The Chap marks 25 years of publication with a special commemorative issue.
This year – 2024 – will be the 25th year of publication for our humble organ. To mark this momentous occasion, we are publishing a special silver jubilee edition. Gracing the front cover is uber-Chap, suave gadabout and all-round-good egg David Niven, who has been an inspiration to this publication since its inception in 1999. Other so-called Silver Foxes whose lives are unpeeled include Cary Grant, Stewart Granger and Patrick Macnee.
And so to the Silver Vixens. Who are or were the ladies of the silver screen who managed to hold on to their greying locks without compromising their talents? Our in-depth investigation includes the careers of Anne Bancroft, Barbara Stanwyck and Jane Fonda. We also meet a real-life lady of the screen who may not appreciate being called a Silver Vixen – Lindsay Duncan – who shares her views on ageing actors and playing an ex-policewoman in Channel 4’s excellent True Love series.
The last 25 years of anarcho-dandyism are the subject of Torquil Arbuthnot’s potted history of The Chap, from its days as the manifesto for tweedy revolutionaries demanding lapsang souchong in MacDonalds, to making such a formidable impression on the International Olympic Committee that we were invited to stage a mini-Chap Olympiad at the Olympic Park in London. Torquil also identifies a career high as a copy of The Chap appearing on the dashboard of a Daimler belonging to a roguish character (the villain, obviously) in Midsomer Murders.
DCI Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) was one British gumshoe who may have outstayed his welcome on the streets of Midsomer, and we look at other television detectives who refused to retire, starting with Clive Owen as Dashiel Hammett’s Sam Spade in Monsieur Spade, as well as Philip Marlowe, Jim Rockford and Lieutenant Columbo. At the other end of the criminal world, we assess a new production of The Talented Mr Ripley with Andrew Scott, and compare it to previous film and television iterations of Patricia Highsmith’s sophisticated anti-hero Tom Ripley, as played by Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper and Matt Damon.
Alexander Larman is better known as the chronicler of the British royal family throughout the early 20th century, but in this issue he turns his considerable insights on to the last decade of David Bowie, looking at how the creative output of the last musical era of his life still produced some gems. Bowie once had a dress made by eccentric sixties tailor Mr Fish, for the cover of The Man Who Sold the World. Michael Fish also made shirts for Michael Caine, gowns for Mick Jagger and even a dressing gown for Muhammad Ali, for his entrance into the ring for the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire against George Foreman.
Can a building be interviewed? In a sense, that’s precisely what happened when we met the filmmakers of a documentary about the Scala Cinema in King’s Cross, a notorious semi-fleapit where countless future artists gained their cinematic and cultural education during the 1980s, including Barry Adamson (above), John Waters, Ben Wheatley and Boy George. Fewer fleas were found by Society of Salome when they paid a visit to the newly restored Leighton House in London, where they were photographed in their Victorian and Edwardian finery by Guy Corbishley.
