Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous | Inside Tatler E1 | Our Stories

The British upper classes at play. I got the people, I got the flirt, I got the giggle, I got the laugh. Since 1709, Tatler magazine has been sending dispatches from the front line of privilege. He came from Paris, from the Pousse market. Have you seen my polar bear? He's called Bipolar. Every issue features the country homes of Britain's elite. It is rather lovely. It is the only one in the world. Wonderful people come and clean it. The world's most expensive fashion and jewellery. Shall we look at upgrading our engagement rings? The all-important social scene. Everyone who's anyone is there. Useful people having a good time. And of course, horse racing. I'm in desperate need of a large drink now. With a lineage longer than some of the families it reports on, Tatler doesn't just observe the upper classes. I know him. I actually know him. It helps to preserve the rules they live by. Under no circumstances should there be any suggestion of saliva. And provides a knowing guide for those aspiring to join. If you're new in London, you might have a Labrador. If you're old country, you probably have a black Labrador. That's like 500 years old and farts, but you love it more than your children. We spent six months behind the scenes to find out what it takes to be posh in the 21st century. The wrong choice of a tweed. The wrong blue on a Tuesday afternoon. That is something terrible. That is epically terrible. OK, so April, we start with front of book up there. All the trend and fashion pages, jewellery, it list. And then we get into the front of book here. So we've got 100 most invited. Just looking, looking, looking. The pictures are good. This is the 36th issue of Tatler under editor Kate Reardon. It's a magazine with a small but loyal readership of 160,000. Kate must get final approval from the magazine's managing director, Nicholas Coleridge, just before it goes to print. Up there, you've got about how the Whippet has overtaken the Pargas, the chic dog du jour. Then what? Then we go into communes. So all these amazing stately homes with all the cottages on the grounds have been rented out to all friends and mates and... Like Blenheim, I mean that... Exactly, that gang. Then we've got Who's the Boss? It's a profile by Quentin Letts on Samantha Cameron. So lots of really good insidery stuff there that you won't read anywhere else. Rather nice, that Cameron picture, I think, don't you? It's really charming. The first time I met her, I was tongue-tied. Really? I was. I think that looks good because looking for the balance of words versus pictures, I think that looks cool. It's a very nice issue. It's a new week and work on the next issue begins. Kate finally got her dream job three years ago. It's a world she knows very well. Tatler has loomed freakishly largely in my life. As a teenager stuck at an all-girls boarding school, I used to devour it. Then when I was 21 and then was made fashion editor, that was a really, really big deal for me. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I just, you know, made it up as I went along. I understand the Tatler world quite well. I had a very good education. I went to Cheltenham Ladies College and then Stowe. Morning. I'm a Hulking Great Sloan and we photograph a lot of Sloans. We in the UK watch way above the global average of porn. What is Tatler porn? Is it Labradors gambling? The Queen Mum waving? A band of the Grenadier Guards marching? Every other Tuesday begins with a meeting with the features team, a select group of journalists who are experts in the world of privilege. Pet of the month. I have written to Prince Charles about his alpacas, so fingers crossed. Although Matthew has also written to him about his cow, so we're kind of competing at the moment. It's where Kate decides what stories are stirring the upper classes. Tatler relies on stuff that's going on in the newspapers and in the general press a little bit less than other magazines. A lot of what we come up with is more of a kind of general zeitgeist thing. We'll also be coming back filled with stories and ideas of things that have happened up in the countryside, out at parties, at social events and stuff like that. Someone in a country pub this weekend pointed out to me that half the men were wearing stained green V-neck sweaters, which he claimed was typical proper gent's country attire. I'm married to that. What's the equivalent for women? Perhaps a photo of a model with arrows pointing to each significant piece of clothing. That kind of appropriate country wear, like, you should be wearing this. Yeah, that's very funny. The people that we hire tend to have an understanding of this world, but it doesn't mean they have to grow up in it. It didn't mean that they had to grow up going to pony club camp or, you know, their dad has to be an earl or something. I'm quite interested in Swiss finishing schools and there's basically only one left and it's now taking men. Oh, it's a lot to go. And I quite like to go and sort of... Be finished. And be finished off. Matthew Bell is Kate's newest appointment. He joined just two weeks ago, leaving behind a staff job as a society diarist at a national newspaper. I'm still gauging what Kate wants because I'm new. And each editor has their own idea of what they want. So, you know, I pitch ideas and she'll say no or yes. Let's just remind me of a feature that Mary Cullen suggested, which is how the middle class has ruined everything. The middle class is becoming rich, has sort of destroyed taste in Britain, but they have ruined public schools because now children are so pampered, they go home every weekend. So her whole thesis is... I mean, it would be a very funny talking point. Yeah. And a great couple of lines. Are you posh? No, technically not. I'm half foreign and half sort of intelligentsia. My father's a doctor and my mother's a teacher. So anyway, you can get a more sort of middle class background. I just think people are the most interesting thing in the world. And I suppose the top 10% of anything is probably the most interesting. Most of Kate's team were privately educated and are well versed in the intricacies of upper class life. But she can never be too sure. One of the incredibly controlling things I do as editor of Chatelot is that when somebody arrives, we give them their very own copy of de Bret's new guide to etiquette and modern manners. And most of them think that I'm taking the mickey. And obviously I thought it was a joke. But no, it was quite serious. And I was just, I was thrilled to think this is, I'm going to be working for a magazine that, you know, that expects that of its staff. I mean, most of it I think I knew, but I didn't know that the smart way to eat a pear was with a spoon. True aficionados eat caviar from the small pad of flesh between the thumb and forefinger on the outside of their left hands. Where's that small pad of flesh? Is it there? A social kissing. Under no circumstances should there be any suggestion of saliva. And unless you know someone reasonably well, one kiss is usually enough. Lady Truebridge once declared that making personal compliments in conversation was in bad taste. Okay, so that's why we find it embarrassing, apparently. But this is no longer the case. However, any compliments should be delicately given. Any attempts to be overly gushy can appear sycophantic and embarrassing to the recipient and creepy to others. I think my favourite rule is that a gentleman is never rude unintentionally. The funny thing about the upper classes is that actually often they're completely hopeless at dealing with things. You know, they're famously not in touch with their emotions and famously brisk and rude and, you know, the hunting field and racing circuits are populated by people who communicate by barking at each other. And the whole point about etiquette is it's designed not to trip you up, but quite the opposite. It's designed to oil the wheels of life. Since its earliest days, Tatler has been a judge of good and bad behaviour, reporting on all the intrigue and gossip of the British upper class social scene. Tatler is to parties what horse and hound is to horses or the field is to shooting. Today, the bystander party pages remain the place to be seen, another most renowned feature of the magazine. Is he actually dropping a lighted match into that man's mouth? Yes. I don't know. Every month, it is Kate who decides who is worthy of making it into the esteemed seven-page spread. Because the thing is, I don't know these people, but I am fascinated by these pictures. I wonder how she got into that position for a start, let alone the trousers. It doesn't have to be, you know, white tie and costing 12 million pounds and I don't need to be juggling uniforms between courses. No, we're just looking for a good mix of names and attitude. The bystander pages are the first pages that everyone goes to. So it's a bit like reading the newspaper, that men always go to the sports pages. But with Tatler, everyone goes to those back pages, scans the pages, who's in. It has become a very good social document, literally down to the shoes people are wearing, the cocktails they're serving, you know, what the trends in fancy dress are. It's a really up-close look, really from inside at what's going on within this particular group of people in this country. When Tina Brown ran that on the front page of Bystander, two boys having their first cigar, the Debs party. This is an event that no longer happens, the Barclay Dress Show, and these were Debs who were about to go and model. Someone had just been pushed in the pond, just before this girl, and I went up and took a few pictures of the tail end of that. And then this boy here, Charles MacDonald, he suddenly rushed up and pushed her in. I hate smiling pictures. It was a world that hadn't been photographed very much. I was told by Jane, the editor, that employed me first time. She had a brilliant rule of thumb, which was, OK, so you're at a party and you're going to come back to me and you're going to have a picture of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and you're going to have a picture of Gerry Hall and Mick Jagger. Really nice, happy with that. But the picture I want is the Duke of Marlborough with Gerry Hall. And it took me 15 years. What, to get that actual shot? To get that actual shot, yeah. If you appear in Bystander, the amount of people that will come up to you and say, saw you in the magazine. And often you look at them and you think, what are you doing reading Tatler? You know, Colonel in the Army. And of course I didn't buy it myself. Dentist's waiting room. Bystander's busiest time is the society's summer season. For 300 years, this has been the time the British aristocracy descend from their country mansions, flocking to cultural events, parties and sporting meets near the capital. Today, the magazine is covering one of the highlights of the season, the Queen's Cup polo match. This is a high-stress day. You've got celebrities, you've got royalty, you've got Will Carling here, Boris Becker. Any name on these tables will make a good photographer. Hi there, can I grab a picture of you two this way? With a sort of, are you happy with the umbrella? Yeah, we love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fantastic, fantastic. I like the matching, it's working very well. Well done, hands on bottoms. Get that close. Yeah, that's it. It's not happening yet. It's not. Nice. Give it a bit of time. Yeah. You'll see. Is it percolating at the moment? Here's Ginny Cooper. Hi there, how are you? Can I steal a picture of you? Huddle in, huddle in. Fantastic, thank you. Have a nice day. You can walk towards me a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get the wind up the skirt, a bit Marilyn Monroe. What is it about this event as a polo event that makes it quite tattler-y? Well, it's very tattler because it's full of very, very good-looking people. It used to be full of Argentinians being naughty, but it's also very glamorous. It's also been very royal traditionally. I mean, the princes and the kings have always played polo, and so therefore it matches up as a social event, I think. You're very much an insider. Well, no, I'm middle class, and so what I mean is I'm equidistant from lower and upper, and so I read a book called Class, and I studied it for about two years completely, nothing but the English class system, because you have to understand class in England because it indicates how people behave in an extraordinary sort of way. What are the upper classes like now? I think they've rather got a lot of black eyes. There's a lot of posh bashing going on. I mean, poor David Cameron can't cross a road with somebody saying, you know, silly old Antonio, really, which is a bit bad luck for him. Hello. Morning. How are you guys? Would you like to take your picture? Sure. I quite like you walking forward. That's quite nice. Just keep walking, and do that with the eyes again. I think people do love looking at, you know, beautiful people in beautiful clothes having a great time. It is a bit exclusive, but don't we all want to be a part of something that's exclusive? I do enjoy it. I get a buzz out of it. Okay, that was a workout and a half. Well, I get a buzz when the pictures go right. Champagne? We've got our Hollywood A-lister. We've got our journalist. We've got our celebrity writer. Take off your glasses so I can see who you are. And you had to huddle in. You know me. I'll make you huddle much more than you want to be huddled. Andy and Patty Wong. They throw fabulous parties. Just getting the puppies in there. I think I don't take it so seriously. Obviously, I'm taking the job seriously, but I don't take it so seriously, so there's a sort of sense of fun. Tatler is so familiar with the etiquette of the occasion that its photographer is the only one allowed inside the royal enclosure with the Queen. You're told you're not meant to point a camera straight into the royal box. This is her garden. This is Windsor Great Park. You know, we're her guests. With all members of the royal family, you don't interrupt them and stop them for a photograph. You photograph things as they happen. Dream picture is just her looking as happy as she always does. She loves horses, loves polo. The pony of the match is a moment that she really likes to see. Okay. Okay, everyone this way. Eyes here, eyes here. Got it. We got it. That's all that matters. Isn't that great? Isn't that what we want? How happy does she look? Matthew is now at the end of his first month on the job. How are you settling in at the moment? How's it all going? I really love it. It's a very civilised place to work. They expect high quality journalism. They want good writing and they want access. You know, Kate's big thing is she likes access to people and that is in a way the point of the magazine is that we are showing the readers this world. So it's no use us being sort of at the window pressing our nose against it. We've got to be inside it. Matthew needs to prove that he can move from middle class outsider to privileged insider. Kate's deputy, Gabandra, has set a suitable challenge for his next feature. This is something that Soph and I discussed, the champagne trick, which was my dad's old trick actually. And we were reading, was it Nigel Dempster used to do it? Nigel Dempster used to do it. Oh yes. To get into parties. You just always have a champagne glass and then you just whip it out and walk into a party and they believe that you were already invited. We thought we could send Matthew around London with a champagne glass. To see how many parties he can get into. We will make you the ultimate gatecrasher in your story. Can you bear it? Of course. One of the gatecrash rules is wedding party. Really? Yeah, it won't go badly, that's a thing. Well, just not a police saying, what are you doing? There is a kind of something embarrassing about gatecrashing a party. It's quite humiliating being turned away or found out or just not being in the cool gang. It's all, it's terrifying. It's an eccentric walk of nerves jangling and egos fraying. I mean, it's ghastly. I don't know why I'm doing it. I'm so completely lost. Matthew has set his sights high. Dress, investitures, royal garden parties. He's attempting to gatecrash one of the Queen's garden parties at Buckingham Palace. The full clock of the Queen, accompanied by other members of the royal family, step down from the palace into the garden, which in summer is a glorious Arcadian scene, complete with a lake, flamingos and white marquees. I think the Queen will mind. I don't want to annoy her. I'm doing it for the readers. Have you gatecrashed? Yes, I used to gatecrash parties at the Hurlingham Club by walking along the bank of the Thames, you know, and climb up the wall. This route is now blocked and I used to think I was so clever. If you Google Queen's garden party invitations, you know, these images pop up of what they look like. So I've asked our genius art director if you could just knock one up. Okay, so now I'm going to take it to Alice and have her write my name on it. Hi, Alice. Oh, you've come to see me? I've come to see you. But unfortunately, Matthew's elaborate plans have added up to little more than a social faux pas. An employee of this magazine could never gatecrash a royal occasion. It's got to be something amazing for us to care, but the Queen was just too far. The Queen was going too far. It was just also anything that's, like, actually illegal, you know, like my job, I didn't want to be attacked. I'm sorry, I didn't think it was... Um, I don't know, are there any particularly amazing parties coming up? I mean, there's the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, they're quite strict on the door, but everyone pays. Yeah, if someone's at the Royal Academy, I think we could... Yeah, okay. Okay, cool. The opening of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in central London is a key event of the social season. All of the city's glitterati are invited, except Matthew, who is attempting to enter through the service entrance. I'm excited because I've never done this waiting room. I'm just going to walk in as if I've got a job to do and it's the most normal thing in the world. You know, the key to a successful gatecrashing is to be utterly confident. I'm just channelling waiter now. I'm thinking, waiter, waiter, waiter, waiter. I am a waiter, I'm late for a job, I've got to go and, you know, get ready. I got the tie and the apron, but I had to go and get the tie from a box in the staff room and there was a woman there with a clipboard who said, what's through you? And I said, oh, I'm a waiting room staff. She said, are you agency? And I said, yes. And she told me I've been late. She said, what time did you get here? And I said, six. She said, well, why are you so late? I was like, I'm really sorry. I just got held up. And so she wasn't impressed by me. And then she started looking on her list and she couldn't find any Matthews on the list. So she said, well, that's odd because I don't have him on my list. You know, are you sure you're working here tonight? I said, yeah, I definitely am. Anyway, so she said, I'm sorry, you know, because it's all on shift work. She said, I'm sorry, we don't need you. We've actually got enough waiters for tonight and I'm really sorry, you can't work for us tonight. I was like, oh, that's, you know, and so I was really upset because obviously I need the money as a waiter. Despite acquiring the correct uniform, Matthew was eventually rumbled and left the same way as he tried to get in, through the back door. Although much of the social scene is centred around London, the magazine never ignores its rural heartland. What I want is a good spread of stewards either side of this valley who's got a 4x4 here, two 4x4s. An 18th century visitor to this scene might believe that the world has been preserved in aspic for three centuries. Today, the magazine is in Leicestershire, covering the revival of a quintessentially English pursuit, side saddle racing. Side saddle almost went out of existence and it's enduring quite a revive. Basically, the race is kind of showing people can be as brave side saddle as they can astride and look pretty damn good at the same time. It's nothing compared to riding in a point-to-point run on a thoroughbred. It's nothing compared to riding at Goodwood over a short distance, but it's crazy and fun and eccentric. Grand and wonderful and ridiculous and it sort of keys back into an era where women weren't allowed to ride normally because it was unbecoming for women to have their legs apart. Obviously, thank God we no longer live in that world, but I think it just appeals to that English upper-class person who loves to really test themselves in the sporty field as well as referencing their ancestors and the way that their grandmother might have ridden. You hang on for grim death and hope for hopefully better. Yeah, it's a bit of elbow action and, you know. You said you'd be nice. There's a bit of competitive spirit. Come on. Let's go for it, girls. Bouncing! It's fun, actually. I've been doing it for about 12 years. The ladylike. Yes, but actually, when you look at the people doing it, I don't think they're that ladylike. Oh, fuck, get out! This is horrible! Ridge of furrows! You can actually tip over backwards off the saddle. They're pretty punchy, these girls, and they sort of, you know, they go at it quite hard. You're fine, sis! Come on! Come on, we can do this. I think these girls are all very fine horsewomen. They're enjoying the beauty and elegance of side-saddle and then doing it on steroids by racing. Oh, my goodness me, the feeling of that. Absolute legend. Never been around one of these courses in his life. Only ever with chasers. Do you want to have a group photo with the team? Yes, everybody! Everyone, team, come on! Yay! Absolutely petrifying, but really fun and thrilling at the same time. I don't know if I'll be doing it next year. I'm very, very in desperate need of a large drink now. Although there's been a revival of these aristocratic traditions, in reality, this world has faced a dramatic decline. In little more than 50 years, many of these grand families went from ruling the world to barely being able to afford their own staff. We're in Scotland. We're just leaving Glasgow behind us. Features editor, Sophia Manicou, daughter of the ninth Baron Latimer, grew up amongst these grand houses herself. She now spends much of her time visiting country estates for the magazine's home section. Everyone who has a big house is desperately trying to find ways to pay for that big house and all the taxes and everything that comes with it. Fully open, that's what we like. Be that letting out your castle, opening it up to punters, having filming there so high, clear and downtown, you know, total cash cow. Well, I'm just going to kind of drive up like... I own it, basically. Sophia has come to see the 10th Earl of Glasgow, Patrick Boyle, at his family seat, Kelburn Castle in Ayrshire. Lord Glasgow has found a novel way of enticing, paying visitors to his 13th century home. A rather distinctive piece of art. I mean, I was quite nervous of this idea, but the Brazilian artists thought it was a really wonderfully interesting idea to do a sort of Brazilian mural, really. Yeah, it is. It's a mural on a Scottish castle. We try to give as much publicity as possible. Yeah. Other people say, oh, well, oh, the castle... The graffiti? If you will. Yeah. What do the locals think? Well, I think most of the locals approve of it now. And there are also a few that don't. If you want a really interesting room, the most interesting room really is the drawing room, which is directly above here. Do you want to see it? I'm like in love with your house. Oh, really? It's amazing. It's quite a manageable-sized castle. If anybody can remind me the name of that, that's a certain type of crocodile, and I can't remember his name. Presumably not Scotland, I'm thinking. That is not Scottish. Wow. I rather love these castles not being perfect. I rather love the fact that the walls are kind of, you know, crumbly. It's all very World of Interiors and looks stunning. But this particular part of the castle, slightly more like a French chateau than it is like an English stately home. We got here in 1163, and we were very much... Leaving your family. We were very much a Norman family. One of my ancestors, the 5th Earl of Glasgow, well, he was active really from about 1840 until about 1870. And the aristocracy had incredible power in those days. And the terrible stories about him, once got irritated by a waiter, and he pushed the waiter through a plate glass window. And when they came up to him in very deferential ways and said, you know, what are we going to do about it? He said, just put him on the bill. It's very complicated, I think, this thing about class. And I think it varies in different parts of the country, whether it matters or not. But it's certainly now... I mean, in fact, I think if someone like me went about throwing my weight around, I don't think that would go down very well. I don't think it would be my best way of influencing people. What shall I call you? OK, look at me. Ready, steady. And that's it. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I'm quite good with these kind of people. Do I look grand and important and intelligent? I think you do. You don't even have to try. You were just born with it, babe. Born with it. I went to a boarding school. I went to a school, though, that was, you know, pretty much tattler people. Do you understand the world? Yeah, my father. My father went to Eton, you know. Go. Right, let's walk. By the way, a thing of great interest to everybody is this camellia hedge. Our gardener decided to make a camellia hedge. Have you had the same gardener forever? Yes, we have had the same gardener forever. And we're really worried because he's almost irreplaceable. I don't think we're ever going to find anybody else. Why is he getting old? Well, he's sort of the old school, he's all dedicated to the work and he's not paid a huge amount. He came here when he was about 21. He's now 68 or something. He lives on a cottage on this estate. God bless him. You know, we forget in society, isn't it, money and having so much money that makes you, you know, think you're special and different. I don't think these people have huge amounts of money. They have to work hard for their money now, you know. They aren't sitting around just reading wonderful books and playing piano all day, which is what they were doing 100 years ago. So it's changed completely for the British aristocracy in the past 50 years. We are totally, you know, very down-to-earth, grounded, lovely people. As the world it celebrates is changing, the magazine is being forced to change too. We are having Tatler Goes to Poundland. So we're going to go and see exactly what happens in this Poundland store, which is a little bit of a kind of hidden gem in a sort of Notting Hill set. Whether you're a lord who can't afford servants anymore or simply a frugal toff, Tatler tries to guide its readers through uncertain times. I'm quite excited. Right, shall I go this way or that way? Maybe let's start this way. Well, I think it's sort of like this is some dirty secret that you can go and get anything and everything for a pound. Oh my goodness, you can literally get everything. David Cameron was here last week. This is retro chocolate at its best. Okay, so we've got after eights. We've got to get some of those, haven't we? Oh my God. What's your budget for today? Have you got... £15. So let's see exactly what we get for £15. I think we should get some washing powder as well. For a pound, that's unheard of. If people knew exactly what was here, I think they would be absolutely stuffed to the rafters. Oh my goodness. Luxury shower cap. It's glamorous. I've got to get one of those. I love shower caps. They've got cocktail umbrellas. They've got a cocktail set. Four burgers. Hello. Wow. This place is completely brilliant. Oh no, I've gone so over. Okay, we're going to have to keep some stuff. With the things we like the most. £13. It's been an education. I got this for Gerry. Don't you think? It's almost time to lunch. That's actually a clutch bag. It's like the jazziest thing ever. That literally is. That's a clutch bag. The staff are charming, aren't they? Work in the shower head because I think... That was my favourite. That's quite extraordinary, isn't it? I got quite excited when I saw that. But the luxury shower cap doesn't really look that nice. It doesn't look very luxurious. Out of context. Perhaps now we're back here, it's not looking quite as flash. Those things all do. With the relationship between money and class constantly shifting, the magazine is aware that its readers no longer come from one small elite group. It's not a simple audience. You can't say it is an old money British audience because it's not. It's way more complicated with aspirational people wanting to read it. People who've, as the saying might go, have already arrived. People who are reading it slightly satirically because they know this stuff and are amused by it. In the 21st century, the magazine is shifting its focus and attempting to play the role of gatekeeper to the upper classes. It still celebrates the old guard but now helps to select new members and guide them in the ways of British poshness. We do these every now and then. It's a very spurious, incredibly tongue-in-cheek look at different camps, basically. Different type of camps. Either new town or new country or real deal, i.e. old town or old country. So things like red cords, old country, real deal country. Red gumboots, a bit new country. The unifying factor we decided was a Land Rover because you would find those kind of everywhere. What's new town? I would say new town, people relatively newly in London, a few Russians maybe. If you're new in London, you might have a Labradoodle. If you're old country, you probably have a Black Labrador that's like 500 years old and farts and is enormous and fat but you love it more than your children. So here we've got real deal town. So this is old town. So we've put in an amazing, wonderful publisher, George Weidenfeld. And here we've got Yellow Labrador. We thought that was maybe more London. We've got Chiltern Firehouse because that's the place that everyone's going to now. Cocaine because we thought that you might find. You know, that's an old, that's a proper old town drug. What have we got? I don't know if we had a drug in old country. No, just slow gin. Slow gin in the country is your tipple. And then down in this bit, we've got new country. So those would be people, maybe like some of these Russians, who are moving out to the country. So actually, we have got Leon Max, who I think is Russian. He kind of, we thought, represented new country, as does Sherry, a bit new country. And Brown Labrador here, we thought. In West London, a particular new town set has caught Tatler's eye. Hello, it's Tatler magazine. We're here to see Cola. Nigerian millionaires who've embraced England as their home. Travelling the world, I spend a lot of time travelling in the Far East. You find Tatler on the tables of most sophisticated and obeying people, showing what people can aspire to be or to see or to become or to want to, you know, emulate. Cola Karim owns oil, gas and construction businesses worth billions across Africa. Tatler deals with the wealthiest magazine readers in this country. And maybe in the 1950s, those people would have been exclusively British. At the moment, there are a lot of Nigerians here. And so we expose their worlds. And we also cater to them. Oh, sorry, sorry, I just walked into the bedroom. That's terribly rude. Sorry, sorry. We've always lived in West London. Kensington has always been home. My mother and brothers and sisters all live around the corner. High Street, Kensington is wonderful. Kings Road, wonderful. Harrods, just keep everything local. It's a big case of seeing what interiors he's got to make it look as sort of sleek as possible. Yeah, let's get Amelia. And yeah. Lagos is our main base and we keep homes in Miami, Marbella, South Africa. And in France. I love him in that couch. It's going to be great. Yeah, yeah. Are you sure we don't want just a white shirt? I'm worried about that. Well, it's up to you if you want to style it. But I like what he's wearing. I think it's genius. My weakness is I work hard and play hard. I keep my cars in different ports. In Lagos, yes, I've got more Mercedes. And how many cars have you got today? No, I don't. We just want to make them not look actually gaudy or bling or obscenely rich. We want them to look like the nice people that they are. What's amazing is the perception of colour and success, so to speak. And I'm driving up the road in London and a lady came up to me and said, who do you play for? I said, play what? I said, football. I don't play football. She said, oh, so what do you do then? I said, I'm in international business. She was stunned to see it, but I get it all the time. So what we thought, he's got his polo gear and we're by Holden Park. And Emilia was saying, just do a sort of grass, beautiful shot like that. Polo, it's awesome. I played a couple of tournaments with Prince William and Prince Harry. It's part of the establishment that you've got to keep going. My son started riding at the age of three, started holding a stick at the age of four, and he's 13 now. Can we take the glasses off as well? No, we light the sun last. I'm not sure, you know. Thank you. I think these people are as much a part of the Taplethene Park as the dukes and duchesses. And then the other way, head that way. If there is somebody sensational for a huge Wad of Eve and a giant wallet who's going to pile on in and have a great time in this world, I am as interested in them as I am in some crusty old duke with food down his jumper. Beautiful shots. The reality is the old world is always going to be part of the world order. It's tradition and that never change. So why not become part of that world? And the newly wealthy seem keen to adopt the more civilised aspects of the upper classes. But the rather more disgraceful and debauched behaviours of the old establishment are something that creates a lot of interest for the magazine's readers. Most famous of which is the Bullingdon Club at Oxford University. Famous members include George Osborne, Boris Johnson and David Cameron. You just read off these names and they are all people basically running the country. And I think that's what people, conspiracy theorists, begin to get sort of crazed about. They think, ooh, it's this tiny cabal of people who all knew each other at Oxford now running the world. But unfortunately, this is what happens in Britain. People just happen to go to school with each other. The picture of the Bullingdon Club in which David Cameron is in mysteriously disappeared from public usage. No one is allowed to use it, which is a bit fishy, don't you think? To find out more, Matthew is on his way to Oxford, home of the Bullingdon, to learn about England's oldest and most secretive dining club. The classic Bullingdon thing is to book a private dining room, the best dinner they can have, champagne, rich meat, endless wine, and then they smash the place up. And then the next day they send a cheque covering their expenses. It's a sort of exuberance of being rich enough to be able to smash up a restaurant and then pay for it. You know, the bad form would be if they didn't pay for it. What I like about where we are now is that everything you can see has stayed the same for 800 years. Nothing has changed. So you could say this is the sort of heart of old England of the establishment. I grew up in Oxford and it was just really fun being at school in the middle of Oxford and ragging around. And yeah, I had a really great time. It was de-paying, it's true. Yeah, I can't deny that. This is Brazenose College, which is where David Cameron was a student. This is Hertford College, which is where Evelyn Roar was an undergraduate in the 20s. And the point about him is he wrote Decline and Fall, his first novel satirising the Bullingdon club. He described it as county families of England paying for broken glass, which sort of sums up everything you need to know about the Bullingdon. My mistake was reading Evelyn Roar when I was 12. It's a classic recipe for, you know, making a middle-class boy like me interested in the upper classes. Because they just seemed to be having such a fun time and it was just a kind of world that, it was a kind of romantic world, I suppose, that appealed to me. So this is Christchurch, which is one of the oldest and grandest colleges in Oxford. And it's also where the steps are, where the picture's taken of the Bullingdon every year. Famously, on one particularly raucous outing of the Bullingdon, they smashed 400 windows in this quad just here. And ever since then, they've been banned from within a 10-mile radius of where we're standing right now. A stone's throw from Christchurch is the tailors where the Bullingdon are rumoured to have their trademark dinner suits handmade. These tailcoats are made to order. They're expensive. They cost about £3,500. And that's part of it, you know, the fact that you can afford to blow £4,000 on a tailcoat, it's already excluding a whole load of people from joining the Bullingdon. So I went in to the tailor and I said, we're doing this piece about the Bullingdon, what can you tell us about it? And he basically said that a few years ago, there was a big hoo-ha about the Bullingdon and they now have a policy of not talking about it at all, which is interesting. When even the tailor won't talk about it, you have to wonder what's going on. OK, well, let's definitely go big on that. Matthew hasn't managed to get any current Bullingdon members to talk on the record, but he has discovered why they're so secretive. It's one of those things where they want people to know they're in this exclusive, cool club, but it's so awful now, or considered to be so awful, that they also don't because they've got one eye on their futures when they might want to become cabinet ministers. It's a bit like the Masons, isn't it? There's a kind of forever they will remember that time in when they were 19, when they got Binky Finknottle out of a dustbin, you know, that sort of creates a bond, these shared experiences of getting into trouble and getting out of scrapes. And I mean, I think we're all for eccentricity and odd behaviour and drinking, so, yeah. Wealth and high fashion have always been easy bedfellows. Many of its rich readers look to the magazine for tips on what to wear, especially in preparation for the social season. So, the first one was Cardiff? Yeah. Wonderful. And Deep? Kate and her fashion editor, Deep, are preparing a feature on following dress codes without compromising style. I just want to make sure that it's not too pretty woman. I like it for that. I think in the mix of the more extreme outfits. It also just felt a little bit 80s. Yeah, but I like that. That, to me, is fun. This story is particularly difficult for Deep because we're talking about giving the readers something to wear for events. So, going to Ascot, going to a summer wedding, something like that. And event dressing, per se, in this country, most of us end up looking like stewardesses from 1992. So, I'm asking Deep to do something that is completely on trend and is very credible in the fashion industry, but that you could wear to Ascot without people pointing and laughing. That's amazing. Are those both? Yeah. OK. So, those are the only ones, too. That's the boater that you saw with the Prada. Oh, look. OK. Yeah, I think that's kind of beautiful. It's beautiful, isn't it? Yeah. It's great. But it's not just event dressing the magazine covers. It also features couture and the latest designer fashion. It's London Fashion Week and Kate has been invited to all of the top shows. My background is fashion. I started at American Vogue. I was a fashion editor at Tatler when I was 21. So, I have a natural, huge fondness and interest in it. I love a laugh and I love a nice dress. Morning, ladies. When you see the other big editors at the shows, it's sort of Pony Club Camp versus NASA. Where the PR and the designer decides to sit you, specifically in relation to Anna Wintour, is a totally public declaration of your status. You know, if you've been shoved at some far end of the runway in Siberia, it's a sort of burning cheek moment. And then there's nothing like the smug pride when you feel that you've been given an excellent seat. Sorry, thanks. Hello, lovely. Hello. Tatler may not have the fashion kudos of other publications, but Kate knows that unlike the readers of most glossy magazines, her readers can afford all the clothes on show. We have two jobs in the magazine. One is to entertain and inform our readers. Our second job is to provide an environment for the advertiser. They're buying access to our readers' eyeballs, basically. We have the richest reader of any magazine in the UK. OK, Kendra's April. Alicia's May. In the sort of background, we've got Rita, Bora, we've got Claudia Schiffer. In a world where commercial success is crucial for the magazine's survival, nothing is more important than the cover. Tatler has a long history of distinctive covers featuring notable society girls of the day. It was an incredibly good-selling Princess of Wales cover. There was a very good Geri Hall cover once. Jagger cover once. Kate Reardon has done some quite good ones with Downton girls. I think Downton always sells well on Tatler. The one that you liked, which was this one, that's as big as the picture will go. And these just don't. For the next cover, Kate and her team have decided on a royal treat, the Duchess of Cambridge. She's particularly relevant for Tatler because anything royal sells Tatler really well. We put a corgi on the cover by himself and he was one of our best-ever-selling issues. She does not do shoots. She's been very, very clever. She keeps herself very much to herself. She's resisted the advances of probably every single magazine in the Western world. So we're going to use a picture that already exists. I just don't know how she does it. I don't know how she manages to avoid all eye contact with cameras. I don't know the point. She's incredibly clever. It's just below. It's just sort of looking at people's waistline. I mean, this woman is probably the most photographed woman in the world. Remarkable. And she manages to not get eye contact with a single camera. I mean, it's obviously marked potential and it's absolutely brilliant because it means that when people like us are trying to put her on the cover, she can swerve it. Even without an exclusive Kate Middleton photo shoot, the team have come up with a rather unusual way to feature her in the magazine. Do you remember those books? They used to have a doll and then you cut them out and they had taps around them. And you dress with a doll. So you do accessories, so shoes, jewellery, bags. So we'll create five looks for her, then everyone will cut out and put on this doll. Just as we're saying, Kate, we love you, but, you know, let's be a bit bolder here. Dressing our modern day princess. So the question is, do we take this head, cut it out, stick it on an illustrated body, do something very weird and funny on the cover? I think not, because I think that we're luring people in because it's saying Kate's fashion makeover and the funny thing is, is you go inside and you see. And that's the surprise. We'll say, are we going with what was first suggested or are we going something else? What, there was something even more demure, where they sort of came down here. Yes, like a play suit meets a sort of thing in a nice mint colour or something. We definitely want her in a long pant. We don't want to do anything inappropriate. I wouldn't suggest royal cubic hair. No, not quite the right tone. Brilliant. Like many of her readers, Kate divides her time between her flat in London and her house in the country. A lot of people take quite a long time to wind down after the working week. But if you get on a horse, it's like meditation, but more fun. And you guys ride together all the time? Yeah, well, we hunt together. Yeah. And then during the summer, we? During the summer, we ride a bit. I think Charlie only married me because I ride a grey horse and it matched his. And how did you meet? We went to a dinner party before a party, which neither of us were very keen to go to. And luckily, we both decided to go. And was it love at first sight? No. Not even faintly. Kate didn't really want anything to do with me for a long time. And then she met my mother and that totally changed her mind. Yeah, once I met her, I suddenly thought, perhaps I should take him seriously. We meet at weekends and maybe once during the week. We've made it for nearly a year and they said it wouldn't last. It seems to work quite well, really. I like the fact that I was marrying somebody who was occupied. And I'm very, very occupied. I was single for a really long time. I only got married when I was 44. And what did you get married to then? I think I probably just missed out on my first and second marriages and just gone straight to number three. Kate is back in London. The Duchess of Cambridge issue is almost complete. You see, they say print is dead, but it's not. The print makes you more creative. I mean, if you've got an all-singing, all-dancing website, you know, why would you make the effort to do this? But you know, Kate in her underwear. Kate in a new ball gown from Del Pozo. Or, hmm, I'm thinking garden party. Perhaps she should wear that. It all works. And how did you decide on Kate's underwear? Actually, we spent quite a lot of time talking about which underwear we should put Kate in. And we wanted something dignified. So we thought that a... What are these things called, anyway? Camisoles? No, but it's a matching. It's an all-in-one, I think. Sort of a camisole romper. It's a, yes. Cami romp. And it's from Marks and Spencer. So, obviously, you know, expensive on the outside. The People's Duchess. She does it again. Once again. If Prince William had chosen some entitled, snobbish girl who nobody in this country could relate to, that would have damaged the whole image of the aristocracy and therefore the upper class and therefore everything that Tatler represents. Garden party, Kate? How about Kate in a lace catsuit? The fact that Kate Middleton comes from such a healthy, functioning, hardworking family and that family has been so embraced, not just tolerated, but embraced by Prince William, is just great. The Duchess of Cambridge doll with a suitable royal wardrobe is complete. Kate has one final appointment before the magazine goes to print. Approval of the cover by the managing director, Nicholas Coleridge. Yes, once again. Yeah, it really is. Aha, well, this is what we've been awaiting. I've heard rumours. Actually, I'm just looking at the cover lines that surround her enormous face. And in some way, you always end up slightly wondering whether they refer to the person. Your very own Kate fashion doll we get. Return of the trophy wife. This time, she's in charge. This one over here. Okay, well, we can move that here. I have to admit that Fisher was worried about, oh, you're a slut as well. I just think it's maybe slightly in the wrong place. It would be all right if it were somewhere else. You know what? Even if you moved it down to there and moved those two up, it would very subtly change them. It looks good. Let them roll. Very good, thanks. Thank you very much. It's not something that had registered in my mind. We've got a piece inside here. It's a tiny piece. It's just a funny 10 surefire signs that you're a slut, which we thought was a funny cover line to have. But we really stupidly put it up there next to Kate Middleton's eyes, which implies that we're talking about her, but we're not at all. It's got nothing to do with her at all. So if we move that line down here or over there or something like that, we will stop making the association between the two. And that's why those cover meetings are so useful, because you get really experienced people looking at them going, are you insane? Why did you do that? The summer season is in full swing and it's Tatler's turn to play host. They are holding a fancy dress ball with Christie's Auction House and have invited many of the people who graced their pages to come as a work of art. Hi, I'm Matthew Bell from Tatler. After three months at the magazine, Matthew is about to have his first taste of a true Tatler soiree. He has chosen a painting by Gainsborough for inspiration. So here we have the quintessential English 18th century landscape painting. You have your classical setting with a Greek or Roman temple in the background, plenty of clipped green foliage. So it's a showing of man's conquering of nature. I think it was the period when Britain became civilised. So there was a focus on elegance and manners and civilised behaviour and the court was very important and the aristocracy obviously ruled the day. I suppose Tatler was founded in the 18th century. I look like the man on the masthead and he stands in this kind of posture somehow. He is the bystander. If Kate's not impressed by this, I don't know what she will be impressed by. I think she'll like it. The 400 illustrious guests at the ball will be treated to a sumptuous feast of motra caviar from Latvia, lobsters from Western Scotland, the finest beef and quail and champagne. Hi! It's a novelty apron I got on eBay for seven quid. I'm obviously Michelangelo's David. I'm a Jeff Koons lobster, obviously. It's an opportunity for the magazine to place itself at the heart of the social scene and in the bystander party pages. It's a very good cross-section of the Tatler theme park. You've got people who are incredibly connected and very knowledgeable about the art world. You've got aristocrats. You've got socialites. This is the sofa of Dali. I'm coming as a Peter Doig picture this evening. I'm the Virgin Mary. I'm the Annunciation of the Virgin. So I'd used to go on the outside and come into these parties and writing about Tatler as a hack, but now I'm on the inside. It's much more fun. How does that feel? Yeah, it's everything all right. I feel like a poacher turned gamekeeper. Everyone has always wanted to know about the goings-on of decadent, eccentric, beautiful people. Probably, in real life, there isn't quite that much taffeta. Maybe people don't go shooting quite that often or go to that many hunt balls, but I think people feel very soothed that the Tatler world still exists. Why is it relevant to this day and age? Well, what's the point of relevance, really? Does anything have to be relevant? Irrelevant things are what make life fun. It would be ghastly if everything in life was relevant. That would be awful, wouldn't it?