Tempting Fête—where I seem to remember that he was always on the receiving end of the gentlemanly violence. By day he teaches stage fighting, both armed and unarmed, and arranges fights (for stage, I mean, not just in pub car parks). To illustrate his talk he brought a number of stage swords (cunningly transported in a guitar case), although he lamented that his favourite rapier was not with him, having been half-inched by someone at the theatre. One pities the soul when Mr Krause catches up with him.

Duels, we learned, are almost always illegal, and that this law is almost always ignored. While they are seldom fought specifically to the death, they are seldom fought specifically just to “first blood”—except in France, where duelling seems to have been more of a fashion accessory than a defence of honour. Mostly they are fought till one party cannot continue. And they were still going on in the early 1900s. Mr Krause took us through the development of the weaponry: and it seems that the message is that speed is of the essence. Duels started with lumbering medieval fights with broadswords or hand-and-a-half “bastard” swords, moving to the use of the rapier—actually heavier and slower than you probably think, leading to the partnering of it with a dagger in the other hand for parrying. We heard how, in unplanned street fights one’s cloak could be put to use as a parrying device (hence “cloak and dagger”). The rapier developed into the small sword, the ultimate duelling blade. It had been realised that slashing strokes were slower and more telegraphed than thrusting moves, and the small sword was all about thrusting. It was light enough to be used for attack and defence and would develop into the foil of modern-day fencing.

The rules seem to have been quite complex. You can only challenge someone to a duel if they were your social equal. Contrary to popular belief you do not challenge someone by slapping them round the chops with your gloves. Instead you throw you gloves at his feet (“throwing down the gauntlet”) and if he wanted to accept the duel he picked them up and slapped you round the chops. For all that, once the fighting started more or less anything goes: punching, kicking, gouging… Because duels typically took place at dawn (when other people were less likely to be about) the duellers sometimes held lanterns—which could be deployed as weapons too.

I would like to thank Mr Krause for a fascinating and well-received lecture.

‘Yes We Can-Can’ Really Can

The famous English sense of fair play got a good airing on Saturday 21^st November when the New Sheridan Club chose the French—our natural enemies—as the theme for the latest of our biannual parties. (It was what in the past would have been billed as a “Christmas Party”, but no date in December seemed suitable and I don’t think it’s on to use the C-word for any event outside of that month.) Many guests commented afterwards that they though it the best party yet.

We were back at the Punch Tavern on Fleet Street, scene of the Kredit Krunch Kabaret last year. But all Teutonic hints had been banished and the place decked out in red, white and blue, the tables strewn with garlic cloves and snail shells. Guests rolled up as auteurs and onion sellers, aristocrats and revolting peasants. The 1952 film Moulin Rouge played silently in the background while a programme of Gallic music, specially prepared by International DJ MC Fruity (Hatfield-Peverel), crooned from the tannoy.

Spicing up the evening were live performances from chanteuse Mademoiselle Maria (bearing a suspicous resemblance to Fraulein Maria from last Christmas…), and stand-up comedian Marcel Lucont, the embodiment of French charm, hauteur and misanthrophy who was bemused to see so many people dressed as the French without one genuine Frenchman in the building. (Afterwards, as he dashed off to another gig, he told me how nice the party was and how he regretted having to leave—you can imagine how preferable the refined and affable NSC crowd must be to the average late-night comedy audience…)

Our first game was Pin The Legs Back On The Frog. One might have guessed that our players were expressing their Frenchness by finding this concept alien—yet the best attempt actually came from Marcel himself. Of course being a performer, and French, he was not allowed to win.

Then came Onion Battle, derived from the game Orange Battle believed to have been invented, or at least recorded, by Sid G. Hedges (1897–1974), author of many books and articles on swimming, games and wholesome home entertainments for young people. Each player must balance an onion in a spoon held in one hand, while using another spoon in the other hand to unseat his opponent’s onion.

And of course there was the Grand Raffle at the end of the evening, plus the usual Snuff Bar and selection of soaps, colognes and hair dressings in the bathrooms—untroubled by looters this time, I’m pleased to say.

A big thank-you to all who came and helped make it such a splendid evening.