Josh Sims

A colleague of mine has a sizeable collection of sportscars. He has, he notes, every expression of his favourite, the Lotus Esprit. He lovingly cleans them, occasionally changes up the way they’re displayed. What he might then jokingly add is just how easy this is. The biggest of his cars is just a few inches long. They’re models, of the kind that small children might push over the carpet making ‘brrm, brrm’ noises, once they’ve passed out of what the toymakers call the ‘bash and crash’ phase, when motorway carnage is the name of the game.   What might appear strange to an older generation - overlooking their own love of train sets - is that this mid-life interest in toys is not unusual.

How appropriate that the late David Hockney favoured that ash blonde hair colour, given that the chain-smoker was said to get through 100 cigarettes a day? And not just any old fags: the long, slender and upmarket Davidoff Magnum Classic, of which he was said to keep a store of 2,000 at home for emergencies. Hockney said they helped him concentrate. But this everyday accessory was also a yellowed two-fingers to anyone who wanted to close down what he saw as his right to live as he chose. More than that – and let’s hope no school kids are reading – they imbued him with an old Hollywood, rebel cool, especially in more anti-tab times. ‘You can’t have a smoke-free Bohemia,’ as he once noted.

Show me the money. Show it to me in the dedicated pages of national newspapers, in documentaries and TV series and on social media, where influencers make their money by showing me the money. Let me revel in all the clichés we’re offered – the poorer man’s idea of wealth, defined by supercars and mega-yachts, houses pent and country, dinky handbags and preposterous watches, fat cigars, deep tans, Tic Tac teeth and honed abs, for even the body is performative of money these days. Tom Wolfe would be slack-jawed.  Forty years ago he coined the sadly forgotten term ‘plutography’, to capture the then prevailing trend for the publishing business to offer readers a monthly dose of full-colour insight into how the other half lived.

Train travel is so expensive these days, but £25,000? For that you get a couple of nights stay on board, with double bed, bathroom, sitting room, views down the track as it recedes into the distance and a rear balcony should you come over all Harry S. Truman.   This is the master bedroom on The Chairman’s Train, puffing into action in July as the UK’s first fully private heritage train for hire. And yes, for £45,000 - a day - you and your 15 guests can have the whole thing, its dining carriage and many comfy rooms pulled by the locomotive of your choice, electric, diesel or steam.

‘Oi mister! Will you buy us summit in the shop? I got the money.’ ‘Here we go,’ I think, ‘another grotty 15-year-old making the usual request for a bottle of Dmitri Vodka or 20 Benson & Hedges. Reluctantly, remembering my rebellious teens, I agree. Surprisingly, he hands over £80. ‘Can you get me a Montecristo Linea 1935 Leyenda cigar?’ he asks. ‘Or, if they ain’t got that, a Davidoff Escurio Gran Toro. You can keep the change, mister.’ This event, of course, has never actually happened. But it seems to be within the government’s fervid imagination that it has. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which cleared the House of Commons last year and passed in the House of Lords this month, will make it illegal for anyone born after 1 January 2009 to buy tobacco products.