William Smith, newly installed as Head Cutter at Douglas Hayward, incredibly finds the time to pen an instructive tract on overcoats. As the nights draw in and the weather turns, the annual ritual of retrieving heavy, woollen overcoats from their summer hideaways begins. The heady scent of mothballs brings a feeling of impending frosty days,… … Keep Reading
Nathanial Adams: On 13th October 1898, the fourth Marquess of Anglesey died at the family seat of Plas Newydd, an estate won by the First Marquess for the price of one leg at Waterloo (his bloody trousers are still on exhibit there.) His heir, Henry Cyril Paget, was now the Fifth Marquess, newly-minted master of… … Keep Reading
A Pakistani man is determined to maintain his impressive lip weasel despite death threats from the Taliban. Malik Amir Mohammad Khan Afridi, a resident of the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on the Afghan border, is currently in hiding with his moustache. Mr. Afridi’s face furniture originally measured 30 inches from tip to tip, easily making it… … Keep Reading
Nathaniel Adams: Our message,” says Peter McGough, “is about history and time and the trap of the calendar.” Since the 1970s, McGough and his partner David McDermott have been living in the past. Under the name McDermott and McGough, they have been making art – painting, performance, film, photography – about time. In those early… … Keep Reading
Steve Pittard: Charters and Caldicott, two cricket obsessed English gents, stole the show in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. Cinema audiences chortled at the whimsical badinage between the bluff heavy-set Basil Radford (Charters) and dapper mild-mannered Naunton Wayne (Caldicott ). Their marvellous rapport owed to inspired casting, as the chaps had only met once before, appropriately… … Keep Reading
Neapolitan Nights – Patricia Hammond and Matt Redman 2013 Patricia Hammond, the silky-voiced singer often described as the Canadian Nightingale, familiar to readers of The Chap as the singer with headline act Albert Ball’s Flying Aces at the Grand Anarcho-Dandyist Ball last December, has recorded an exclusive track for The Chap, to coincide with her… … Keep Reading
A team of scientists working on Mount Everest has broken the world record for the highest altitude reading of The Chap. Dr. Martin, Dr. Hennis, Dr. Smedley, Dr. Vercueil, Dr. Couppis, Mr. Horscroft and Captain Carroll sent us this photograph of a reading of The Chap at South Base Camp in Nepal, at an altitude… … Keep Reading
The long-anticipated announcement of the date of this year’s Chap Olympiad – which can now return to its original title of The Chap Olympics without risk of being hauled before the now non-existent British Olympic Committee – has come: Saturday 13th July in Bedford Square Gardens, London. This year’s incarnation of this stunning attempt by… … Keep Reading
Hot on the heels of the Jimmy Saville scandal, writes Steve Pittard, the BBC has committed another dreadful faux pax, by axing Charters and Caldicott from their new production of The Lady Vanishes. In the original 1938 Hitchcock film, elderly rail traveller Miss Froy disappears, but the biggest mystery in this new production, due to… … Keep Reading
England’s best-loved and most eccentric astronomer, Sir Patrick Moore, has died aged 89 at his home in Sussex. Much loved for his enthusiastic delivery and extra curricular activities, which included playing the xylophone, writing children’s stories and composing operas, Sir Patrick was involved with BBC television’s The Sky at Night for over 55 years, and… … Keep Reading
Photographs of some of the guests at the Chap’s Fourth Grand Anarcho-Dandyist Ball on 1st December 2012. Photography by Russ Bell. … Keep Reading
The U.S. Presidential election became a two-horse race, and eventually it was the two candidates’ approach to wearing white tie that swung the contest in Barack Obama’s favour. He and Mitt Romney were speeding neck and neck towards the finishing line, when one small but essential detail helped voters decide whom they wanted in the… … Keep Reading