I’m living proof not all office romances are ‘inappropriate’

The BP boss who quit over a ‘small number’ of office liaisons shows how the rules of workplace romance has changed, writes Rowan Pelling – but not necessarily for the better. And here’s why…

Look away, or I’ll call HR (Getty Images/iStockphoto/Aleksei Morozov)

Should BP be renamed “Boardroom Passions”? After four years at the helm of the oil giant, 53-year-old Bernard Looney has resigned after it became clear he had enjoyed a number of relationships with colleagues – rather more than the “small number of historical relationships” to which he had admitted during an official internal investigation last year.

When this story first broke, those of an infantile mindset (guilty as charged…) will have summoned visual metaphors involving giant drilling rigs, spurting oil geysers, perhaps even Daniel Day-Lewis being cast to play Looney in the film version, There Will Be a Non-Disclosure Agreement…

But this also serves to remind us all that attitudes towards office dating have changed considerably over the past three decades.

Whereas once it was widely viewed as positive that you might meet a romantic partner – perhaps even your future spouse – in the workplace, now many (if not most of us) are concerned about the power imbalance that such dating might involve, or the possibility of unwanted advances and coercion. Corporate codes of conduct have been tightened up accordingly. And it’s particularly frowned upon for those in senior positions to initiate sexual relationships with office juniors.

Which sounds utterly reasonable, until you look around – particularly if your work colleagues are part of Generation X – and note the number of relationships and marriages that have their roots in office romance.

At this point, I must raise my hand and declare myself thoroughly guilty of a workplace love affair. The year was 1993, I was 25 and the newly appointed PA to Michael Vermeulen, GQ magazine’s ebullient editor and one-man party machine. I did not fall for my immediate boss, however – which was just as well as he was thoroughly occupied elsewhere. (On my first and only Valentine’s Day as his PA, I had to send three identical, lavish bunches of flowers to three different addresses.)

I learnt via the office grapevine that Vermeulen’s official girlfriend had first met him when she was his assistant. She’d complained to what was then known as the personnel office about his persistent attentions, and they had shuffled her out of the office with a payoff. When he then asked her out formally, she said yes – a story that is illustrative of the ambiguities and oversensitivities that can arise from such situations.

For my own part, I had developed a very absorbing crush on the magazine’s deputy editor, Angus MacKinnon, and would do anything within my power to loiter with intent near his desk. I even offered to make tea for everyone in the office so I could place one lovingly by his mousemat, hoping this would lead to an exchange of conversation – a tactic that often worked.

We soon discovered we both felt there was no greater film in the cinematic firmament than Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death and fell into the habit of reciting stray lines of dialogue to one another. I nearly swooned when one day he said, sotto voce: “You’re life and I’m leaving you” – a line that’s preceded in the film by David Niven’s heartfelt declaration: “I love you June.” No wonder that one female colleague noted: “I saw you and Angus talking very intently during the fire drill…”

And yet I can’t in honesty regret any of it, or wish that the office had been better regulated, with tighter codes of professional and emotional conduct. Not least because, a couple of years later, I married Angus and went on to have two beautiful sons with him.

It was around the same time that Vermeulen, who was under huge work pressure to emulate the soaring circulations of the new lads’ mag titles, died in a moment of excess. Angus had to help arrange his funeral, and a great deal of energy was devoted to ensuring the editor’s many girlfriends sat in different areas of St George’s Hanover Square. Four different women said Vermeulen had asked them to marry him in the weeks before his death.

I imagine, to the ears of young people, all this sounds de trop, and I come across as a ghastly apologist for the worst kind of #MeToo behaviour. And yet I can’t help feeling that dating was easier – and workplaces more interesting – when it was relatively easy to conduct relationships within them.

Yes, there were rogues, but you were far more likely to make a cool appraisal of these men’s shortcomings when you observed them on a daily basis – unlike today’s dating apps, which tend to conceal and obscure a potential mate’s flaws. Even the mugshots are photoshopped. And how many potential life partners are you passing up if you work from home?

While it’s right to discourage hook-ups between office bigwigs and juniors, it’s also important to acknowledge that no one can regulate for some perfect distribution of sexual chemistry, meaning only people of equal professional status fall in love.

Furthermore, it’s an observable fact that power and influence tends to vastly inflate people’s sexual chemistry. What else explains the sudden allure of Matt Hancock to a gorgeous female colleague such as Gina Coladangelo?

So, while I’m glad that, in 2023, it’s the company boss who’s fired, rather than the women he dallied with – which, historically, wasn’t always the case – I’d still say there’s no better way to make an accurate character assessment of a potential mate than by watching them in the workplace.

And flirting with them during the fire drill.