2 Tuesday May 17 2022 | the times
times2
Me, guilty of ‘he-peating’ a
woman’s idea? Never. Unless
you count this column
Robert Crampton
GETTY IMAGESI’m as oily
as James
Corden
James Corden has
fessed up to washing
his hair only once every
couple of months.
Respect! Especially
because, although he’s
threatening to come
home soon, he still lives
in California, where
personal grooming is
the state religion.
Given his job as a
US TV chat show host,
that’s an awful lot of
stale hairspray to keep
hanging around on
your head. Hard objects
must bounce off his
bonce like rubber balls.
I’m no fan of the hair
wash faff, not least
because my hair when
clean goes all fluffy,
floppy and friendly: not
the image I want to
project, goodness me,
no. I prefer the natural
hold provided by a
week of accumulated
filth, whereby you can
brush your hair off your
face and it stays back.
Mind you, I’ve never
bought that line about
how if you leave it long
enough, eventually your
follicular secretions, or
something, cleanse the
hair naturally, without
recourse to shampoo.
My natural hair oils
don’t cleanse anything:
they just make my hair
go, well, naturally oily.
And itchy. A fortnight
is my limit.Sachs on
the beach?
Unlikely
During lockdown,
Solomon was a vocal
critic of working from
home, calling it
“an aberration”.
Now, though, senior
employees of the
investment bank are
to be trusted with
unlimited holidays.
As in, they won’t have
to account for time off.
In theory, although Ivery much doubt in
practice, they’ll be able
to head off to the beach
whenever they fancy
it. Make your mind
up, Dave!
Although no doubt
he has done his sums.
Studies suggest that
abolishing a prescribed
holiday allowance
benefits employers, as
staff tend to take fewerbreaks than they do
when a maximum is
allotted. A maximum
becomes a target to
aim for, doesn’t it?
Without an upper
limit, the target swiftly
becomes, I fear,
precisely zero. People
at Goldman Sachs work
famously hard. They’re
about to start working
even harder, I suspect.David Solomon, the
boss of Goldman Sachs,
seems a bit erratic
about precisely where
he wants his staff to be.
‘I want to ask
you now
about Soho
Farmhouse,
Mrs Rooney’
The lawyers, the outfits, the football
husband: what I saw when I watched
Wagatha in Court 13. By Hilary Rose
F
irst there was
manspreading, which I
always thought betrayed
a simple ignorance of
male anatomy. Then
there was mansplaining
— which means, for the
benefit of female readers,
male condescension — something
that I don’t indulge in but other
chaps sadly do.
Then there was manterrupting,
which I rather admire as a neologism
for not even bothering to try to sound
witty. And now there’s he-peating,
also known as bropropriating, which
is when a man nicks an idea off a
woman and claims credit for it.
Like a boxer soaking up a battering
on the ropes, these portmanteau puns
dissing traditional sexist behaviour
keep slamming into the collective
male ribcage.
My boss suggested I write about
this new thing called he-peating.
“I tell you what,” I told her a minute
later, “maybe I should write about this
new thing called ‘he-peating’, have
you heard of it?” “Ha, ha,” she
said with a sigh.
Actually, at first I’d thought she’d
said “heap-eating”. Oh good, I
thought, it must be some wacky new
diet. I get to spend a day scoffing
enormous piles of food.
That confusion cleared up, I can
state in all conscience I am not guilty
of he-peating. Well, I’m half guilty of
it, in that yes, I steal other people’s
(not just women’s, I’m an equal
opportunities thief) insights all the
time. (Don’t we all? Isn’t that how
knowledge spreads and accumulates?
Standing on the shoulders of giants,
etc?) I like to think, however, that I’m
scrupulous about awarding credit
where it’s due. I’m like the honourable
muso who acknowledges a debt to
a previous tune or lyric, as opposed
to the one who just lifts an obscure
Motown melody and hopes to get
away with it.
I’ve witnessed a fair bit of
he-peating — and some she-peating,
I have to say — over the years. I’ve
known quite a few people — again,
not all of them men — build entire
careers based on observing an iron
rule of agreeing with everything
the person above them says while
repeatedly and consistently nicking
ideas from the people below them,
sometimes mere moments after those
ideas were voiced. “They just use your
mind,” Dolly Parton wrote, 42 years
ago, in 9 to 5, “and they never give you
credit.” As ever, Dolly nails it.
Thirty years ago, when The Times
Magazine was launched, the late,
great John Diamond suggested a
regular short weekly column about
a new fad called the world wide web.
John’s colleagues, me included, took
some persuading because, hey, it
wasn’t like this thing was gonna catch
on, right? But he prevailed and then
we had to come up with a name.
I suggested “Enter Password”. Which
now sounds staggeringly quaint and
dull but back then, trust me, had a
sexy ring to it.
So sexy, indeed, that Enter Password
was adopted. Not long afterwards I
was in a meeting when I heard from
someone other than me make the
utterly shameless straight-faced boast
that they personally had coined the
groovy tag for John Diamond’s new
techy column. Aha, I thought: so that’s
how the world works. Naturally I was
fuming: I was only 27 so injustice still
appalled me. But, being only 27, I kept
my mouth shut, just like so many
women do.I
t was just before lunch in Court
13 yesterday when Rebekah
Vardy’s QC went in for the kill.
Coleen Rooney had spent two
hours giving evidence, calmly
explaining the ins and outs of
how Instagram works to Hugh
Tomlinson QC, who may or may
not have been as baffled as he
appeared. She explained at length her
“suspicion” and “beliefs” regarding the
source of leaks of private information,
suspicions that culminated in her
publicly accusing her fellow Wag,
Vardy, the wife of the footballer Jamie
Vardy, of being the source. Finally at
12.40pm, after giving evidence that can
be summarised, legally speaking, as “I
had a hunch”, she uttered three fateful
words: “I don’t know.” Punching the
air and shouting “Boom!” isn’t really
how QCs do things at the Royal
Courts of Justice. What they do is
what Tomlinson did: he drew out the
moment theatrically by giving a final
glance at his notes, murmured, “No
more questions,” and sat down. On the
other side of the courtroom Rooney’s
barrister, David Sherborne, visibly
deflated. Wayne Rooney stared
impassively ahead and picked his nose.
Two hours before, the Rooneys had
walked into the courtroom almost
unnoticed. Understated in co-
ordinating shades of grey suiting,
Coleen was heavily tanned and
businesslike, with a professional blow
dry, a small Chanel handbag and a
leopard-print notebook in which she
jotted a few things down. Wayne,
trussed into his suit and tie, looked like
a sunburnt dumpling. While Coleen
went into the witness box ready to
give evidence, he settled into his
stance for the rest of the morning:
don’t look left, right, up or down. He
glanced at his wife giving evidence
only once and gave Vardy the merest
flicker. Mostly he stared straight
ahead, literally twiddling his thumbs.
A few minutes after the Rooneysarrived together, Vardy arrived alone,
flanked by lawyers. Dressed in a skin-
tight sparkly lemon skirt suit and with
her hair slicked back in a bun, she had
white stilettos, beaded bracelets on
each wrist, the inevitable Wag giant
diamond engagement ring and an
expensive-looking tote bag. She smiled
tightly, sat down and remained rigidly
upright for the rest of the day.
Occasionally she glanced at Rooney
giving evidence. Once or twice she
joined members of her legal team in
pretending to stifle melodramatic
giggles of disbelief. Mostly she was a
tense, taut presence in a mess of a
courtroom: oak panelling, boxes of
paper and a wall of dusty legal books
that nobody ever seems to open. The
judge, Mrs Justice Steyn, is a woman
of few words. The leading counsel
could hardly be more different from
each other. Tomlinson is said to be
“capable” and “sensible”, with an old-
school, understated style of advocacy.
Sherborne is more flamboyant and has
acted for, among others, Harry Styles
and the Duchess of Sussex. “Flashy,”
one fellow lawyer said sniffily — the
ultimate stamp of lawyerly
disapproval. “He seems inordinately
fond of having his picture in the paper
next to his clients,” said another.
And so began week two of the trial,
in which two women spend millions of
pounds and hours of their lives
slugging it out over something that
doesn’t matter. Slated for seven days in
court, the case is due to end tomorrow
and turns on such matters as who
follows whom on Instagram, whether
you would be offended if someone
unfollowed you, who said what to
whom and why. Was Vardy fishing for
information when she once sent
Coleen a message, or being a
supportive friend? The court heard
about a measles outbreak at the school
attended by the Rooney children and
something called the “McDonald’s
Football Mum of the Year lunch”.