My first boss was one of the world’s best lunchers. Editor of a magazine covering the film, television, advertising and music video industries in the 1990s, a decade when you could have a perfectly respectable career in the audiovisual world without ever bothering to produce anything, she was a legend in Soho. She would take me to lunch at the drunkards’ hideaway. Andres EdmundsTerence Conran’s vast megalopolis, Mezzo, gleaming in chrome, or the perfect institution, Vasco & Piero’s Pavilion. Wherever we went, she was greeted warmly, kissed on the hand, and visited by industry luminaries from the surrounding tables. As we staggered back to the office, I felt immersed in a lifestyle.
It taught me many things about journalism, but the most important thing it taught me about working life was that relationships last, and relationships formed over lunch last for decades. Television work was interrupted between 1pm and 3pm, and being able to get a table at Sheekey’s or The Ivy between those hours was something to boast about without irony. Mentioning the name of the proposed restaurant was one way to secure a meeting. A glass of champagne to open the place and a half-bottle of Chablis were standard fare. In retrospect, it’s less of a mystery why so many working relationships were, ahem, problematic.
So, at first, I mostly found myself a junior partner at the meals of the most celebrated and self-mythologised diners: the media men. Invariably, I was booked through them by my assistants, who hinted at the unimaginable glamour of their standing reservation at a top restaurant (“If you eat on Wednesdays, in four weeks time will Nobu suit you?”). I had no complaints. In my first job, in 1995, I was paid £13,500, but no one batted an eyelid if I submitted an expense claim for an £80 lunch. My answer to the conspiratorial question “Shall we have a look at the dessert menu?” was always “Yes”, because then I could save the expense of dinner. The media men of the 1990s stole my cigarettes and taught me how to drink at lunch (I once had to go to the infirmary and lie down after a three-hour show). I learned that it was important to fight to have money spent on food. foot the bill (to flatter a superior), occasionally give in politely (“next time it’s my turn”), pass on all the gossip I can pick up, as fair trade is not theft, and always ask after the wife and children. Of course, it was a ridiculously inefficient way of doing business. In a sense, that was part of it. I still get goosebumps when I remember the time I kept the BBC1 controller waiting because I was stuck in traffic and he had to eat soup alone. How embarrassing!
When men talk wistfully about the golden days of luncheons, the more polite ones today remember that, of course, they were a terrible boys’ club. But they only remember the luncheons they attended. At the turn of the millennium, all over the media, women breaking barriers were watching men do it, and it’s fair to say we rose to the challenge.
I was lucky enough to be part of girl bands who had boxes at horse races and dog arenas, who went to gamble at the Ritz casino, who hired private rooms at Nobu and the River Café and special tables at The Wolseley or The Ivy. Events where eight or ten of us, from cabinet ministers to newspaper editors, TV channel directors and major TV production companies, demonstrated that women socialised just as successfully despite vast amounts of drink and merriment, and behaved just as badly. I remember singing in public, an incident where two fierce egos challenged each other to arm wrestling, someone demonstrating how sign language would be added to pornography to comply with new regulations, and the destruction of a rather nice hat.
We were loud, but we were few. It wasn’t until I moved to New York in the 2010s that I realized women networking over lunch was a global game. One kindly but powerful PR woman hosted a welcome lunch at Michael’s, a highly regarded Manhattan restaurant that had network CEOs at set tables and daily tweeted lists of the executives and celebrities who had crossed the threshold at the reception desk. She invited only women. I was the editor of a website that hadn’t launched yet and couldn’t understand why anyone would come, but we all ended up on Page Six, New York’s reigning gossip column, so someone knew what she was doing. Female guests brought gifts of Diane Von Furstenberg scarves and eyebrow-stylist recommendations. This was a huge step up from our “girly” London traditions of beautiful handwritten thank you notes on artistic postcards and the fact that we actually remembered each other’s children’s names.
In New York, I recognized I was being admitted to a place where the rules were subtly different. Networking was based on quick intimacy accelerated by spending, but not necessarily by dinner. A journalist once invited me to lunch, but he started by saying, “I know you live near me and you have a daughter who is about the same age as mine, so why don’t we take them both for manicures and pedicures?” Now that’s a new way to balance life and work.
Should we blame the internet or budgets for the decline in lunch invitations? In a sense, the internet separated advertising from media, and as revenue became programmatic, so did contacts. Those who introduced me are now beginning to leave, very sadly, for the big, never-ending lunches. Let’s be honest, it’s not a lifestyle associated with longevity.
The only thing left were the lunches I wouldn’t have been seen dead at back in the day: the ticketed ones that started with the words “Women in,” often hosted by a brave, high-ranking woman in an organization full of men, trying to emulate the clubs they weren’t invited to. The problem with these lunches wasn’t their intentions, but the lack of spontaneity in execution. There are few opportunities to network at a quick networking event. And, in truth, the few truly powerful women in any industry had no availability between work events and family.
I don’t want to deny the benefits of more formal networking. The rules of entry into informality are opaque and exclusionary, and I can’t pretend that my group of girls were any more thoughtful about our various privileges than our male counterparts. I remember inviting some younger colleagues to lunch at a posh Edinburgh restaurant to hear their hopes and dreams, hoping to show them that I considered them important, but immediately realising that was too formal and risked doing the opposite. It’s undeniable that young women can now express their ambitions by applying for mentoring and paid internship programmes. However, I will never get over my fundamental disapproval of a serious event where, after a glass of mulled white wine, everyone exchanges a business card.
When I invite people to lunch now, they are pleased but bemused. I feel a bit like I’ve sent a cabman with a calling card. These brutal days of computerised booking diaries and automated emails are, of course, more efficient and more democratic, but what influence, ladies! The sheer influence of walking into a “famous restaurant in London’s West End” and being greeted with a glass of champagne and a “Congratulations on your promotion.” You would never feel like you were in the wrong club and neither would your lunch guest.
Except, except. Maybe there is another way. On a recent trip to Manhattan, where everything happens first, a former colleague and social media maven announced that brunches, Midtown restaurants, and trendy eateries are back, along with everything from the ’90s. The personal connection, the intimate bond of confession, the sense of order in a chaotic world established by a maître d’ who knows your name and what table you like — an antidote to anonymity and social media socializing. How exciting, and what a relief.
My advice for women For anyone who’d like to partake in this 1960s trend, they were told this: consolidate your expense account. Spend your entire budget at one or two restaurants, and those restaurants will reward you for your loyalty. Take people out. Nowadays, you can split the bill, but nothing says “I liked this and we’ll do it again” like “You can do it next time.” Form your own posse. Invite someone from your world and get a friend to do the same. Don’t underestimate the power of a little sin, whether it’s dessert, a drink, or being a little late to work, and always, always, order fries for the table.
It is unlikely that you will be a benchmark in this new wave of hope. Real networking should happen in your twenties, when everything is yet to come and you can still tolerate alcohol before six in the evening. But if you are lucky, you will not only learn a lot more about your job, but you will also gain a little life.
The best lunch of my life started simply and directly with a TV executive I barely knew. Somehow, at 5pm, it was still going, as the staff around us began to set up tables for dinner service, pausing only to reassure us that, although life must go on around us, they didn’t want us to feel like we had to take hints. “We love that you’re still here,” they encouraged us. It ended at 7:30pm, when she revealed to me that she had to go to dinner with Rupert Murdoch. She is still my best friend and godmother to my son, but we now eat lunch at our own pace.
Janine Gibson is FT Weekend editor
Continue @FTMag To be the first to hear about our latest stories and subscribe to our podcast Life and art wherever you listen