Tatler UK - 08.2019

PHOTOGRAPH: RENÉ HABERMACHER. MODEL: JULIA ZIMMER

BYS TA NDE R

SOCIETY

must consider her feelings first and

foremost. Is the mere act of asking

insensitive? Would she prefer you

washed up the cup? After all, she is the

most valuable member of the ‘team’.

Welcome to the new Upstairs

Downstairs – except that it is now

Upstairs Upstairs. Or even Downstairs

Upstairs: a world in which domestic

staff are no longer called ‘staff ’, but

simply referred to as ‘talent’. ‘The

worm has turned,’ says Chris Harvey

of Octant, a strategic brand consul-

tancy and trend forecaster. One must

regard one’s gardener, cleaner or

nanny as a combination of Beyoncé

and The Princess and the Pea – some

super-rich Russians have nannies on

rotation, so while one is working, the

other is at a luxury spa for ‘R&R’

between shifts. ‘No one is subservient

to anyone anymore,’ says Louise Taylor

of Kensington Nannies, which places

employees in aristocratic, celebrity

and professional homes all over the

world. ‘Many parents today struggle

to manage someone who sees them

without their make-up, watches

them fight with their partners and

scans the odd document left in plain

sight.’ Nanny knows where the off-

shore bank accounts and the lovers are

kept. Some, with masters degrees in

education from Oxford and Yale,

command salaries of £120,000, plus

perks including use of the private

plane, cash bonuses and a designer

clothing allowance.

It wasn’t always this way. Twenty

years ago, when I moved to London

from the US for a high-powered TV

job, the market was saturated with

hardworking, well-educated Eastern

Europeans willing to do almost any-

thing for a wage. My first cleaner

from Poland literally washed the floor

of our Chelsea home on her hands

and knees. Today, her ilk have either

left because of Brexit or moved on to

office jobs, leaving a small but ex-

tremely entitled group behind. Still,

that group is in hot demand: there

are many more millionaires with

yachts and McMansions today in

need of staff than there were aristo-

crats with large estates 200 years ago.

Now in Gloucestershire, for ex-

ample, there are thousands of Cordon

Bleu chefs who can cater for your

dinner, but not a single person willing

to do the washing up. A freelance

butler who works for the Bamfords

and Prince Charles is so in demand

he has to be booked six months in

advance. When he does arrive, one

is almost too grateful to ask him to

clear the plates. We all schedule dinner

parties around his availability and

pay him twice the going rate.

Gardeners, meanwhile (note: ‘art-

ists’, not just ‘talent’) make Cher look

like a busker – one we employed did

not ‘like rain’. As it rains 50 per cent

of the time in Britain, it meant he

only showed up half the time. We

also had an award-winning gardener

in London, who charged £25 plus ]

sh e’s got

it maid

C

onsider employing a

therapist for your nanny,

instructs the employer

advice section of one exclusive agency

website. Should one even think to

ask a nanny to place her used coffee

cup in the dishwasher (never yours

• that would be nanny abuse), one

Staff now expect designer

clothes, private jets and

bankers’ salaries in the

topsy-turvy new world

of Upstairs Downstairs

By HELEN KIRWAN-TAYLOR

tatler.com Tatler August 2019

BRITAIN’S

GOT ‘TALENT’

‘No one is subservient

to anyone anymore’

08-19BYST-SOCIETYStaff.indd 39 30/05/2019 22:14

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