Two Chaps Talking

Old Chap,

It is easy for a fellow in search of a quick laugh to have a pop at the honest Scot but I, for one, will have none of it. Music hall comedians may caricature them as careful with a groat: I have found them uniformly generous beyond the call. People call them dour: I find them warm and charming. Some would even suggest that they over indulge in alcohol: I naturally find that their most endearing feature.

They seem to have been responsible for most of the advances in exploration, science, philosophy and religion that the English claim as their own and are no slouches in the arts either. Perhaps here I should admit to a slight bias in that, though my own parentage is a kind of mongrel, didekoi Welsh, my beloved is from Edinburgh. Laying this aside though, they are clearly God’s own people and just the chaps to go to if you require a colony governing, a book written or a sticky, coal-derivative road surfacing material invented.

Not though, one would think, quite the ticket when it comes to tailoring. When a chap thinks of suitings he drifts naturally to (in order) Savile Row, the East End, Milan, Singapore and perhaps Brooks Bros. Auchtermuchtie occupies a place in the list of tailoring centres of excellence slightly behind Wolverhampton and just ahead of Kiev.

A chap might think this: a chap would be wrong. Allow me to expand.

In recent weeks I’ve been asked to don the Old Soup and Fish several times as the party season has developed. I could, of course, never tire of my classic rig, but I’ve recently been gripped with an uncharacteristic urge to liven things up a little. I sense your sharp intake of breath but, I assure you' I haven’t gone native. Hear me out. I was on Jermyn St. last week and became besotted with a plum coloured velvet smoking jacket. I had my hand on the credit card and was about to ravage my capital to the tune of six hundred quid when better counsels prevailed. I retired, stunned to Quags for a steadying brandy Alexander and to rethink my clothing strategy.

I felt I needed something formal yet slightly more racy - being of larger frame and lacking hair, it is difficult to wear full fig, even of the most refined cut, without being taken for a doorman. Suddenly, inspiration struck. Was it not you, in these very pages, that spoke in such fond terms of his Black Watch tartan trousers. The perfect solution. Pausing only to admonish the barman for use of heat-treated cream, I rushed to Gieves and entered the hushed hall of the military outfitters dept.

A bald man with a reprehensible accent approached me and I apprised him of my needs, stretching the truth only to the necessary extent of implying that I was an officer in a Highland regiment. He asked me if I required trousers or trews. I asked him to elaborate and he explained that trews are built without an outseam the better to cut a dash in the mess or on the parade ground.

When I tentatively probed the question of price he airily quoted me £800 for full bespoke and £400 for a ‘Factory Made Trouser’.

I made a strategic withdrawal.

It was my Father-in-Law Apparent, a man whom Billy Connolly would probably have to refer to as ‘That Scottish Sounding Bloke’ who suggested I’d be better off with a Scottish tailor. Trying hard to suppress a sneer I addressed myself to the web, thinking that, if I located one, it would be worth a flight up to whatever midge-plagued Celtic hole made the best offer, if only for a bit of authenticity and an agreeable evening of liver damage with single malts.

How right he was. There are dozens of tailors offering a full made-to-measure service and, though I searched for an entire day, I couldn’t find one who’d charge me more than £135 per pair. These are made to my own specifications, mark you. In my choice from about a million tartans, specifying, waist finish, cuff width, fabric weight , number of pockets and favourite braces fastening. No less than 20 separate choices and specifications to tolerances of half an inch.

One site even had the decency to point out ‘We do not recommend military trews to gentlemen measuring more than 40” in the seat’. By my calculations, a 40” seat equates to a 34” waist and I’m no more likely to see that again than I am to achieve a commission in a fashionable regiment. I somehow imagine that nugget of advice being dispensed in a discreet lilt by an elderly gentleman with luxuriant eyebrows and a tape around his neck. The overweight, balding pederast at Gieves would cheerfully have sent me into the Row, looking like 9lbs of shit in an 8lb sack and £800 the poorer. I’m incensed.

I now await delivery of a pair of trousers with button fly, fishtail, braces buttons, half-lining, right side pocket, left hip pocket, 18” bottoms, slight drop to the heel, no turnup in a heavyweight Black Watch Regimental tartan for £128 including postage and packing. They may take up to six weeks to arrive but when they do, I hope they are stoutly built across the seat because I propose to wear them directly to Gieves where I shall invite selected members of their staff to kiss my arse.

God, I wonder what they could do with a decent tweed.

Hoots Mon etc.

T