TOM UTLEY: The photo that taught me life's most valuable lesson: Try to be cool and you'll end up looking ridiculous By Tom Utley for the Daily Mail Published: 01:02, 12 July 2024 | Updated: 01:03, 12 July 2024 e-mail View comments Somewhere there exists a snap of me, taken on a school trip to Greece in the late 1960s when I was 15 years old. In the fashion of the time, my hair is almost shoulder-length, and parted in the middle. I’m wearing a pair of duck‐egg blue, flared trousers and a pink, flowery shirt, bought for me in Carnaby Street.
If I ever lay my hands on that photograph, which I fear may have found its way into an album belonging to one of my siblings, I shall certainly destroy it. My trouble was I was trying to look cool, so as to fit in with my schoolmates on the trip. I realise now, at this distance of more than half a century, that I succeeded only in looking ridiculous.
But then, of course, nothing dates faster than fashion. Indeed, it’s a lesson that most of us learn as the years roll by: if we want to pass the test of time, we should dare to be uncool — and avoid anything that smacks of a trend. If we want to pass the test of time, we should dare to be uncool and avoid trends, a point Ken Bruce made when he attributed the decline in BBC Radio 2's audience since his departure to the station's 'urge to think of itself as being cool' This week, the great Ken Bruce made much the same point, when he attributed the sharp decline in BBC Radio 2’s audienc.