Sophia Money-Coutts Modern manners
If you’re not on this year’s most-eligible singletons list, don’t despair – the process has absolutely no scientific basis
SWe put men on the Little Black Book list purely because it meant we could invite them to the party
ound the heralding trumpets! The annual list of Britain’s most eligible singletons has been published by Tatler and, as usual, reading it brings to mind an Evelyn Waugh novel. Top of the list is Emma Raducanu, followed by the Duke of Westminster, followed by a posh Scottish model who’s “partial to performing her breakdancing party trick, ‘the Worm’, and dedicated to working on her mental-health charity”. Presumably not at the same time?
Before I worked in magazines, I used to pore over such lists: “100 Most Influential People in the Country!” “Britain’s Hottest Power Couples!” “56 People Who Manage to Brush Their Hair Before Breakfast!” Then I helped write Tatler’s Little Black Book list and realised how unscientific the process is. I sat next to the social editor and we used to loll in our desk chairs while scouring Facebook, shouting out the names of men we had a crush on, who would go on the list purely because that meant we could invite them to the infamous Little Black Book party.
Friends often went in as a joke, with barking-mad entries (“loves her pet mouse, hates mushrooms and the District line”), although there was an unfortunate fall out one year when the social editor wrote that her flatmate liked “toad in the hole”, and they didn’t speak for several weeks when the list was published. The social editor thought it was harmless innuendo; the flatmate took it as an implication she was fat.
Mischievous journalists are usually behind the creation of these gilded gangs. The “Bright Young Things” was a moniker encouraged by the press during the Roaring Twenties, who reported endlessly about policemen’s helmets being pinched and raucous treasure hunts across London. During the Second World War, weary Brits were perked up by newspaper details of “the Happy Valley set” and the murder trial of Sir Jock Delves Broughton. In 1975, a Harpers & Queen sub-editor suggested a play on the phrase “lone ranger” for a piece in the magazine about pie-crust collars and velvet hairbands. After Prince William and Kate moved to Norfolk in 2015, their pals were dubbed the “Turnip Toffs”.
Entry requirements to such a group are fairly subjective, but there are some obvious musts: you should be attractive, ideally rich, have a fondness for animals that borders on the peculiar, and a total devotion to party games. In
Kenya, after dinner, the men would line up to poke, er, themselves through a hole cut in a bedsheet while the women sat on the other side, screaming with laughter, guessing who was who. The Sloane Rangers’ religion, more demurely, was charades.
Any sort of link to the Royal family, however distant (“he’s 73rd in line to the throne, being the Queen’s 49th cousin nine times removed”), is a plus. Tatler, in recent years, has made vague efforts to make its list less embarrassingly white. In my day, I recall a long debate about whether Idris Elba should make the cut.
Please don’t panic if you’re not on this year’s list, is what I’m saying. It is an entirely random compilation of people jotted down between office discussions about who has just got engaged and who has got a new horse. And I never snogged anyone at the party, anyway. The aim, back then, was to get one of the Middletons to pitch up, but they never did, so it was usually the Made in Chelsea cast and Nancy Dell’Olio. There’s a metaphor in that, somewhere.
Anna Pasternak on this year’s Little Black Book: in Features in today’s main paper, p30
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