British GQ October 2019

Lest we forget, 1999 was meant to be the end of us all. It’s easy to laugh now, and to scoff at the media hysteria surrounding our approach to the millennium, easy to minimise the way in which we took the end of days so seriously. But we did. Sure, the concern over the Y2K scare was nothing compared to the atomic feverishness of the Fifties, when nuclear oblivion was all anyone could talk about, or, indeed, the Eighties, when even the most sophisticated soothsayers expected the Americans and the Russians to blow us all into space. And yet, the millennium bug was a very real thing. Well, it was in the media, anyway. For those of you who have quite sensibly filtered out the memory of it all, the YK2 bug…

Stuart McGURK GQ Associate Editor Stuart McGurk travelled to Sweden to interview teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg for this year’s GQ Men Of The Year Awards portfolio. “Interestingly, we had less time with Greta than any of the megastars in this issue. But then when you’ve met Obama, been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and given speeches worldwide, your time is precious.” Sirin KALE GQ contributor Sirin Kale investigated an apparent upsurge in Scientology in the UK. “My journey led me to unexpected places: I learned that our collective memory as a nation is shorter than we’d think, that security guards are unfailingly polite, even when they’re ejecting you from the premises, and that, mostly, Scientology is no laughing matter for its members.” Matthew BROOKES David Beckham made his GQ cover debut in October…

Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” felt like it came out of nowhere. In April, the country-trap song stampeded to the top of Billboard’s charts, holding the No1 slot for months. In a single week it was streamed 143 million times in the US alone, breaking the previous record (move over, Drake). But fans of social media app TikTok saw it first, sending the song viral by recording and sharing 15-second clips of themselves dancing to it like a cowboy. TikTok might seem hidden in plain sight. Although it has been installed by more than a billion people globally, according to market intelligence company Sensor Tower, the vast majority of those users are reportedly under the age of 30. In other words, this is an app that makes even millennials feel…

If you’re the sort of person who pays attention to the sharper edge of popular culture rather than spending all your time listening to true crime podcasts, then you will already have heard of Pete Davidson. No? Well, let us drag you out of your brainless cultural lethargy… Here’s the skinny on Davidson, a man who, by our reckoning, is an icon in the making. (Maybe.) His father died on 9/11 when he was seven years old; he’s a regular (and increasingly beloved) star on the US comedy show Saturday Night Live; he, by his own admission, “cannot function” without marijuana due to suffering from Crohn’s disease since the age of 17; he got really famous by dating Ariana Grande and then got even more famous by snogging Kate Beckinsale courtside…

The Sixties had weed, the Seventies got acid, the Eighties had (decent) cocaine and the Nineties took ecstasy. So what do we get? CB-fucking-D oil. I was at a friend’s 40th birthday party in Manhattan recently. They’d hired out a big, swizzy penthouse loft. They’d called the Champagne brand manager and blagged 20 crates of legit French fizz. They’d invited a couple of hipster drug dealers they knew. All in all, they were ready to celebrate. But, wait, what’s this I see on the kitchen counter as I peruse the bespoke birthday bar menu? CBD oil-infused cocktails? WTAF? Isn’t that for teenagers with terrible seizures? Or gym bunnies who take too many steroids so can’t sleep at night due to the swollenness of their own pecs? The truth is, no one…