On Saturday Even a scruff’s standards are slipping

NOW we’ve heard it all… Jonathan Agnew in his attic, commentating on an international cricket match for the BBC, dressed in pyjamas? It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Better not tell you about the longjohns I’m wearing, or the fact that I regularly attend business meetings on Zoom with the antediluvian underwear hidden beneath the desk. It would embarrass my young female colleagues. And who needs to know anyway? What occurs out of camera, should stay out of camera.

But there’s no doubt – standards are slipping.

Of course, regular readers will know that this particular columnist’s standards were somewhat questionable in the first place – even in those happy days when we could mingle freely in public. For years I was the only journalist working for a daily paper who constantly attracted letters of complaint for his appearance rather than for his opinions or writing. I’ve had miraculously few complaints about the actual thrust of my opinion columns (and those usually from the sort of ultra-right wing types who stormed Washington’s Capitol the other day), but if I ever dared to turn up somewhere like a county show without a proper haircut, the editor would be swamped with letters calling for my dismissal. Alas, Hespian standards have slipped even further. The pandemic styled hair is wilder than ever, having been occasionally mown or hedgetrimmed by a despairing Mrs Hesp. As for the nadir – the final coffin nail in one’s personal appearance – by which I mean a missing front tooth, it’s been gone so long I can’t even fit the much-hated, uncomfortable and expensive denture into the gap any more.

So what? If I’m too busy to indulge in wasteful periods of self-preening, it is because no one’s going to see me anyway except on internet video calls – and even then, images sent from this valley tend to be intermittent and blurry thanks to slow rural broadband.

But… One thing for me to be scruffy – quite another for the normally well turned out BBC cricket correspondent. One wonders if this pandemic might cause a major setback in personal appearance standards around the world. You can imagine millions of people saying: “My pyjamas are so comfortable – why can’t I wear them all day?”

It was all so very different just a few decades ago. There are probably still a handful of ex-colonial chaps who put on a collar and tie at dawn and ladies who dress as though they’re going out to the county town – even if they are breakfasting alone before spending a long lockdown day without seeing a soul.

When I was a young reporter I’d regularly come across these stiffupper-lipped relics of Empire. Besuited tea-planters and their wives who had, in previous lives, raised the Union Jack each morning in some sweltering mosquito infested jungle, before sitting under a spinning fan to endure a helping of hot porridge and marmalade on toast. I met them after they’d come home to spend their final days in elegant villas with names like Benares Bungalow or Darjeeling House.

The once handsome seaside resort of Minehead had its fair share and I recall being summoned to ornate homes up on the hill overlooking the bay where I’d take notes about forthcoming charity concerts or whatever, and they’d say things like: “My dear boy, you’ve arrived just in time for tiffin.”

Everything was stylish. It was all about appearance and form. And, as an impressionable teenager, I rather liked the faded glamour. But being a council-house boy with a leftie Dad, I could never carry off the style. I wore the gear – the posh white linen jacket and straw boater in summer – but I’d always look somehow seedy or down-at-heel.

Not quite the ticket… Is what they’d mutter, after I’d gone off to the rundown newspaper office and its grimy printing works with my notebook. But you didn’t have to come out of a Somerset Maugham story to be ‘quite the ticket’. My wife’s civilservant father was a perpetual jacket and tie man – even when gardening in his allotment. On occasions when nature forced the old boy to disrobe just slightly, it would mean English temperatures were matching those of the Federal Malay States. But yes… Those late-Victorians put me, with my “all day long-john and no trousers look”, to shame. However, we all have different standards. For example, one of those ex-colonials invited me to lunch on a summer day 45 years ago – and it was the most disgusting plate of food I’ve ever tasted. He’d thrown half a can of curry powder into a pot of Heinz Baked Beans, and that was it. Well… Where I am very much not allowing standards to slip is in the kitchen. The more difficult it is to go out and purchase fresh supplies, the more determined I am to create fabulous meals from the contents of pantry and freezer. It is hard work. But seven days a week I go at it like a bull at a gate. Forget tiffin! At Hesp Towers we go in for lavish multi-course suppers. And of course I always don a dinner jacket and a dickie bow.

Just don’t look under the table.

Everything was stylish. It was all about appearance and form