Shake it all about

The doomsaying about NETFLIX’s subscriber figures felt overdone. A near-saturated market, plus an incoming crunch on disposable income? Of course a bit of fall-off is to be expected. Still, since taking out an Apple TV trial, I’ve found more and more that I want to watch there, and am particularly obsessed with Severance — part high-concept sci-fi, part conspiracy thriller, where the twist is that the protagonists can’t know what they’re doing half the time.

That’s because in the world of the show, they’ve undergone a procedure called “severance” where their work selves (their “innies”) are wholly detached from their home selves (“outies”). It becomes a detective story from both sides, with the two sets of sundered psyches trying to work out what each is doing. Most of all, I’m rooting for the innies and outies to get together. If they’re ever reunited, it’ll be a self-love story for the ages. Anna — Amy Odell’s biography of Vogue editor Anna Wintour — is a treasury of fashion excess, with Wintour far from the worst offender. Gloria Moncur of Bazaar apparently once responded to a sub-par item of footwear by slinging it at the offending staffer and saying: “Are you trying to make me sick bringing me these terrible-looking shoes?” Even more shocking is the amount of money washing around publishing in the noughties. Condé Nast once paid double the asking price for a URL, simply so the vendor wouldn’t think they were owed a favour — an approach that I am sorry to say none of my editors have ever taken to setting my fees.