Wearing their finest tweeds, stroking their sideburns and filling the air with pipe smoke, competitors and spectators gathered for the Chap Olympiad, an annual celebration of the classic English gentleman.
Hundreds of “chaps” and “chapettes” descended on a leafy square in London on Saturday for the sporting social occasion, where regular pastimes are overlooked in favor of smoking pipes, ordering butlers about and swilling cocktails.
The event is the annual summer bash of The Chap, a bi-monthly magazine celebrating the English gent, his eccentricity, courteous behavior, impeccable dress and devotion to facial hair. In its 12th year, it now has 10,000 readers.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s a sports day for people who don’t like sport,” said organizer Gustav Temple, The Chap’s editor. “It’s unfair that chaps who spend most of their time filling their pipes, pressing their trousers and mixing dry Martinis don’t get a chance to compete.”
The 10 events include the pipeathlon — sauntering, bicycling and being carried by servants while smoking a pipe — butler baiting, ironing board surfing and moustache wrestling.
In the swooning contest, chaps “have to induce the ladies to swoon through any means possible.”
The fun concludes with shouting at foreigners in an attempt to purchase an item and umbrella jousting, where two contestants, armed only with their brollies and briefcases, charge at one another on bicycles.
“The things that people love about Britain are the things that we stand for,” Temple said. “To be a chap is to take the mannerisms of an old-fashioned English gentleman, and take the bits that we like — being eccentric, drinking cocktails before lunch, dressing exquisitely and being courteous to ladies.”
“The rest, such as bloodsports and flogging manservants, we put that aside,” Temple said.
Enjoying the conviviality in London’s Bedford Square, chaps, cads and bounders lugged battered suitcases around, took tea and scones, doffed hats, wiped monocles, wound up gramophones, popped champagne corks and filled the air with clouds of sweet-smelling smoke.
Meanwhile, chapettes were shown the way by the Vintage Mafia, a group of ladies who were by their own admission “exceptionally well-dressed, but not always well-behaved.”
The occasional torrential downpours did not dampen the spirits of those armed with a stiff upper lip.
Temple, 46, reckons Britain started losing its way with rock and roll, when youth culture, obsessed with being trendy, separated from the rest of society.
However, be believes all is not lost. Anyone can become a chap, starting with a wardrobe overhaul, shedding all garments made from denim or plastic.
“Once you’ve got the clothes, your mannerisms will change. You are not likely to get into a pub fight or end up at a football match,” Temple said. “You will find yourself drawn away from lager and crisps towards dry Martinis and a pipe.”
“With a pipe, you feel like you should be putting the world to rights, speaking in clipped 1940s tones and pointing at things of relevance,” Temple said. “Any man holding a pipe — you feel like a chap.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in