5 things we learned this week
WELCOME to The Mail on Sunday’s entertaining new column that tracks down some of the quirkier news stories from around the world that you might have missed over the past seven days…
1 Ambitious sales people are turning to dating apps to flog their wares. One 27-year-old Singaporean looking for romance on Tinder had a nasty surprise when he met his date and she ‘whipped out a folder of pamphlets and started promoting life insurance policies’, says Business Insider. Others have been using dating apps to pitch investment plans or houses for sale. By contrast, LinkedIn, the business-focused social network, has become a hotbed of online flirting – as with career details on display, it’s easy ‘to vet a potential mate’.
2 Boris Johnson cost GQ magazine about £4,000 in parking tickets. The Prime Minister racked up the eyewatering bill during his spell as the magazine’s motoring correspondent from 1999 to 2009, according to former editor Dylan Jones. Boris never received a single speeding ticket, however. ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea why,’ says Jones. On many occasions, the test car’s mileage would be exactly the same before and after Boris had taken possession of it. ‘I leave you to draw your own conclusions.’
3 Margaret Thatcher didn’t take snubs lying down. When she made her first prime ministerial visit to Paris in 1979, Valery Giscard d’Estaing insisted he be served before her at lunch because, while he was head of state, she was a mere head of government. When d’Estaing next came to Downing Street, she got her revenge by deliberately seating him opposite two enormous portraits of Nelson and Wellington.
4 Martinis have made a comeback in New York. ‘I’m watching these kids hammering martinis and I’m like, “Good Lord,” ’ says one Manhattan bar owner. The reason for their renewed popularity is simple: they’re very boozy, so cheap to get drunk on. Above all, says Emily Sundberg in New York magazine’s Grub Street blog, they’re fun.
There’s none of the ‘sanctimoniousness’ of previous trendy drinks, like natural wine.
5 Six is the perfect number for a dinner party, according to a resurfaced 1922 editorial in The Times. The guests should all know one other, since strangers may feel ‘outside the talk’, and very young people, ‘who have not yet found their feet socially’, should be avoided. Most important is the hostess: a ‘woman of perseverance’ can only get so far. The holy grail of spontaneous and easy conversation requires ‘a woman of natural charm and some brilliancy of mind’.
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