Watch out, Burnham
Looking for an insight into the kind of person Andy Burnham really is? You could do a lot worse than checking his wrist, says Andy Blackmore.
If you think it’s been a long time since we had a hip PM, think no longer, for the new inhabitant of No10 wears his credentials on his wrist. The evidence is there for all to see: proof that Andy Burnham is one cool dude.
Now, I’m warming to our new leader; in fact, you could say I like Andy Burnham, but not for the reasons you are probably imagining. And while I am a card-carrying member of the Labour Party, what has me excited is not his policies but his watch.
Like all new PMs, the axes were being sharpened before the ink on the handover of nuclear letters of last resort to the submarine commanders had dried. In this case, a Twitter (I refuse to call it X) user posted a photo asking people to identify a “rather swish” watch that Burnham was seen wearing on the campaign trail, noting that it appeared to have a ceramic bezel similar to an Audemars Piguet watch.
You can see the headlines now, “Man of the People’s Watch costs a Packet”, and that timepiece would have started ticking down. For most Prime Ministers, it’s like lying in the bath with the hot tap running; you don’t notice until it’s too late, and you’ve scalded your nuts, and you leave the building screaming.
The Audemars Piguet is a very fine watch, and so is Andy Burnham’s, a TAG Heuer Series 2000 Professional with a blue dial and bezel, in case you were interested. In the right light and from the right angle, it does resemble an Audemars Piguet, but I love it for what it is.
Burnham’s telling timepiece
While some of the press say, “It is not an especially fashionable choice”, I would have to disagree and say it’s at the pinnacle of a certain fashionability, right at the top of that curve of affordability, style and aura.
Admittedly, it’s not an apex predator like the TAG Heuer series 1000 reference 984.013L as worn by Leonardo DiCaprio in the Wolf of Wall Street film or the fugly TAG Heuer The Super Professional WS2110‑2, a proper 1000m diver’s watch (not that I’d say no to either). But it’s still a lovely example of a 90s tool watch, and my advice would be to buy one while you can. While it’s still an affordable design classic.
And again, admittedly, it’s a watch that has spent 30 or more years being mistaken for other, more expensive watches purely by virtue of its gorgeous lines; those bevelled lugs doing the same visual trick the Gérald Genta-designed Audemars Piguet Royal Oak made famous, without troubling itself with anything as exotic as an eye-wateringly expensive in-house movement.
TAG wasn’t shy about copying Genta’s homework back then. Half the industry wasn’t. The difference is that most of those assorted doppegangers have since been quietly exiled to an old biscuit tin, while Burnham’s is still on his wrist, still doing the job, blue bezel fading exactly the way an old quartz bezel is meant to. I like that.
I like a man who seems happy with his watch, and Burnham must be, as he’s been wearing it for around thirty years; rather than one of those sad watches that got quietly forgotten once their owners could afford better.
They say never judge a book by its cover; the same with wristwatches and their owners, says a man wearing a dreadful 70s Smiths Astral with a truly awful Hamazawa 5026A movement but when Sir Keir lived in the same building, he wore a Tissot PRX Powermatic 80, a watch some have called “a carefully chosen modern classic” which, as we all know, is really an anagram of boring, boring, boring.
The evolution of Downing Street watches
For balance, Rishi Sunak wore an Apple Watch and the occasional luxury vintage piece by Chopard or Rolex; David Cameron sported a custom Shinola Runwell, featuring the official Presidential Seal engraved on the case back and gifted to him by Barack Obama; and surprise surprise, Tony Blair wore that universal symbol of quiet power, the Rolex Submariner or GMT-Master, stainless, of course.
On the other hand, or should I say wrist, Cherie Blair sold a Locman Mare Titanium watch on eBay for £98 in 2010, reportedly one of nine watches gifted to Blair by Silvio Berlusconi. Still, when it comes to the other female former occupants of Downing Street, there is very little information out in the public domain, a degree of apathy that tells you more about the male bias of the watch collecting world than I have the room, the words, and the appetite for.
And while Boris Johnson always wore a practical, utilitarian, and intentionally unflashy Pulsar dress watch in public, with me, it never quite rang true. For some reason I always picture him in private wearing nothing but a blingy Hublot and matching underpants.
Now I don’t know the story behind Burnham’s watch, and if I ever get the chance, I will ask him, but I suspect it has that special emotional je ne sais quoi that money just can’t buy. And I like that too. Did I say it was a cool watch?