Trail Blazer

Anyone who has a penchant for clichés (and I hardly try to avoid them like the plague) will love the one about teaching an old dog new tricks. I just love the image of a withered old German Shepherd sat in a quarantined, security operated lock up for the canine elderly wearing tweed patches and learning how to operate an iPhone, as if age will have quashed what little is left of its hand-eye coordination. Surely the lack of opposable thumbs will see to that. The crux of the matter is that there is nothing new anymore that hasn’t been recycled from all the old crap that old dogs used to bang on about. Because before our old dogs were sat in a canine state of comatose daytime drudgery, they were using quills and ink spots to dot the letter I, communicating through string lined tin cups and using the postal service to tell people things that were actually worth telling people. No use for an iPhone in the 1940s, unless you needed a door wedge for your air raid shelter.

According to Harvey Nichols’ new Spring Summer menswear collection, stack-jawed socialites the country over will be hitting the beach, the club and the sports hall in the most traditional of attire: the humble, smart and particularly effortless blazer. This is far from a new trick: blazers have hung from the shoulders of everyone from Abe Lincoln to Lionel Ritchie, from marketing execs to t-shirt combos on Primani students. It’s certainly a proud day for all those old dogs who will notice - as they tune in their wireless into a remix of the theme tune from Housewife’s Choice - that things, particularly in fashion, haven’t moved on that much at all.

If a guy really wants to look smart, then you can’t go wrong with a blazer. It may scream of a slightly arrogant public schoolboy, a relic of the classroom that outlived even the chalk board, but there is no denying that even the most snotty of vagabonds will look a million times better in a suit, even if it is just half of one. Justin Timberlake went from a prepubescent Mickey Mouse dweebo to the king of cool when he stole Michael Jackson’s dance moves (mostly performed in a blazer, I might add, only with more sequins) and modified the trend with converse and stubble. Sinatra held his over his shoulder, while many have tried to replicate the way that President Bartlet in The West Wing threw his on in one swift motion, less of a simple pull over and more of a poetic moment of cocksure showboating.

The new Harvey Nichols blazer showcase ranges from Paul Smith to D&G and incorporates the sort of bygone tailoring plucked from a different age, when men dressed smart for not just their wedding day, but also the beach and the football match. This season, lads, the old dogs really do know best.

Universally Challenged

It's been one of those great weeks for snobbery, the kind we stiffen our upper lips for in Britain. I remember clearly incidents at school where in order to hide one's intelligence, one would have to imitate a cockney rebel yelp when reading Oliver Twist aloud in class for fear of a behind-the-shed drubbing. A violently yanked tie could break a boy’s windpipe - a nasty trick, that one. Of course, I’m not suggesting that the likes of trailblazing clever clogs Gail Trimble would ever have been so unceremoniously tunnelled in a ladies lavatory at somewhere like Corpus Christi, but maybe her University Challenge team mate Sam Kay may wish to take a different bunk upon his return to campus for fear of itching powder in his pillow case. He may feel that he had overstayed his welcome, which he clearly has, because it was revealed this week that Kay isn’t even at university anymore, and instead has a job at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Beeb, sensing a Uni-gate backlash of Daily Mail proportions, quickly robbed Oxford of their title and handed it over to Manchester, the show’s runner up, who have diplomatically remained quite blasé about the whole thing. Surely the biggest regret regarding this whole affair is the overshadowing of Trimble’s terrific trail blazing: she scored more points than her three team mates put together, which begs the question that it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if the rest of her team hadn’t even bothered to turn up at all, let alone graduate. Next year, expect to see Trimble alongside a plumber from Dorking, a Sussex bee keeper and Wonky the Clown.

So the snob-bashing continues, mostly from those sorts who confuse intelligence with arrogance, particularly in an over educated news week of endless repetition where it was not only announced that GCSEs are so easy that one day, pupils won’t even have to turn up to sit them, and will instead just get their cats to text in their answers. That isn’t true, of course, but in a world where Liverpool Hope University are offering an MA in Beatles Studies (yes, look it up), then you do have to question these new levels of absurdity. We’re great at taking money from thick kids, but what good, honestly, is a degree in Beckhamology, knitwear and golf course management? (They're not made up, either). Well, obviously, the answer to this starter for ten is quite simple: these students could easily form three successful spare parts for Trimble’s next university pub team. As long as they were still students, of course.