A pint of lager, shaken, not stirred

The press has been alive with reports this week that the forthcoming Bond film, Skyfall, will see our hero drink not the traditional dry martini, “shaken, not stirred”, but the Dutch lager Heineken. Outrageous! people have cried. Sell-out! traditionalists have wailed. You will know, dear readers, that the Sybarite takes a lively interest in all things Bondian. So what of Heineken?

Well. First, it would be disingenuous to say that I am not unsettled by the idea of the world’s most famous spy knocking back lager instead of a cocktail. Will the dinner jacket be exchanged for an untucked, short-sleeved shirt? Will Commander Bond ask for a packed of salt and vinegar with his pint? If it were not unacceptable to the health police, would the Morland Specials give way to Benson and Hedges, or Silk Cut? On the face of it, it seems A Bad Matter.

But one has to remember that Bond has been about product placement for a long, long time. As early as Goldfinger, prominence was given to the Aston Martin DB5, a matter which will have pleased the management at Newport Pagnell, and Bond has long flashed a succession of Omega watches. (I myself have an Omega Seamaster, and a very handsome timepiece it is, too.) Nor was the intrusion of brand names an invention of the filmic Bond. Ian Fleming was a terrible name-dropper when it came to brands, from Bond’s Bentley styled by Mulliner, through the Kina Lillet in Casino Royale’s vesper martini, to the Rolex Oyster Perpetual by which Bond told the time. The thread of champagne branding running through both the books and the films is legendary. So are we in a tizz about nothing? Is the Heineken deal merely the latest in a series of commercial agreements?

Yes and no. I think there is a fundamental difference in philosophy between Fleming’s name-dropping and the later celluloid product placement. For Fleming, using brand names like Rolex, Bentley and Dom Pérignon was a mark of luxury and high living, an important aspirational tone in 1950s Britain. Bond ate, drank, wore and drove the best because it made him a figure of glamour and exoticism, which brightened up the lives of Fleming’s readers. That is a different matter from hawking Bond’s image to the highest bidder. Importantly, Fleming attached brands to Bond because they were the best and the sort of things which a man of Bond’s station would consume, own and use. The films were not a complete abnegation of this philosophy: one can see that Bond might drive an Aston Martin, or wear an Omega if he tired of his Rolex. He might well be dressed by Brioni, as Pierce Brosnan was, though one cannot help think that it would have taken a great motive force to drive Bond into the arms of a foreign tailor.

Would Bond drink Heineken? It is a mistake to associate him solely with the vodka martini. The Commander is partial to a Negroni and an Old-Fashioned, will happily drink Dom Pérignon, Krug or Taittinger (especially with caviar), likes his vodka with pepper sprinkled through it, sometimes rounds off a meal with Hennessy Three Star, and has been known to knock back bourbon and raki (not together!). And, of course, in the very first book, Casino Royale, he creates the Vesper martini in honour of the woman with whom he is working. So Bond is a versatile drinker.

Somehow Heineken is tin-eared, though. I have no brief against the drink; it’s one of the more pleasant lagers, one of the relatively few which one can genuinely enjoy, and I have certainly, ahem, “enjoyed” it fulsomely myself on more than one occasion. Lager also has a respectable film history: think of the pints of Carlsberg in Ice Cold in Alex. But there is nothing of sophistication and glamour about it, even if Daniel Craig is to appear on the labels and Sam Mendes is to direct one of the advertisements. This, surely, brings us to an important point. We are all wise enough now to know that Bond is not realistic, nor gritty. He is not Jason Bourne, nor is he “Harry Palmer”. Bond exists for two purposes – action, and glamour. The “reboot” of the film franchise with Daniel Craig provided plenty of the former; the bone-crunching, dizzying chase at the beginning of Casino Royale was a thrilling example. But Bond must provide the latter as well.

It’s not the commercialism of the Heineken deal to which I object. It’s that the choice of drink is just wrong. You might as well take Red Bull’s shilling, and have Commander Bond keeping himself going with a foul, sweet-tasting energy drink. In fact, if you have no regard for the appropriateness of the marketing, make it Horlicks, or an Innocent smoothie. It simply lacks authenticity. I know that branding is important for Bond, especially in these straitened times (a substantial proportion of the new film’s budget comes from sponsorship and product placement). But is the best they could do?

Still, I will go to see the new film when it’s released, and I will probably enjoy it. But I will still come home afterwards and crave a martini before dinner. Over to Bond:

“I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that drink to be large and very strong and very cold and very well made.”

I differ on the number of drinks, but you just know he wasn’t talking about a pint of lager.

No brown in town? A journey into shoes

It will come as no surprise to you, dear readers, to discover that I have several bêtes noires, particularly in matters of dress, and one of them is the unfortunately prevalent practice of wearing tan-coloured shoes with grey suits. I cannot fully explain why this should be so. Partly, I suppose, it is an aversion in general to shoes being lighter than the clothes worn with them – think about it, it’s quite rare, really – but there is something deeper than that. I suppose, at bottom, it is a combination of finding it visually unappealing, and, for want of a better comparison, thinking that those who indulge in such a look tend to be the sort of people who appear on The Apprentice (“When it comes to business, I’m a tiger” etc).

So far, so good. No tan shoes with a grey suit. But I have recently been pondering the validity of the “no brown in town” rule. How sound is it? Are there exceptions? By “town”, of course, we generally now mean “with formal clothes”. I do not think there are many people who would say that brown shoes should never be worn within the metropolis. But in the days when a gentleman would automatically be wearing a suit, it had a certain pithy point to it.

Of course rules are less strict now. However, it is worth thinking about them, because sartorial strictures often emerged from a point of fundamental common sense, or some basic notion of what looked right. I will admit straight away that there is one very clear exception which I make to the “no brown in town”, and that is when the sun comes out and it is time for a linen suit. I know not everyone takes the same approach, but when dressed in a pale linen suit, I think black shoes look somehow too harsh, too much of a contrast, and you will find me in a pair of brown Oxfords, perhaps tobacco-coloured suède brogues or even – gasp! – co-respondent shoes. (A digression: a colleague at work was delighted to be informed that two-tone shoes are so-called because the sort of chap who would wear them was the sort of chap likely to be cited as co-respondent in divorce proceedings. Equally, he was amused to learn that Americans, rather more primly, refer to them as “spectator shoes”.)

I do think that I would adhere to a black-only policy towards shoes in the most formal of dark lounge-suit situations, primarily in terms of work. As most people wear suits in navy or charcoal, or some variation, I think that black tends to look best, and a well-polished black shoe is a thing of a beauty which will always flatter the wearer. Even lighter grey suits – I have a mid-grey three-piece in Prince of Wales check, of which I am very fond – still respond best to black shoes. However, anyone with aspirations to style and elegance will realise that suits are not just for business.

For more social occasions, I think it is not unreasonable to apply slightly different, perhaps even more relaxed, standards. I would not, for example, go tieless to work, but to a reasonably smart party a suit with a crisp shirt open at the neck might be just the ticket. So it is with shoes. Here, then, it is not a matter of arbitrary standards, but of what looks good. My own view (i.e. the correct one) is that grey suits simply will not stand up to shoes other than black. Perhaps it is the slight coldness, the hardness, of charcoal, a marvellous thing in its own way, that is a mismatch with the warm richness of the palate of browns. With a black suit, if one wears such a thing outside the funeral parlour or crematorium, brown is an absolute no-no.

When it comes to navy, I am not so sure. Again, I think tan is out. Too light, too attention-seeking. But a pair of well-shined chestnut brogues might be a gainly addition to the ensemble, or perhaps dark brown suède loafers. Choice of sock here is key; I favour scarlet, generally, but if one is making a statement with one’s shoes, it may be de trop to have noteworthy socks too. I understand that women have a maxim, “Cleavage or legs”, and it has some applicability in this case too. But a case-by-case basis might be the way forward.

Then we come to the vexed question of oxblood. I have rather a fondness for oxblood leather; if it is done right, it has a lustre which brown can rarely match, and a lightness of touch that sombre black simply lacks. Done badly, one is simply a man wearing purple shoes. For a navy suit, though, it may provide an acceptable via media. Its warmth matches that of the cloth. For a social occasion which requires smartness, it suggests that the wearer has not just wearily donned his working clothes, but has thought about his wardrobe, and chosen carefully.

In conclusion, then, “no brown in town” has had its day, but that does not mean a free-for-all. It’s like anything else about clothes, really. Just think about what you’re going to wear. A bit of thought is repaid many times over.

Of course, none of the above applies if you are the Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke QC MP. Some people are just exceptions.