It seems there are only two modes of billionaire: deathly dull or unstoppably cringe
I’m always disappointed by the outer reaches of my own imagination when I sit and idly wonder about myself as a rich person. For some reason “having a fullsized pool table” is always involved. Three holidays a year, that sort of thing. Maybe fly first-class. Maybe learn to drive, maybe have a chauffeur, I can’t decide. I think I would stop pausing when burrito places ask me if I want guacamole, but unlearning that behaviour would take a while.
I think there is a limit to how much wealth a human being can spend interestingly, and mine caps out just short of the £2m mark. If I were a billionaire I would, simply, be a very boring one. I would retreat into a gated mansion, get a VR headset for my PlayStation that I never use, then pay Robbie Williams to come over and be my mate. That’s about it.
I have to assume every billionaire is bored, then, because so many of them seem to end up spinning their wheels within their great glass palaces, watching their net worth jump and jag on a big five-screen set-up, and then – as sure as night follows day – starting to act in a way that can only be described as “cringe”. Elon Musk’s past couple of years, of course, have just been faintly embarrassing all round. The entire city of Neom, a vanity project of Mohammed bin Salman’s, is fundamentally cringe. (“Oh, so it’s a big long line, is it? And you’re going to build it by 2030, is it? Right, OK. And what is there to do? Oh, you’ve just got Ronaldo out there scoring triple hat-tricks to an audience of no one? Yeah, wow. I’ll book my flight.”)
And then there’s Jeff Bezos who, it was revealed this week, has had an intricately carved figurehead of his girlfriend Lauren Sánchez installed on the front of his $500m superyacht. Which is the sort of thing a 14-yearold boy would draw in the back of a maths textbook, but made real. And this is arguably the coolest thing he’s ever done. This is why so many billionaires end up dabbling with the folly of space, isn’t it? At a certain point, your wealth truly eclipses what you can do, and there’s only so many times you can go to the Maldives with some supermodels before getting bored. The only thing left to do after that is buy Twitter or make your boat a bit silly.
Even if you disagree with the sheer concept of billionaires, you have to admit: the current crop should be doing a bit more to inspire awe, be more formidable, or be more jealousy-inducingly insane with it. There are two other options with billionaire status, of course: be dull, or unbecome one. Bill Gates – the byword for “richest guy on Earth” when I was growing up – has done a lot of impressive work in water sanitation, which is great, but you wouldn’t want to have to talk to him about it at a party, would you?
Similarly, I cannot imagine anything worse than squirming in the corner with a warm beer while Mark Zuckerberg stares through me and tells me how the metaverse is actually good now, honestly. But while dullness isn’t a sin, it does seem to highlight how little there is to actually do once you acquire a nation-state level of wealth. Does Zuck really need an $84bn net worth to wear T-shirts and be too into grilling meat? I would just like one billionaire to pivot into something flamboyant and Bond villainesque. Even celebrity billionaires aren’t that cool: Kylie Jenner is arguably the least interesting Kardashian-adjacent sibling, and I’m not looking to rattle “Stan Twitter” too much, but it’s fair to say Rihanna’s been way less fun since she made all that Fenty money. You’re telling me not one of them can even plot to blow up the moon? They wouldn’t even have to blow it up, just start assembling the big laser. Give us something.
What, then, is the sweet spot for being rich but still capable of coolness? Thankfully, the Sunday Times rich list came out this week, so I went through it for ages trying to find a single name I recognised that wasn’t just some anonymous guy called Alex who inherited a lot of property from his dad who was a lord, and I think I’ve figured it out.
The triptych of Harry Styles, Adele and Chris Martin – an estimated wealth range of £140m to £165m – are right on the cusp, I think. Any more than that, and you can’t be cool any more (sorry, Elton John). Any less than that, and you can probably just about get away with still being a bit cool. But all three of those are in the danger zone. Styles really does need to be very careful not to make more than £20m this year, and Adele doing the final Carpool Karaoke put her right on the edge. Being rich, I imagine, is really great. But at some point it just does become insurmountably embarrassing.
Joel Golby is a writer for the Guardian and Vice, and the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant