My first boss was one of the world’s greatest lunchers. Editor of a magazine about the film, television, advertising and music video industries in the 1990s, a decade when you could have a perfectly respectable career in the broadcast world without ever having to worry about producing anything, she was a legend in Soho. She would take me to lunch in the cocktail bar Andre EdmundsTerence Conran’s vast chrome megalopolis, Mezzo, or the perfect institution of the Vasco & Piero Pavilion. Everywhere we went, she was warmly welcomed, caressed by the air and visited by industry luminaries from the surrounding tables. As we staggered back to the office, I felt initiated into a way of life.
She taught me a lot about journalism, but the most important thing she taught me about working life was that relationships last, and relationships made over lunch last decades. Television work ended between 1 and 3 p.m., and getting a table at Sheekey’s or the Ivy between those hours was something you could brag about without irony. Mentioning the name of the restaurant you were offering was a way to get a date. A glass of champagne and a half-bottle of Chablis was the norm. In retrospect, it’s less clear why so many working relationships were, uh, problematic.
So, in the early days, I often found myself as a junior partner in meals with the most famous and mythologised lunchers – the media men. These meals were invariably booked through assistants who hinted at the unimaginable glamour of their fixed reservation at a high-end restaurant (“He’s having lunch on Wednesdays, will Nobu be suitable in four weeks’ time?”). I had no complaints. I was paid £13,500 in my first job in 1995, but no one batted an eyelid if I filed an £80 lunch claim. My answer to the conspiratorial question “Should we have a look at the dessert menu?” was always “Yes”, because it meant I could avoid the expense of dinner. The media men of the 1990s stole my cigarettes and taught me to drink at lunch (I even had to lie down in the infirmary after a three-hour show once). I learned that it was important to fight for pay the bill (flattering to his superior), I sometimes give in graciously (“next time my turn”), I pass on as much gossip as I can gather, fair trade not being theft, and I always ask about my wife and children. Of course, it was a ridiculously inefficient way of doing business. In a way, it was part of the problem. My skin still stings with mortification as I recall the time I kept the BBC1 controller waiting because I was stuck in traffic and he had to eat his soup by himself. What a shame!
When men look back fondly on the golden days of luncheons, the more cultured among them today recall that they were, of course, a terrible boys’ club. But they only remember the lunches they attended. At the turn of the millennium, women breaking the glass ceiling were everywhere in the media watching men do it, and it’s fair to say that we rose to the challenge.
I was lucky enough to be part of girl gangs who had boxes at the races and dog races, went to gamble at the Ritz casino, had private rooms at Nobu and the River Cafe and special tables at the Wolseley or the Ivy. Events where eight or ten of us, from government ministers to newspaper editors, TV bosses and big TV producers, proved that women could get on just as well over copious amounts of drink and merriment, and behave just as badly. I remember a public chant, an incident where two fierce egos challenged each other to an arm-wrestle, someone demonstrating how sign language could be added to porn to comply with new regulations and the destruction of a rather nice hat.
We were loud, but few in number. It wasn’t until I moved to New York in the 2010s that I realized that women’s networking over lunch was a global game. A kind publicist threw a welcome lunch at Michael’s, a Manhattan restaurant so important that network presidents had regular tables and the front desk tweeted daily the list of executives and celebrities who had walked through the door. She invited only women. I was the editor of a website that hadn’t yet launched and I didn’t understand why anyone would come, but we all ended up being featured in Page Six, New York’s gossip column, so someone knew what they were doing. Guests brought gifts of Diane Von Furstenberg scarves and eyebrow-styling recommendations. It was a serious step forward from our “girly” traditions in London, which included sending cute handwritten thank-you notes on artsy postcards and remembering each other’s children’s names.
In New York, I recognized that I was being accepted into a group where the rules were subtly different. Networking was about building quick intimacy, accelerated by spending money, but not necessarily by eating. A journalist once asked me out to lunch, but he started by saying, “I know you live near me and have a daughter the same age as me, why don’t you both get a manicure and pedicure?” This was a new approach to work-life balance.
Should we blame the Internet or budgets for the slowdown in lunch invitations? In a sense, the Internet has separated advertising from media, and as revenue has become programmatic, so have contacts. Those who inducted me are now, very sadly, starting to leave for the big, never-ending lunch. Let’s be honest, that’s not a lifestyle associated with longevity.
The only thing left was the kind of luncheon I would never have been seen dead at back then: the ticket-selling ones that began with the words “Women in,” often hosted by a plucky senior woman in an organization full of men, trying to simulate the clubs they weren’t invited to. The problem with these lunches wasn’t their intentions, but the lack of spontaneity in the execution. There’s little opportunity to network at a speed networking event. And, in truth, the few truly influential women in a given industry had no time between work and family events.
I don’t want to deny the benefits of more formal networking, though. The rules of entry to informal networking are opaque and exclusionary, and I can’t pretend that my group of girls were any more attuned to our different privileges than our male counterparts. I remember inviting younger colleagues to lunch at a posh Edinburgh restaurant to hear their hopes and dreams, hoping to show them that I valued them, but I immediately realised that it was far too formal and that I was in danger of doing the opposite. It is undoubtedly healthier that young women can now express their ambition by applying for mentoring and paid training schemes. I will never recover, however, from my fundamental disapproval of a stern-faced event where, after a glass of warm white wine, everyone exchanges a business card.
When I invite people to lunch, they are delighted but disconcerted. I feel a bit like I have sent a coachman with a business card. These difficult days of computerised bookings and automated emails are of course more efficient and democratic, but what an influence, ladies! The sheer influence of strolling into a “famous restaurant in London’s West End” to be 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 guest.
Except, except! Maybe there is yet another solution. On a recent trip to Manhattan, where everything happens first, a former colleague and networking expert announced that lunch, Midtown and power restaurants were back, along with everything ’90s. The personal connection, the intimate link between confession and intimacy, the sense of order in a chaotic world established by a maître d’ who knows your name and the table you like, an antidote to anonymity and socializing on social media. How thrilling and how relieving.
My advice for women Who wants to get in on this retro trend, this is what my forest sisters have passed on to me. Consolidate your spending. Spend your budget at one or two restaurants and those restaurants will reward you for your loyalty. Invite people over. These days, you can split the bill, but nothing says, “I liked it and let’s do it again” like, “You can do it again next time.” Create your own gang. Invite someone you know and ask a friend to do the same. Don’t underestimate the power of a little sin, whether it’s dessert, alcohol, or being slightly late to work, and always, always order fries for the table.
I’m unlikely to be a leader in this new wave of hope. Real networking should be reserved for twentysomethings, when everything is in front of you and you can still tolerate alcohol before 6 p.m. But if you’re lucky, not only will you learn a lot more about your job, you’ll also gain a little bit of life.
My best lunch ever started very simply with a senior TV executive I barely knew. Lunch was still in the works at 5pm as the staff around us began to arrange tables for dinner service, pausing only to reassure us that while life had to go on around us, they didn’t want us to feel like we had to figure it out. “We’re glad you’re still here,” they told us. Lunch ended at 7.30pm when she revealed she was going to dinner with Rupert Murdoch. She remains my closest friend and godmother to my child, but we eat lunch at our own pace these days.
Janine Gibson is FT Weekend Editor
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