2 1GT Monday October 5 2020 | the times

times

A

council in north

Wales is toying with

the idea of charging

walkers to climb

Snowdon, although

I imagine Storm

Alex this weekend

might have put

a few of them off. One councillor

complained that all they get from the

half a million climbers a year is litter

and the expense of clearing it up. I

can reassure him that Snowdon is safe

from me. I have no intention of

climbing it, or any other mountain,

now or ever. Climbing mountains is

a stupid thing to do and fresh air in

October is best enjoyed sitting near

a partially open window while

remaining toasty warm inside at

all times.

But after a year of endless

sunshine and alfresco living, which

made all the other awfulness

semi-bearable, normal British

weather, and life inside, is

clearly being resumed. The

only difference in winter 2020

is that we have the threat of

another lockdown, this time

cooped up. I have therefore

been developing a coping

strategy for the months ahead,

which centres mainly on

gluttony and sloth.

Storm Alex has done for my

attempt to embrace cycling because,

to the surprise of precisely no one,

I’ve turned out to be a fairweather

cyclist. Halfords has reported

“unprecedented” demand for bikes

and rocketing sales as commuters

avoid public transport, but it doesn’t

rain on the Tube, and buses are

heated. My bike, therefore, languishes

out on the street, sodden and sad, the

wicker basket rotting. If it ever stops

raining I’ll manhandle it into my car

and drive it to my parents’ house,

where at least it can spend winter

under cover.

So while cycling cheered me up in

June, my top tip for instant October

joy is old episodes of Top of the Pops

on iPlayer. Most of them seem to be

from the 1980s and all of them are

surreal. Last night, for example, I

goggled at Midge Ure singing Vienna

dressed as one of the Village People,

while behind him, inexplicably, was a

Look out, Dad

Phoebe Saatchi Yates grew up with

Damien Hirst’s sheep in the drawing

room. Now 25, she’s opening her own

gallery. By Rachel Campbell-Johnston

I

t has been 30 years since

Damien Hirst put a 13ft tiger

shark in a tank; since Marc

Quinn created a self-portrait

from ten pints of his frozen

blood; since Sarah Lucas plonked

a pair of fried eggs and a kebab

down on a table; since the name

of the advertising mogul Charles

Saatchi swept like a tidal wave over a

stuffy British art world, sending staid

traditionalists and their sedate Cork

Street galleries tumbling, rebranding

our nation and making Brit art cool.

Saatchi’s 1997 Sensation show at the

Royal Academy in London was widely

acknowledged as the high-water mark

of his achievement. And although he

didn’t stop there — he went on to

open more galleries and pioneer an

influential new business model in

the form of the “specullector” (a

collector/dealing-speculator hybrid),

which drove a massive art boom — his

name has of late rather dropped from

art world headlines.

But now prepare for the sequel.

A Saatchi is back. And this time

she’s female.

Phoebe Saatchi Yates — Charles

Saatchi’s 25-year-old daughter with

his second wife, Kay — is slipping into

the driving seat of the family business.

In partnership with her 29-year-old

husband, Arthur Yates, she is

preparing to open a massive new

Cork Street space.

Called Saatchi Yates, this gallery

will (like its Saatchi predecessor) be

taking unknown and never-shown

artists as its main focus. It will be

stamping new talents for the coming

decades. Who knows, it may one

day even find itself branding its

very own movement. But it will

also be selling secondary market

works on consignment from private

collections. Hockney, Rego and

Auerbach are the sort of names

being bandied about. “Selling on

consignment is definitely the way

that business is going,” Yates says. “A

lot of galleries do this, but normally

in the back office. We are upfront.”

They certainly seem optimistic as

they enter the countdown period. Both

are smiling confidently as, side by side,

they walk briskly to meet me across

the almost completed (all bar a few

fiddly bits) expanses of their brand

new white cube.

They are both dressed in strict art

world monochrome: he in black suit

and white buttoned-up-to-the-collar

shirt; she in white blouse and puffy

black velvet jacket with a big black

satin bow in the waves of her

shoulder-length brunette hair. They

look, at first glance, a bit like some

contemporary take on a pair of Dutch

burghers, minus the ruffs. “We really

care about getting dressed up every

day,” Saatchi Yates says, “because then

every day has a sense of occasion.”

Her black-and-white outfit is

accented with the flashes of pink that

burst from her handbag, nail varnish

and phone case. “I love pink,” she

chirps. “We wanted a pink flag outside

the gallery, but the offices above

belong to HSBC and they were a bit

stuffy.” “Practical,” her husband

corrects her, diplomatically.

It feels rather as if he is the head

and she the heart of their business.

Her enthusiasms could easily carry

her away. “Keep it gallery-centric,”

Yates mutters as a reminder as she

chatters. Her mother once said in an

interview that her main worry for her

daughter, then a teenager, was that she

had been given too much in her life.

“What’s going to delight and astonish

her when she’s seen so much so

young?” she fretted. But it would seem

that she need never have worried. Her

daughter overspills with enthusiasm.

“I am astonished by everything. I was

astonished by my almond croissant

this morning,” she cries.

She shows me proudly around her

new world — all 10,000 sq ft of it. “We

really believe in the physical space,”

she says. “We are obviously going to

have a wonderful website and a

wonderful presence on Instagram and

social media, but we want everything

to be physically beautiful too. There’s

something really nice about going into

a space and seeing something. Just like

there’s something really nice about

going into a shop and trying on a dress

and feeling pretty in the dressing

room. Just because everyone is online

and attached to their phones doesn’t

mean they aren’t interested in a

real experience.”

“And when people start coming out

again,” her husband adds, “it’s going to

be a wonderful moment. It’s like the

Sistine Chapel: no matter how many

times Google photograph it, or how

high-resolution or how three-

dimensional the images are, they can

never compare to the real thing.”

The gallery launches with a show of

work by a Swiss London-based artist,

Pascal Sender, who studied under

Peter Doig (made famous by Charles

Saatchi). “We stumbled across him

in the depths of the internet doing

strange livestream videos... We

stalked him. We loved him. We

followed him and it all led to this,”

Saatchi Yates says, gazing exultantly

round a display of large canvases.

They’re on sale for upwards of

£50,000 and take modern-day “types”

as their subjects — a receptionist

playing Candy Crush, a man standing

at a barbecue glancing at his

smartphone — and give them a

Duchampian nude-descending-the-

staircase-style treatment.

So is it old-fashioned painting

they are backing, I wonder. Not just

painting, they enthuse. Sender is the

sort of man, I am told, “who builds

face filters on Instagram for fun”. He

understands augmented reality

technology. Visitors to this show can

download an app that will make the

Hilary Rose

Nobody

wants tea

innovation

I hesitate to share this,

but Yorkshire Tea has

launched a line of

toast and jam-flavour

teabags. It claims, as

if it’s something to be

proud of, that they

“taste like jam on

toast!” The pack shows

a cup of tea popping

out of the toaster,

which is an electrical

accident waiting to

happen and upsettingly

terminal for the toaster.

The brand’s “tea

innovation manager”

describes it as a

“strong breakfast

blend with all the

loveliness of jam

on toast without

the crumbs”.

If I know only one

thing in life, it is that

tea doesn’t need an

innovation manager.

Second, tea should

taste of tea, not toast.

I don’t approve of

putting jam on toast

anyway because it’s

nasty, sweet, sugary

rubbish. Toast is

savoury, and the only

acceptable thing to put

on it is butter. As for

putting jam on toast

and then turning it into

a teabag, it’s pure

wickedness and brings

shame on Yorkshire.

I thought they had

more sense up there.

Evidently not.

Kevin Maher is away

Through

the royal

keyhole

equality of opportunity

by a prince is endlessly

entertaining, but

mainly I’m fascinated

by the decor of their

new California pad.

A symphony of greige

and oatmeal, it looks

like a ten-year-old

White Company

catalogue. Did they

buy the room set?

Why has all the colour

been leached out? And

what are those weird

black-and-white prints

above the sofa?

Apparently they’re

birds’ nests, but

they look like black

holes in space, or a

nightmare mash-up

of squashed spiders.

Then there’s the

ladder propped against

the wall with a throw

draped over it. I

imagine it’s not just

any ladder, but an

artisanal ladder

handmade by

underprivileged

indigenous peoples.

The throw is probably

pure cashmere, not

something you dry the

dog with, but still. A

ladder? With a blanket?

What’s that about?

Harry and Meghan are

much-maligned, but

they get a round of

applause in my house.

Being lectured about

woman doing ballet in a ballgown. Or

how about Kim Wilde, blonde and

gorgeous and lipsynching for all she’s

worth to Kids in America? Can you

honestly listen to that song without

singing along? Not even the “whoa!”

bit in the chorus? What’s wrong with

you? There was Adam Ant dressed

as a pirate and Duran Duran in all

their youthful pomp, looking like an

explosion in a make-up factory.

If Simon Le Bon with crimped

hair giving his best blue steel to

camera doesn’t make you happier,

nothing will.

But if that doesn’t spark joy, the

second prong of my survival strategy

is pikelets. Betty’s of Harrogate is

Climb Snowdon? I’m

developing a survival

strategy for indoors

ch

ause,

ne,

her

which

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Th

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I do

put

any

the purveyor of the nation’s finest nas

pikelets, but only if you can get to

one of its tearooms. These are all

in Yorkshire. I am not. Betty’s

therefore needs to raise its game and

make its pikelets available for mail

order. No other pikelet passes muster

and I see no other way of getting

through winter except with pikelets

and hot Ribena. Especially now

Cineworld may be closing all of its

cinemas, and we no longer even have

Bond on the big screen to look

forward to.

True, the hands-down best way to

survive a British winter is to spend

it in the Caribbean, but that isn’t

much help at the moment, on

multiple levels. Come on, Betty’s:

your country needs you.