I am very surprised to find that the GQ editor, Dylan Jones, has become a committed recruiting sergeant for Jeremy Corbyn: after all, Jones did once pay David Cameron 20 grand to be allowed to write a book about him. But it is impossible to draw any other conclusion from Jones’s faux-pained Today programme interview about Corbyn, who is the magazine’s cover star this month.
I must admit, I didn’t hear this live – like anyone normal on 1 December, I was listening to Mariah Carey’s Christmas album. But having caught up with it, I can see it’s absolutely the most important thing this editor’s done since the GQ power list that ranked David Beckham above Rupert Murdoch.
By way of context, I don’t really read men’s magazines – I am quite uncomfortable with the way they demean men. Just kidding! I love them, with all their hilarious articles about Bear Grylls’ work ethic, what to do in 48 hours in Zurich, and the overwhelming implication that not knowing the difference between a standard luxury watch and a chronograph is a moral crime basically akin to racism.
Anyway, Jones began by sniffing to Today that Corbyn didn’t realise “he couldn’t just turn up in his anorak”. The entire riff seemed predicated on the notion that British people would rather be led by someone whose team spend literally months being dicks about what their client will and won’t do. “He’ll wear Tom Ford, Dior, Armani (mainline, no Emporio) – nothing by John Galliano for obvious reasons – and Ken Pavés does his hair or it’s off.”
Instead, Jones winced, the Labour leader’s office “didn’t really understand the process” – as though “the process” of how a magazine cover happens should interest anyone outside the trade to the extent that they’d lavish more than 12 seconds on trying to “understand” it.
For what minuscule amount it is worth, I thought Corbyn had never come across better than he did in the Today interview, despite the fact he wasn’t in the room. But wherever you stand on Corbyn – even if it’s his windpipe, to adapt a Steve Coogan joke about someone else – it was difficult to escape the feeling that Jones is a Momentum sleeper. “It was almost like he was being pushed around like a grandpa for the family Christmas photograph,” Jones said of the photoshoot – a critique that taps into the fact that everyone hates their grandpas, especially at Christmas.
If this wasn’t deliberate … well, let’s look forward to hearing Jones publicly shitbag Robert Downey Jr or some multi-Grammy winner the next time they act a million times worse. Mainly, Jones seemed shocked that Corbyn behaved in the way magazines let people behave all the time. But the Labour leader’s sole diva-ism seems to have been declining to be interviewed by Alastair Campbell, which is perfectly reasonable.
Furthermore, unless you’re a movie or rock star, these showbiz moments in life don’t come along very often. Looked at seasonally, Corbyn’s entire rise is a Christmas movie in the Home Alone/Trading Places tradition, where someone unsuited and vulnerable has to step up and deal with a situation. We don’t begrudge these characters the odd moment of owning their success, do we?
If anything, Corbyn didn’t go far enough. I’d have had the full Mariah Carey-style dressing room rider – 286 white votive candles spelling out FOR THE MANY NOT THE FEW, a basket of kittens to pet, and a vegetable medley with all the green ones picked out. Also: I don’t do stairs.
Anyway, the magazine containing the full interview isn’t out till next week, but I am one of the lucky! few! who has been shown it in advance. I can report … not a lot. The interviewer starts by saying Corbyn “shakes my hand like someone who has just been handed a particularly ripe piece of fruit”, and ends with an anecdote about Corbyn seeing an otter in the sea, which I think might be meant to be read allegorically. I’ve put a call into Bletchley Park, but haven’t heard back yet.
Certainly, some of Corbyn’s replies have the excruciating ring of celebrity cliche. He doesn’t use the large, formal opposition leader’s office because he “felt like a prisoner in a gilded cage”. Almost the exact words Mariah used for her marriage to Tommy Mottola. She ended up leaving him and emancipating her Mimi; Corbyn dealt with it by taking a much smaller office than his strategy director, Seumas Milne. Both have an amazing Christmas album in them though. (Jeremy and Mariah, I mean. I can’t really see Seumas doing one.)
Moving on, the interviewer and Jones are very exercised that Corbyn couldn’t name a favourite movie. (I once asked Nigel Farage to do the same, funnily enough, and he initially couldn’t think of a single one, floundering for what felt like hours before saying Love Actually.)
Mainly, though, the questions to Corbyn seem designed to showcase what GQ likes to think about itself, as opposed to anything else. For instance: “What’s the last American novel you’ve read?” When Corbyn cites a 1937 novel about Ford factory workers, he is immediately hit with: “Anything more contemporary?”
When Corbyn says he read De Profundis during one of his leadership campaigns, GQ follows up with “which, of course, is Wilde’s letter written while incarcerated in Reading gaol”. I adore that “of course” – for the benefit of readers only here for the abs tips and Overfinch Range Rover porn.
As mentioned, the Corbyn interview is thin editorial gruel. I’ve just finished The Vanity Fair Diaries, Tina’s Brown’s absolute scream of a book about her meteoric editorship of the magazine in New York in the 80s. It contains several episodes in which she’s not happy with a cover, and knows the only way to save sales is to use some sleight of hand, either with a cleverly provocative cover headline that jumps off the newsstand, or by creating noise around it in some other way.
Jones is engaged in the latter, perhaps because his mag is too self-regardingly grand to have given the public what it wants. Namely, to put Corbyn in a big Santa costume for the Christmas issue. (And don’t tell me he wouldn’t have worn it, because he dressed up like a hip-hop mogul for The Last Leg.) Having failed to do so, and been left with a bit of a turkey, Jones knows his trade, and is frantically hustling his way around the problem. Nothing wrong with that. We’re all in trade, dear – I myself am grateful for the column material. Our only wish can be that nothing like this is taken remotely seriously, by anyone, on any side of any political divide, ever. All I want for Christmas is that.
• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
