Podcasts and Aperol? How common! Nicky Haslam unveils his 2023 guide to Great British snobbery

Interior designer Haslam has shared his definitive guide to separating the wheat from the chaff

On their way out: ‘Aperol anything’, Grayson Perry, and the Northern Lights (iStock/Getty)

Planning a winter nestled indoors with a skinny latte and a good podcast? Or dreaming of a summer sipping Aperol Spritz’s while watching Wimbledon? Unfortunately, that makes you rather common.

So says interior designer Nicky Haslam in his fiendishly snobbish annual list.

With an impecably posh Eton education and an eqully credible connection to nobility (his mother’s godmother was Queen Victoria), Haslam has become Britain’s self-appointed arbiter of what’s hot and what’s most certainly not when it comes to being upper class.

For the past five years, he’s put together his annual selection of “things Nicky Haslam finds ‘common’”, printing the list on a tea towel that can be purchased on his website.

The 84-year-old socialite’s choices have previously included lists including celebrity chefs, expensive bikes, and skiing in France.

On Sunday (5 November), Haslam unleashed “The Fifth Nicky Haslam Common List” on the world. It’s a wide-ranging selection, covering everything from hobbies and interests to food and drink and, erm, health conditions.

Items on the list can be sorted into a number of categories. There are those most in line with old-school class snobbery: coffees with “crystal coffee sugar”, feel-good TV like The Repair Shop, attending festivals.

Then we have those with a different approach to “common”. In the recent past, these items were considered edgy or unusual, have subsequently become popular and in turn oversaturated the market. Here, common can be taken back to its most simple meaning: something that commonly occurs. “Basic”, as Gen-Z would put it.

Aperol, the lurid Italian apéritif, makes for a delicious drink, but is hard to escape in the summer.

Podcasts were once a cutting edge medium, but with more than 1 million individual shows out there, they’re clichéd.

According to a recent survey, seeing the Northern Lights is the number one travel event on the British public’s bucket lists. Not only is that considered common, in Haslam’s eyes, but so, bizarrely, is having a bucket list at all?

Those wanting to avoid Haslam’s “common” food and drink items will have to eschew more than just Aperol. Strawberries? Out, apparently. Think “ordering lobster” is a show of wealth and sophistication? Not according to Haslam. In fact, avoid Italy altogether; not only is Aperol apparently a no-go, but so is Puglia and “Italian food” in general.

To impress Haslam, culture vultures will want to steer clear of the works of Grayson Perry, the BBC Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny. and Choupette (the late Karl Lagerfeld’s cat).

And whatever you do: don’t use the words “110 per cent” as an agreement or describe something as “more-ish”. Haslam wouldn’t like that.

Aperol Spritz is no longer the drink du jour , according to Haslam (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The most bizarre “things Nicky Haslam finds ‘common’” (2023 edition)

The Northern Lights

Podcasts

Choupette

Grieving

Puglia

Your Brownies recipe

Aperol anything

Grayson Perry

Mrs Grayson Perry

Italian food

Pride in grown-up children

The stars of ‘The Repair Shop' (BBC/Ricochet/Guy Levy)

Aliens

The Repair Shop

Music

Ordering lobster

Bucket list

Selling your business

Needing house keys

Skinny laaartays…

…with crystal coffee sugar

Wimbledon