The Capitalist: Let’s do the time warp, Square Mile edition
As City PM turns 20, The Capitalist turns nostalgic. Join us for a trip down business-with personality-memory lane… to the Square Mile September 2005
An incitement of the “Bra Wars”, reassurance that “it’s cool for men to carry a bag” and a warning that “Communist Capitalist is taking over the world” – reader, let me hold your hand as I take you back to City PM 2005. Though it was once suggested by an earnest office inspector that City PM dispose of its backlog of newspapers (a fire hazard, you understand), The Capitalist this week proved they were worth keeping, with a rummage through the archives proving the newspaper has indeed always been committed to its creed – business with personality, with rather the emphasis on the latter.
One particularly bold opening week gambit for the Square Mile’s public service freesheet involved a text-in competition to vote for the City’s most eligible bachelor and bachelorette, with a shortlist of 40 drawn up by City PM’s scrupulous reporters. Candidates included the likes of “Dragon’s Den dark knight” Duncan Bannatyne, Easyjet’s “charismatic marriage-dodger” Stelios Haji-Iannou and “looker with spondulicks” David Ross of Carphone Warehouse, whipo readers could text in to endorse. Presumably on their Nokia 8800s, lauded (along with the likes of the PSP) as a “burn your bonus must-have” in a September 2005 edition. Apple’s soon-to-be-released iPod phone – a “phone-cum-jukebox using the latest technology dreamed up by Apple and Motorola” – was also nodded to for those with more extravagant budgets.
Asides from a bygone era of property prices, The Capitalist was perhaps most surprised to see such an emphasis on health in City PM’s early lifestyle pages – albeit with Square Mile readers in mind: “How to booze, schmooze and still keep your liver healthy” runs one informative feature. Elsewhere, an article encouraging readers to take up a rollerskating fitness regime and a plea for “Why we should all learn to LOVE wheatgrass” spoke of great optimism from our 2005 predecessors.
Or perhaps an effort to overcompensate. Over in the diary pages (then known as Page Nine), The Capitalist was reassured to find regular programming: drunk executives, Boisdale mishaps and oil bosses releasing mission statements. Some things are forever.
Bill of the Week
Not all change is for the best, and The Capitalist can’t help but lament the decline of a feature that used to grace these diary pages many years ago: Bill of the Week. Nobody’s quite sure why the item disappeared, but one theory goes it was felt a little out of sync with the times during the Cameron-Osborne era of austerity. Anyway, for old time’s sake, here’s one of the last nuggets that ran, in 2011:
To Raffles, on the King’s Road, where last night one local Chelsea resident, believed to be a ship broker, left the club after creating one of the biggest bills this column has ever seen: £62,744, including a service charge of £8,184. Eight bottles of Don Julio tequila at £190 and one of £4,800 Dalmore whisky sustained the group, who gave out 16 of the club’s signature Singapore Slings to the “well-heeled girls” on the table next-door. To the club’s “horror”, however, said a spokesperson for Raffles, four of the six bottles of 1996 Krug Clos d’Ambonnay were sprayed across several tables – £32,000 of liquid assets down the drain.