The practical joker who teased David Beckham

Has the HR boom had its day?

Bit by bit, says The Economist, HR is “taking over corporate life”. Last year American businesses employed about 1.3 million human resources professionals, up a whopping 64% in 10 years, and there have been similar rises in Britain, Germany and Australia. HR has “moved up the office pecking order, too”: the pay of chief human resources officers has risen relative to other senior executives, and more of them are moving into the top job, with companies including General Motors, Dunkin’ Donuts and Chanel all now run by “HR gurus”.

The most obvious reason for all this is the recent “string of disruptions” to workplaces: the #MeToo movement; Covid; the rise of diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI) initiatives. Another factor is that employees are better informed about their rights. Allegations of workplace discrimination or harassment in the US more than doubled from six per 1,000 employees in 2021 to 15 per 1,000 last year. Yet there are signs the HR boom “could soon turn to bust”. With enthusiasm for DEI fading – not everyone thinks companies should be obsessed with micro-aggressions and non-gendered toilets – firms like Amazon are culling their HR ranks. And AI could accelerate this process. Big companies are already using the technology to sift through CVs and create chatbots that can respond to employee queries. When McKinsey asked businesses how AI had affected head count over the past year, 22% said it had led to reductions in HR – more than in any other department. “For the people people, the rise of the machines looks like bad news.”

Today’s superyacht buyers are younger, richer and increasingly American, says Ronda Kaysen in The New York Times. Connected to the world via Starlink internet, they play in St Barts, Sardinia or more far-flung corners like the Arctic, and do so with “all the trappings of home”. Coveted onboard features include basketball courts, underwater lounges, wellness spas and infinity Jacuzzis. For some, “one floating villa is not enough”. The richest owners now buy a “shadow yacht” to ferry the jet skis, the helicopter, the submarine and the smaller speedboat that “zips you into Monaco in time for lunch at Le Louis XV”. The priciest boats have traded for over half a billion dollars, more than double the most expensive home sold in the US, and annual maintenance runs at roughly 10% of the boat’s value every year. As one yacht designer says: “it’s expensive to be rich”.

There’s nothing wrong with an age gap

A few years ago, when I saw a tweet suggesting the then 23-year-old actress Florence Pugh was in an “age-inappropriate relationship”, says Rowan Pelling in The Independent, my “inner speculo-meter went crazy”. For people to be this upset, I thought, we must be in the same sort of realm as the 36-year age gap between Charlie Chaplin and his wife Oona O’Neil or the 35 years between Woody Allen and his stepdaughter-turned-lover Soon-Yi Previn. Imagine my “mountain-to-molehill surprise” when I found out her boyfriend Zach Braff was a mere 21 years her senior – well within the wide spectrum of what should be socially acceptable. Yet social media scolds treated Braff as though he were the “child-snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.

I can empathise: when I was 23 I dated a 50-year-old architect who “bore a distinct resemblance to Beethoven”. I was attracted to my older lover for all sorts of reasons. Most men my own age were “something of a disappointment” and I realised they wouldn’t really grow up until their forties. I didn’t fancy carrying an immature, insecure boy through the practice stages of a grown-up relationship where he made all his mistakes with you, “including prioritising his own sexual pleasure”. I enjoyed the glamour of having a partner who could “sweep me off to Le Caprice” before retiring to his Notting Hill home. But the biggest attraction was that he was an intelligent, naughty, funny polymath who taught me invaluable life lessons. I’m staggered that in the “enlightened 2020s” we’re still behaving like “passion has age restrictions”. If we’re going to applaud “gender role-reversing cougars” like Madonna and Heidi Klum then we must also applaud the younger women who just so happen to fancy “smart and drop-dead sexy” older men. “Time for the self-appointed sex police to find a new target.”