The 2007 Chap Olympics
This morning dear readers I would like to raise my normal tawdry level & inject a little decorum into proceedings. Consequently we shall eschew the current round of allegations relating to drug taking cyclists in the Tour de France (well, what sort of behaviour do you really expect from men that shave their legs) & turn to a much more esoteric event
yes, its that time of year again to break out the G & Ts and enjoy the 2007 Chap Olympics.
Now regular readers might well recall last years event but for those of unfamiliar with The Chap Magazine
Since 1999, the Chap has been championing the rights of that increasingly marginalised & discredited species of Englishman - the gentleman. The Chap believes that a society without courteous behaviour & proper headwear is a society on the brink of moral & sartorial collapse, & it seeks to reinstate such outmoded but indispensable gestures as hat doffing, giving up one's seat to a lady & regularly using a trouser press.
So for months now, chaps across Blighty have been in serious ... ahem ... training
using the most up to date techniques to ensure a tip top performance
The Olympiad begins with the lighting of the Olympic Pipe, an enormous briar stuffed with navy shag. When all the contestants have taken a heady puff, the pipe is placed on the Olympic Pipe Rack & the games commence. The opening event is the MARTINI KNOCKOUT RELAY, in which teams compete to mix the perfect dry martini. This is a handicap event - the handicap is that teams dont have a butler to build the drinks for them.
The whole event is now becoming so popular that even the Torygraph is now giving it extensive coverage
The racers take their marks. I crouch low, every sinew coiled, hope in my heart, wings on my heels - and the pipe between my teeth. Plus of course a solid pair of brogues on my feet, a trilby on my head and a tweed suit in between. You see, old chap, this is it: the pipe smokers' relay, the Chap Olympics, sport's ultimate trial of Chappism.
You are, one trusts, reading this at your leisure after rising some time after noon. Which means that just 24 hours ago, Fruity Metcalfe, last year's victor ludorum, lit the sacred Olympic Pipe - a jolly impressive 18in corncob - and the games began, in that hallowed sporting arena, Bedford Square Gardens, Bloomsbury, London.
About 100 chaps (and chappettes) competed, partly for the gold, silver and bronze cravats, mainly for the glory of the Chap Olympic ideal: not so much swifter, higher, stronger, as slower, lower, go easy on the tonic. Until the final "saunter of honour", to the last man and popsie, they honoured The Chap, not just a gentleman, but a movement
Here, at last, were 100 competitors and 800 spectators brave enough to confront the truth "that a society without courteous behaviour and proper headwear is on the brink of moral and sartorial collapse".
If only I hadn't made the most dreadful howler. I did keep my pipe lit throughout my leg of the relay (tamping with one's pipe tamper being allowed). But I showed overt signs of effort, and came alarmingly close to running. Still more horrifying, as far as the judges were concerned, I let my trouser creases fall out of alignment. There can be no dissent (even if a chap could contemplate such a thing).
My two judges are founders of the Chap Olympic movement: Gustav Temple, the editor of The Chap magazine, and Torquil Arbuthnot, a former bronze cravattist, and the author of a seminal paper identifying 73 different ways to doff one's hat ("The Chamberlain", lifted above the head as if returning from Munich, "The Delayed Chamberlain, lifted and held, as if seeing a chap off on the Indies steamer").
"No panache," concludes Temple. "Our referees are trained to look for perspiration." "Rash exuberance of youth," murmurs Arbuthnot, 44, after confirming the crushing trouser crease verdict with the help of his Malacca cane. "Try some of this," he counsels, producing a hip flask from the pocket of his cream linen suit. "Calm you down." It is filled with the Chap's sports energy drink of choice: whisky.
Temple, 42, a Hampstead-born poetry lover, founded the Chap movement in 1999. "It was a stand against the horrible culture at the time: lads' magazines, wearing too much sportswear, the Spice Girls. They were out there: chaps wearing tweed, smoking pipes, lamenting England's lost charm. We gave them a voice."
Indeed they did. Courtesy of "Johnny Interweb", a manifesto was broadcast to the world: "Pleasantness and civility are being discarded as worthless ephemera of a bygone age, an age when small children could be counted upon to mind one's Jack Russell while one took a mild and bitter in the local hostelry. The local hostelry has been taken over by a chain and serves chemically laced lager. Needless to say, the Jack Russell is no longer there upon one's return."
The attempt to bring tweed to the nation's hoodie-wearing youth was less successful, although they did eventually recover their car (if not all their mobile phones).
The Chap Olympics, however, has grown unstoppably since its inception in 2004. They have even had to adapt to such caddish 21st century customs as cheating by introducing random moustache testing. "If you can't be genuine in your facial accoutrements," explains Temple, "how can you possibly wear cufflinks with conviction?"
"Drug and alcohol testing?" he adds, somewhat bemused. "We are sponsored by Hendrick's Gin. The more the merrier."
The Chaps' sports "injuries" are similarly novel. "Raconteur's wrist," says Arbuthnot, waving his hand theatrically. "Dreadful business." Only the elite few, of course, can ascend to the ranks of the Chap Olympians. Temple ignores vulgarities like athletic ability. "There is the tie, the trouser creases, so many factors."
Just occasionally, very very occasionally, I think that there still might be some hope, old boy