This actually happened
Bertie Hoskyns-Abrahall, partner at big shot private client firm Withers, has made an appearance in a Tatler article called ‘The rules for wearing make-up during the shooting season’.
Yes, we know.
The column is written by the very middle-class magazine’s ‘Beauty in the Country’ columnist Netia Walker, and features advice on how best to play grouse shooting season.
The piece features unmissable fashion tips and tricks like:
Grouse are very alert and react to bright colours, so for heaven’s sake don’t go out bedecked in shocking-pink cashmere, and if you have very bright highlights or very blonde hair, wear a cap.
And:
There is A LOT of walking to be done and people forget that it’s meant to be the height of our summer so can be boiling. Remember this as you dress — you don’t want to be carrying armfuls of discarded tweed along with you all day.
You’d think a make-up advice piece about beauty in the countryside wouldn’t be the place for a London-based male law firm partner to make an appearance, especially given the firm’s efforts to buck the stereotype of stuffiness attached to lawyers who serve wealthy private individuals. But you’d be wrong. Cue Hoskyns-Abrahall:
No one in their right mind refuses a day’s grouse. Bertie Hoskyns-Abrahall, a partner at Withers, agrees: ‘If you are lucky enough to be invited grouse-shooting, you need to be on your best possible form — there is a waiting list, so if you make the cut, go for it!’
Well that settles that then.
Maybe Hoskyns-Abrahall’s fleeting appearance in the article can be explained by some law firm partners’ love of eating game birds.
Remember Fieldfisher’s pheasant farrago of a few years back, when the firm was forced to switch to other lunch options because — shock horror — their stock of the bird was “too thin”.
How the other half live, eh?