The Great American: Studs Terkel 1912-2008

Obama Landslide (in Dixville Notch)

The voters of Dixville Notch NH (pop 75, registered voters 21) cast their ballots at midnight. See the sensational result here

Non-political corner: a woman goes out with no make-up

I travel make-up free on long haul flights and am confronted with the 'real me' in the mirror of the creepily lit plane toilet. Beauty is not necessarily in the eye of the beholder, as Harry might have noticed when he thoughtfully popped round yesterday to bring me a a carton of milk and some Jaffa cakes as I caught up with my post Canada sleep. Here's a woman from the Times

The morning passes uneventfully and most of the women I see on the bus, or on Oxford Street, don't seem to be wearing make-up either. When I catch sight of myself in the mirrored lift at the BBC I realise that I look a bit rough - luckily I am doing only radio - but apart from that, I don't really think about it again. It is only when Gill the photographer from The Times turns up and shoves her giant lens practically up my nose that I begin to feel stressed and self-conscious. The closer she comes to me, the closer I come to punching her lights out.

Later, I telephone the clinical psychologist Dr Cecilia d'Felice. She is very sympathetic. “Women wear make-up because it makes them look and feel more attractive and there is something very masochistic about forcibly stripping that away and not allowing yourself some protection. It's human nature.”

I totally agree. I've left my make-up bag at home in the interests of the experiment, but a quick trip to Boots and five minutes in front of a mirror puts a smile on my face again.

I lasted all of three hours without my “face” on, and it cost me fifty quid to feel normal again. Rather than liberated, I felt robbed of the right to make the most of myself and I suddenly understood why the Miss Naked Beauty contestants felt so vulnerable. To be honest, I feel disappointed in myself. Why can't I love my unadorned face? To compound my sense of failure, when I speak to psychologist Oliver James, he tells me that the credit crunch will make me think twice about the amount I spend on unnecessary cosmetics. He believes that the recession will challenge women such as me to distinguish between real “need” and the artificial “want”.

'You've got everybody here in your hands'

'It's easy to let the best of yourself slip away'

America Week on The Thoughtful Dresser

The love affair started with this record which was one of the few my parents owned in the 60s (until the LP of Fiddler on the Roof, of course)

Interview in the Toronto Star

with photo - so what do we think about that £60 foundation that Mary Greenwell made me buy?

Harry Wonders Whether Barack Is Cool

Well, actually, as any fool know, he is.
I don’t know where he gets his suits and shirts. And ties and shoes. It isn’t really relevant. They are not that interesting.
He’s playing the game of looking corporately solid.
( And , pragmatically, I’m glad he is). It appears that somewhere along the line we have colluded with an idea of what we want our father figures to look like. Because that’s what they are. They are the ones who tell us , metaphorically speaking, that everything is ok because they are reassuringly in control ( oh yeah?). And, not quite so fancifully, when we should go to war.
The fact is that female politicians don’t have the same universally acceptable corporate style to find refuge in. Thatcher did it by reflecting back a frightening combination of post war austerity and joylessness (dull clothes) combined with a folk memory of a fearful headmistress.
No-one else can now do that without looking like a pale imitation.
Palin is ghastly. ( As was Thatcher.) But that’s got nothing to do with her wardrobe. And I still don’t know what is the problem people have with Hillary. But please don’t tell me it’s her clothes.

Yes, in the public spotlight you can expect to be de-constructed. And derided. Particularly if you are female.
The fact is that there is an inhibition about ripping apart your average male politician about the way he presents himself. Why are we so deferential?
Perhaps we don’t want to incur daddy’s wrath by being so trivial. Or , even more worrying, provoke him into storming out and leaving us bereft of his oh so re-assuring masculinity.
But perhaps we are simply acknowledging the fact that men ,incompetent in so many ways , are particularly lacking in how they present themselves. Poor bunnies. We just accept that they don’t know how to do anything other than conform.
This time round, ( just like T Blair in the UK ten years ago) I don’t care if playing the conformity game means Barrack will win .
But I am still mildly curious why nobody has revealed where he gets his ties .

Cometh the hour cometh the suit

everyone crazy bout a sharp-dressed man

I suspect that there is a rift in America between those who like their aspiring candidates to look just like them, and those who prefer the candidates to look as if they are actually aspiring. There's a good discussion of all this in the Telegraph.

"Fashion has always been political since the days when sumptuary laws prohibited people of lower rank from wearing certain fabrics," says Caroline Evans, professor of fashion history at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

"But there are new, unwritten laws as to what kind of clothes political figures choose to wear. Like it or not, in a media age they will be judged by their appearance as much as by their convictions."

But politicians need to play the game carefully, insists Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys. "Image is vital, but people need to feel gravitas from their politicians - and you don't feel gravitas from a politician who's wearing Dolce & Gabbana."

.

Sarah Palin and the Needless Mark-up

Sarah Palin and I do not exactly see eye to eye on a number of policy issues, but personally, I don't begrudge her or any woman who had dressed her entire life from a consignment store (or so she says) a $150,000 shopping trip to Neiman Marcus, or Needless Mark-up, as it's known. As we know, women in the public eye are scutinised in ways that men are not, and Hillary Clinton's attempts to look presentable for the hostile attention of a merciless media shows what happens when you get it wrong. Not being a hockey Mom, I don't feel betrayed by the shopping. I never thought she was anything like me. I'm sorry she doesn't get to keep the outfits when she returns home to Anchorage next Wednesday, as consolation prize for not becoming vice president. Inshallah.

What the guru wears

The woman who taught McQueen

And while Wilson is undoubtedly a daunting presence, it's not because of the chic glossiness you might expect from someone so revered in the fashion world. Dressed in her uniform of plain black top and skirt (she refuses to mention designer names), she is matter-of-fact and decidedly unshowy: 'I wear black, because I'm a large lady, and I have many exact replicas of the same black outfit. I'm normally so dismissive and bitchy about my students' work, so if I always wear the same thing I kind of dissolve. I'm not putting myself in the firing line,' she booms, her comments loud, quick and fiery with expletives.

To Canada

I'm off on a book tour of Canada later today. See here for details.

Some liked it

Last night Harry and I accepted a couple of complimentary tickets to hear Tony Curtis talk about his new autobiography with Joan Bakewell at the Criterion Theatre.

Curtis, who once looked like this

Now looks like this
(and is bald as a boiled egg under the hat.)

Still, what a moving an memorable evening! Joan Bakwell was continuously prompting the quite deaf Curtis to talk about Marilyn, and eventually he did recounting the brief affair they had when both had just arrived in Hollywood after the war. He was 20, she was 18; both were unknowns who had not yet made a movie.

But Harry and I agreed that of far greater resonance were his recollections of his childhood in the Bronx, of extreme poverty and anti-semitism, of speaking Hungarian at home until he learned English at the age of five, of the tragic death of his brother in a street accident when he was nine just after they were released from a month in an orphanage because their parents were too poor to buy food.

What Curtis really wanted to talk about was the Navy, the great institution which he described as his mother and his father, which gave him equality and an escape from poverty and racism. And under the GI Bill sent him to acting school. You felt that he loved the Nany more than all his years in Hollywood.

Though rather deaf and unable now to walk, his wit was as fast as ever. A male member of the audience asked him: 'What was it like to be as handsome as Elvis and as charismatic as Steve McQueen?' Quick as a flash he answered, 'You'd love it.'

Curtis is only really famous for one film, Some Like It Hot, his career had nothing like the highs of Jack Lemmon's - but what a film that was. Like having a starring role in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

In which I am bankrupted by Mary Greenwell

But I just do what she tells me do.

Lock stock and two silk barrels

It has been almost a week since Madonna wore these - how did I miss it? They're Chanel by the way and cost £900.

British style genius: the rebels

I have just spent an hour without moving a muscle watching a riveting programme about British style focusing on Westwood, Galliaono and McQueen. If you didn't catch it, you can see it again from tomorrow, I think on BBC iplayer

Men sit around talking about each others' clothes

From the Times, like eating sweets, reading this:

Jason Nicholas: I try to wear a suit as rarely as possible; I’m most comfortable in jeans and T-shirts. As an Australian, that’s kind of what I’m used to.

MW: Yeah, you look like you’re dressing out of a backpack.

JN: Well, you have to trust your instincts. We’ve been around long enough to see some trends come and go, so you know what works for you. You can’t pull off trying to dress too young, especially when you’re having to shave your head as we are.

MW: I do sometimes worry that I dress too young. Because I’m from Altrincham, you either have to go for the Land-Rovers-and-green-wellies county look, or a more urban, Manchester style, which I do like.

DK: Urban? He normally wears sandals with white socks…

MW: Have you tried it? It’s very comfortable. But look at John’s shoes, they’re far too pointy – where do your toes go?

John Askew: I really like them! I think you know, deep down, if you’re wearing something that you’re not totally confident in.

AB: I won’t spend money on designer casual clothes any more, though. I’ll buy jeans and T-shirts I like the look of, not because I’m seduced by the label.

DK: What about that awful yellow and brown Armani shirt you were going to wear on that first date with your missus? I made him not wear it. When I showed it to her, she said she wouldn’t have married him if he’d worn it.

MW: The reason we don’t go for labels now is because we have mortgages, wives, cars, children, insurance, holidays… You can’t spend £150 on one shirt. But sometimes you’ll still spend so much money on something that you have to keep quiet about it, and sneak it through the back door when your wife’s asleep. I’ve found a good independent shop for tall blokes that’ll order everything in for me...

DK: Asda’s great, isn’t it?

MW: You like Harvey Nicks, don’t you Dave?

DK: Well, they’ve got everything you need under one roof.

MW: Yeah. For a girl.

Still banging on about Jaeger

It was Hilary Alexander who first persuaded me to go and take a look, 18 months ago, and now half my wardrobe is full of the stuff (in the group portrait in the V&A Library, I'm wearing their snake skin print fringed top)

Jaeger has established itself as one of Mrs Brown's favourite brands, and in wearing it she has placed herself in fashion-savvy company. Alexa Chung, Fearne Cotton and Erin O'Connor all have pieces from Jaeger London's current collection.There is a delicious irony in the fact that this once-moribund brand can simultaneously transmit to the fashion antennae of a rock star's teenage daughters, the Prime Minister's wife and a septuagenarian diva. It is proof that when a brand gets it right, it can bestride the generation gap as if it were a supermodel in spike-heeled, seven-league boots.

There was a waiting list for the long-hair shearling coat, which anticipates next spring's passion for fringing, and which Meg Mathews has bagged, as well as for the gilt-buttoned coat-dress snapped up by Lisa Snowdon.

At the Jaeger London catwalk show earlier that week, Shirley Bassey sat front row in a black lace dress by the label. Perched a few seats down were Lizzie Jagger and her sister, Georgia May - both perfect contenders for its clubby, stretch snake-print leggings.

It has done this by pinpointing different attitudes to dressing and creating attuned collections. Jaeger London is the fashion-forward collection. Jaeger Black has semi-couture hand-finished pieces, with quality trims such as mother-of-pearl buttons. Jaeger Collection falls between the two, with contemporary looks that update the brand's classic DNA.

Large woman + Puccini

Hilary Alexander at the Telegraph has a piece and video about Marina Rinaldi, the larger size label of MaxMara. They have a shop on Bond Street and go from UK size 12 - 26, but as this shoot demonstrates, and as I have noted whenever I have tried anything on, they tend to design for the tall and voluptuous rather than the narrow shouldered, and big-hipped.

Where are the photos?

Where indeed? No press photographers were allowed at the ceremony at the Guildhall, that's why you had the frankly terrifying photo call that lunchtime, with 50 snappers shouting at you, 'over 'ere, no, 'ere.'

Responsibility for recording the event fell then to my nephew who had been given his girlfriend's camera. Unfortunately she had forgotten to charge the battery.

Champagne reception from 7 pm. Best dressed woman beyond a doubt was the wife of fellow shortlisted author Steve Toltz who looked as though she should be pacing the catwalk in Sydney. Slightly, to say the least, younger, taller and thinner than me, she looked sensational. What a dress! Long-sleeved, bias cut, and an Oz designer too, she told me. But best dressed person was Hardip Singh Koli, the Glaswegian Sikh Booker judge who wore a pink turban with a kilt.

The food was fantastic, though I couldn't eat much, and the table two along was the one I really wanted to be at, former winners and shortlisted authors, who hasd all the fun and none of the tension. Congratulations to Aravind Adiga who did won. I have read his novel The White Tiger, and I can strongly recommend it as a shocking portrait of contemporary India done with both wit and rage.

Then we all scrambled into cars and hit the Groucho Club for the after parties.

Some thank yous: to Avsh Alom Gur at Ossie Clark for the dress, Mary Greenwell for the make-up, Anya Hindmarch (personally, for the emails of support,) and her staff for the evening bag, Susie Boyt for the diamond bracelet (!) George Szirtes and Clarissa Upchurch for the flowers and Yan and Rosita also for the flowers.

And to my fellow shortlisted authors, particularly Sebastian Barry who knows it was a close thing.

And to my readers here for cheering me on.