WHAT defines the modern day man?
Knowing the extent of our personal carbon emissions? Choosing the right vinaigrette for a kale and spinach salad? The ability to pick out the most appropriate pair of brogues?
I’m still clinging on to that idealistic and transgenerational sense of manliness, the notion that involves WD40, chopping wood and only four varying shades of blue Oxford shirts.
At one time the concept of manliness was sufficiently displayed by winning the bread and knowing the difference between a spanner and a wrench.
I'm still not entirely sure what a wrench does.
Great John Street Hotel
I blame the New Romantics, soy beans, Beckham, trainer socks and particularly technology for making us spend too much time on our backsides and less time hitting hard things with heavy things.
If something needs fixing, we can Google it. If we need a woman, we can Google one. Even if we need food, we can Google it. We can’t even be arsed to walk to the chippy anymore.
Never mind hunt, we barely even gather.
My dad can fix just about anything. My granddad could fix even more. He was also a champion boxer and a Sergeant Major in WWII. He punched and shot people.
The closest thing i come to shooting is the Vanish stain remover. For shame.
The manly man
So when the opportunity arose to attend Frank’s RedHot Man School at the Great John Street Hotel, I jumped at the chance. Less jumped, more sloped out of the chair because my thighs were tender from Broga (yoga for bros).
Shit, I needed sorting.
What did Frank’s RedHot Man School have in store for me? Shelf erecting? Plunging out a U-bend? How to kill a bison with a ruler? Basically I wanted to be Bear Grylls in less than two hours.
Got the bottle?
Well, that didn’t happen. Not one bit. Not even close actually.
You see, according to Frank we men require a rather different set of skills these days. Skills that don’t require any form of making, fixing, or maiming Bison for that matter. No maiming? Boo.
I have to admit I was rather disappointed.
Apparently now in the modern day survival of the fittest, what us blokes need to know is how to: dress, dance, pick a wine, remember things and above all, be funny.
The night started as all nights should really. With beer, lots of it, tray after tray actually. They were lubing us up. I knew their game.
The men
It was a fairly homogeneous crowd, a group of around twenty men aged loosely between the early 20s to late 30s, smartish chaps, suits, wayfarer specs, Ralph Lauren shirts, boat shoes, v-necks, blazers, side partings and satchels. All of that general ilk.
Herded off into the projector room (which gave the whole affair that despondent powerpoint quality) we began our first ‘man’ class: Being funny.
The classroom
Recent scientific studies suggest women have actually evolved to be attracted to men that are funny, something to do with the nucleus accumbens and the mesolimbic reward centre.
I’d always just imagined that wit (or ‘educated insolence’, thank you Aristotle) was a clear symptom of intelligence, meaning we'd make well smart babies 'n' dat.
Up stepped David Morgan, stand-up comedian, nominated for various comedy awards that I didn’t have time/couldn’t be bothered to write down, possibly something at the Edinburgh Fringe.
David Morgan: He's gay by the way
After clearly establishing himself as ‘quite a lot gay’, David then went on to talk mostly about nobs for around fifteen minutes before departing with, "Yeah so if you want to get the girl you need to be funny. And not gay. Thanks. Bye." Helpful.
I’d laughed a bit but learnt nothing. Except about nobs.
Round two: Wine with Matt Mawtus, former head sommelier to Gordon Ramsey at Claridges.
Matt talked us through some wine etiquette to impress. Firstly, choose a nice big glass, nothing too poxy (allows the wine to aerate) and pour roughly a third of the way up. Secondly, have a good sniff of the wine. Thirdly, look at the colour to check for cloudiness and corking. Lastly, have a good old slurp.
Yep, definitely wine
Now, taking into consideration that we were discussing etiquette, Matt's slurp surprised me. It sounded like a Dyson DC41 dipped into a gritty puddle. She’d have upped and left before you could even say "I detect a subtle note of leather armchair."
Matt then did something i find intensely tedious. He began to slowly and unknowingly creep deep into the lexicon of wine intricacies: malic acid, fermentation and lemon rind.
Much like football, There is more utter and pointless crap spoken about wine than anything else in the world. You can say everything without really contributing anything.
By this point, I was out – and hankering after these RedHot chicken wings I’d been promised. When was half-time?
Next up was Mark Channon: The Memory Man.
Now apparently we’re getting ourselves into all sorts of bother because we can’t remember dates like our partners' birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas.
And Mark had the solution to make sure we never again forgot an important date and thus, never again have to succumb to another sex ban. What a hero.
Thing is, I can't recall what the solution was. Probably should have listened but this was dragging now.
Frank's wings: Good scoffAnyway, food was up.
Frank’s RedHot Sauce was surprisingly edible; I’ve had a slight aversion to anything red hot since I was forced to eat a full Scotch Bonnet for a dare. To give you some scale, a standard Jalapeno is around 4,000 on the Scoville Scale, a Scotch Bonnet is 350,000.
Needless to say the bonnet went down like a brick baguette and my tongue went on compassionate leave for at least two weeks.
Luckily these hot wings were hot, but not pulled from the arse of Satan hot. Manageable. And when dipped in a cool blue cheese dip they were a revelation.
So on to style with John Lancaster, Saville Row trained for five years, designer at Hackett, Alfred Dunhill and now for has his own label, JLSA.
Interestingly, according to John, he’s also the guy that somehow managed to get Shane Warne to snag Liz Hurley. Something to do with a dark green tie.
John recommends that us guys keep it simple, keep it timeless and most importantly, keep the lines clean - one of those heavily recited fashion phrases that you never really understand. I mean, which lines are we keeping clean? Where even are these lines?
Either way, the lines need to stay clean and a suit (John’s all about the suit) needs to hold our posture. Essentially, the cut of the suit needs to be a rod for our backs. Keep us standing upright, keep us sapien.
So realistically, how much should we be paying for a good suit? Well, John reckons £500 for an ‘off the peg’ suit, £1,500 for a ‘made to measure’ and around £3k-£4k for an entirely bespoke suit, which involves a crack team of people working around your exact frame and dimensions making anywhere up to 400 different manipulations for up to 120 hours.
Bit excessive. Sounds like Q’s laboratory.
Bulletproof? Check
The man to my left, also probably the youngest in the room, raises his hand and asks: ‘Where is the best place to get a suit for around £150.’ He asks.
‘M&S’, John replies.
There’s a collective nod. This was probably the most pragmatic and useable piece of information we’d gathered all night. The rest had, for the most part, been detritus.
So what was the final string we needed for our bows? Now that we weren’t any funnier, slurped not sipped, still couldn’t remember anything and knew the best suits that we really couldn’t afford.
Why that’d be to dance good man, to dance. That is, if you consider this dancing:
If I’d have walked into that room a woman, I’d have opted for sterilisation.
The ‘man’ school, for the most part, had been anything but. I’m still clinging on to that idealistic and transgenerational sense of manliness, the notion that involves WD40, chopping wood and only four varying shades of blue Oxford shirts. Somewhere between Fred Dibnah and Steve McQueen. Functionally cool.
But perhaps my vision is skewed and overly nostalgic. Perhaps at 27 I’m even beginning to stray out of touch. I mean, I do hail from Grimsby and we’ve never been widely regarded for our knowledge of contemporary habits or cutting edge fashions. We’ve only just stopped courting women by bonking them over the head with a club.
The aim of the school had been to turn us from Mr Beans into Mr Bonds. But if Bond had slurped and danced like that, I'm not even sure Moneypenny would have given him one.
Follow David on Twitter @David8Blake
