A man walks into a pub (this isn't a joke, it actually happened on a family holiday in Dumfries and Galloway) and a kid in the corner points and goes:
"Look Dad, he's won something." The dad looks and spots a tweedy-looking man on whose lapel there is indeed pinned a rosette, such as might be dished out at a garden fete for the chap with the biggest marrow. Then the dad looks again. Two minutes later he's explaining to the kid that, yes, the man is wearing a rosette but, no, he hasn't won anything nor is he likely to because the rosette is purple and yellow, says "UKIP" and is clearly affixed to that party's candidate in whatever elections are then upcoming.
It's all true. I was the dad and what I didn't notice at the time was the man's tie, which is a pity because now I'll never know if it featured the Gadfly And Crank design favoured by some UKIP members and which, I learned this week, is traditionally worn by the party's MEPs when they meet up a Strasbourg's Pierre-Bois Et Feu restaurant to scoff poached eggs and fois gras. (It's called the Gadfly And Crank tie after Michael Howard's use of those terms to describe UKIP party members, though the crank shown on the tie is the sort you'd use to start a vintage car and that's not the sort Howard had in mind. To be fair to UKIP, though, I'm not quite sure how you would represent that sort of crank pictorially on a polyester tie.)
I think it unlikely I'll ever vote for Nigel Farage's party, but I confess to a sneaking admiration for those Gadfly And Crank ties because I do love club regalia and I suspect most men feel the same way. Why else do they join golf clubs? It has nothing to do with chasing a small ball around a big field and everything to do with the thrill of wearing polyester ties whose colours and logos are loaded with meaning and significance that outsiders can only guess at.
They sell the UKIP ties on the party's website (£10 and, yes, they come in claret) but typically the coolest club ties are those which are harder to acquire. Take the one that has on it simply a plain red triangle framed in blue. It's the tie of the Ejection Club, a group of men and women, pilots all, who have pressed a similar-looking button in their plane's cockpit and survived. Another one you won't find in M&S is the tie of the Shuttlecock Club, whose members have all come unstuck on the infamous Cresta Run and - you guessed it - lived to tell the tale of the terrifying toboggan track. Best (and gaudiest) is the tie embroidered with a huge helix worn by the RNA Club, founded in 1954 by a group of scientists working on DNA research.
It's hard to compete with that sort of derring-do but go online and there are websites where you can cook up your own club tie, even if you don't have the club to go with it. I plump for a four-stripe design in the colours of Saxe, Sunshine, Cardinal and Lilac - a hideous confection - and for an emblem I'll have a man in a pub wearing a UKIP rosette. I think I'll call it the Club Of Hopeless Causes.
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