Former Stamp Collector Jason Cowley on Why Being Cool Leaves Him Cold

Ben Elton, writing in the latest edition of the Radio Times has launched a polemical attack on the concept of Cool Britannia and coolness in general. Complaining that the country is collapsing under an avalanche of designer labels, he argues that the celebration of cool is a deeply destructive force, bringing only misery and despair. “The present Government should be very careful: style is no substitute for substance...What, I should like to know, is so great about being cool anyway? All the trouble that is caused in the world is caused by people trying to look cool. Uncool people never hurt anybody – all they do is collect stamps, read science fiction books and stand on the end of railway platforms staring at trains.”

Well, as a former stamp collector, Elton’s critique, I must say, carries a satirical ring of truth. For how tired some of us have grown of the style bullies, of the cult of cool which dictates how we must look and dress, where we shop and eat and with whom we mix and speak. And how tedious it must be to be a slave to passing fashion, to be the kind of person who walks down the street in eight-inch heels; or snorts cocaine; or pierces his or her body; or uses a street-smart, wised-up vernacular, peppered with such words as “cool” and “wicked” – because this is how the characters in Pulp Fiction speak, or something like that. And how peculiar it is to go through life sneering at the so-called uncool, the ordinary majority who live quietly, dress modestly and have no idea – or care – what’s in or out, who’s hip or not; who never waste time worrying about whether they should be drinking mocha or double espresso, listening to the Verve or Finley Quaye, or wearing Helmut Lang or Martin Margiela.

I spent most of my late teens in pursuit of the grail of coolness. Why did I do this? Because I was appalled at how “uncool” I was as an adolescent. Following Elton’s model, I collected stamps (how proud I was of my Penny Black!), played and collected marbles, was an altar server in my local church, enjoyed watching county cricket, let my mother cut my hair, worked at Woolworth’s on Sunday afternoons and did a regular paper round, for which I borrowed my mother’s bicycle (the basket was particularly handy on Sunday). At school I was mocked for not smoking and for preferring to spend my lunchtime playing sport, rather than looking for trouble. And no one understood why I read Herbert Wells.

Turning 18, I’d had enough. So I revolted against the small conventions of my early years, this resolute uncoolness. But nothing ever quite worked out. I bleached my hair, but merely ended up scalding my scalp (crimping my hair was worse: my fringe fell out). Trying my first (and last, as it turned out) cigarette, I was violently sick.

As for piercing my ears, I spent months arguing with my parents over the matter; yet when I gathered the courage to have both ears pierced, against the wishes, I discovered the local piercing booth had closed (we lived in a village).

I reached my nadir when, arriving at a party dressed, as I thought, as a dashing New Romantic, with frilly blouse and eye liner, a former girlfriend laughed out, telling me that I resembled nothing so much as Jane Fonda. In short: wishing to be cool, I ended uncool.

So by the time I arrived at university, I’d exhausted my search and was ready to work hard. This, I soon discovered, was not cool; in fact, quite opposite: my preference for books over soft drugs led to accusations of eccentricity.

It is amazing how much of our contemporary culture – from the icon of popular culture to politicians – is defined by restless quest for novelty, for cool. Just look at how John Major, for all his faults of leadership, was ridiculed for the blandness of his image, for looking like, well, what he was: a serious politician uninterested in the spurious modernity of Cool Britannia.

So when William Hague puts on a baseball cap, or turns up at the Notting Hill Carnival wearing chinos and a light denim shirt, buttons stylishly undone; or when the likes of Ulrika Jonsson, Zoe Ball and Denise Van Outen pose flirtatiously in lad’s magazines, their behaviour has a common motivation: look at me, they cry, we know where it’s at.

If so, why do these girls, these stars of the ephemeral microphone, appear to share the same image, the same bleached hair and glazed metropolitan swagger, the same commitment to hard sunlight and designer labels?

But authentic cool is not like that at all. True originals, such as, say, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Samuel Beckett or Jodie Foster lead, not follow; they are always one step ahead of the game. They have a stable sense of self that transcends the merely fashionable; they have the strength to stand alone. As for me, I no longer think that life is elsewhere. I’m happy to let my hair lap my collar, even if I am occasionally confused with one of the guys in Abba; live on the Hertfordshire/Essex border, drive an old VW Golf, wear cords, spend time with Mum and play cricket at the weekends. Coolness can take care of itself.

Judith Martin

/ The Times, Dec, 1998/

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