I despair of the younger generation who, according to research published last week, are too shy to shake hands, look someone in the eye, answer the doorbell or take a call on their mobile if the number is unknown. That’s crazy! No wonder young people find life so difficult. Teens and twentysomethings of Gen Z might regard the physical contact of a handshake as intrusive, but it’s far easier than any of the other means of greeting people. And it’s pretty impossible to get wrong.
The value of a handshake
A long career as editor of Vogue taught me how valuable the handshake is. When a stranger would walk into my office for a meeting, I would always shake hands before sitting us down. If I was in a line-up at a glamorous gala, I would take the hand of anyone presented to me, relieved not to have to make the decision as to whether that person merited a kiss.
When I recently met a young woman for the first time to take her on a personal shopping trip, the handshake was a friendly but not overly close ice-breaker. After a successful afternoon together, we graduated to a hug goodbye.
Unlike Meghan, I am not a hugger by nature and slightly recoil when someone I don’t know well flings their arms around me. As for kisses, is it single or double and how do you avoid bumping noses? Indeed, is it even appropriate as a greeting?
A handshake offers the right degree of distanced intimacy. And it’s a good measure of a person’s character. A limp handshake is possibly one of the most unattractive gestures imaginable, indicating a complete lack of interest or actual dislike of contact. At the other end of the spectrum, a bone-crunching squeeze always strikes me as signalling some kind of weird power grab. There’s nothing much you can do about it at the time, but it certainly colours my view of that person when it comes to future dealings.
Teaching social skills in schools
Perhaps we should include social interactions in secondary school PSHE classes. Shaking hands, answering phones – and while they’re at it, perhaps they could also learn to offer someone a drink.
I’ve found Congo’s missing masterpiece
Back in the late 1950s, my father Milton Shulman, then a celebrated critic at The London Evening Standard, made an important programme for Granada Television. It was about the drawings of a chimpanzee named Congo. (Bear with me, this wasn’t some random eccentricity!)
My father’s collaborator was the famous zoologist and author of The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris, who died last week aged 98. During his years presenting a children’s show from London Zoo, Morris had encouraged Congo to draw and paint. The chimpanzee completed some 300 to 400 pictures and even had his own exhibition at the ICA.
The Granada programme set out to examine the quality of Congo’s artwork and compare it to human abstract art. Some of Congo’s oeuvre ended up in the collections of people who know their stuff – including Picasso and Miro – and were even included in an auction at Bonhams in 2005.
Going through cupboards in our parents’ flat the other day, we stumbled across a folder of original Congo drawings that we had suspected were long gone. Now we are wondering, optimistically, whether we are sitting on a treasure trove of the chimp’s work.
The Dame with a deadly catflick
Dame Emily Thornberry’s performance when questioning sacked civil servant Sir Olly Robbins over Mandelson last week was a wonderful example of revenge best served cold.
Here was her opportunity, as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to drip poison in a mellifluous voice that mixed exaggerated concern with pointed disgust. Her target was Sir Keir, the man who, when Labour gained power, surprisingly dropped her from his ministerial team despite the fact she had been Shadow Attorney General for three years.
I have a lot of time for Dame Emily, who on the whole speaks a great deal of sense, but even more so now I’ve seen her in action.
And I also couldn’t help noticing her excellent eye make-up, immaculately applied eye shadow topped off with a catflick that was worthy of former Vogue-contributor-turned-make-up-mogul Charlotte Tilbury. Go girl!
Raunchy Madge’s still got it
At 65, Dame Emily is two years younger than Madonna, who is also nifty with the eyeliner but has a very different look. I flip-flop in my attitudes to the Queen of Pop, who is the same age as me depending on where we are in the calendar.
I frequently grumble about why she can’t allow herself to age naturally, but watching her perform Like A Prayer last week on stage at the Coachella festival alongside Sabrina Carpenter, I was in full ‘Go girl!’ admiration.
There she was in knee-high boots over pink stockings in the lilac satin corset she first wore 20 years ago, prancing around alongside a singer less than half her age. It didn’t seem ridiculous, but utterly magnificent and inspiring.
Who wants the perfect big day? I do
It’s the start of the wedding season. Comedian Jack Whitehall and his bride Roxy Horner went the whole hog in the Cotswolds last weekend, singer Dua Lipa is reportedly planning a massive bash in Sicily… and I married my long-term boyfriend David last Tuesday.
Compared to those others, and frankly most marriage ceremonies, ours was wedding-lite. We had the smallest room – just 12 seats – at London’s Chelsea Register Office, no rings and a 24-hour honeymoon. It was perfect.
Possibly one of the best elements was keeping it so minuscule. The 12-guest limit allowed our closest family and a couple of friends to attend. Anything larger would have caused ructions over who to invite and who to leave out, decisions I knew would cause me to regret saying yes in the first place.
By removing the stress over the guest list, we were able to be immersed in the proceedings and enjoy every second of the day.
