British GQ June 2016

A few weeks ago I was attending a big music industry event in aid of music education. All the great and the good were there, by which I mean people in full-time employment who happen to earn their living in the music business: record company heads, agents, publicists, publishers, promoters, journalists (not so many these days) and seemingly dozens of people working for quangos (most of whom appeared to have the words “associate” or its US counterpart, “vice president” attached to their job titles). It was a swinging affair, with performances from highly proficient students and speeches from various industry bods, swanky non-execs and – this being a London event – a topof-the-bill monologue from Boris Johnson. As this was a highly mediated event full of gossip columnists, music paper hacks…

Lou STOPPARD GQ’s Contributing Fashion Editor Lou Stoppard spent time with British artist Celia Hempton, who finds creative inspiration in online exhibitionists. Hempton spends several days a week logged in to Chat Random, painting nude video chatters from across the world. “The relationship between subject and artist is layered and slippery,” says Stoppard. “Hempton’s work captures the trickiness of sexual politics.” Arthur BELEBEAU The photographer Arthur Belebeau brings shoes to life for this month’s feature on summer footwear. Belebeau, who has shot famous faces including Katy Perry and Kim Kardashian, wanted to give each colourful shoe its own character. “The idea was to show the personality of the shoe as well as the personality of each outfit,” said Belebeau. “We wanted to bring the fun and energy of the summer.” Caroline DAVIES How do you…

We are in the middle, so we’re told, of “Tinder and the dawn of the dating apocalypse!” We don’t date anymore, we app. From a standing start, the Tinder app has now been downloaded over 100 million times, and there are, at any one time, over ten million people swiping with horny thumbs. And it’s not even the most popular app anymore. A host of slightly tweaked others have joined it, all helping you, the sexless singleton, have sex. Don’t worry – GQ isn’t about to bemoan this. We couldn’t be more for it. Your humble GQ correspondent, for instance, has been awed by the wonder of hook-up technology ever since we heard the story of a former colleague’s flatmate. Said individual was an avid watcher of two long-running dramas which aired…

TERESA Palmer is in her Los Angeles home, surrounded by security guards. Her house alarm went off at 3am and they’ve yet to discover why. “It was scary,” says the 30-year-old. “But I had my hunting knife next to me.” Naturally. After all, Palmer grew up on an Australian farm, where hunting knives were the norm, before moving from Adelaide to LA to parlay her ample charisma into screen presence. Just check 2013’s zombie comedy Warm Bodies, in which she charms the life back into Nicholas Hoult, or her performance this month in Terrence Malick’s Knight Of Cups. She plays a stripper and initially her co-star, Christian Bale, didn’t realise she was an actress. She spun him some fake backstory as she gyrated on a pole. “It was hilarious,“ she says,…

THE art world is famously opaque: buyers, sellers, fixers, blaggers, what’s in, what’s out, and exactly who’s paying how much? to whom is all kept to a small cabal of those in the know. So why would you expect the dining room of choice for art’s elite to be anything other than a well-kept secret? To access Bonhams’ Michelin-starred restaurant, which has just extended its opening hours into the evening, one must turn up at an alleyway behind the auction house and head up a flight of stairs where a small dining room that seats just 20 awaits. Yet chef Tom Kemble’s outstanding, level-headed menu – poached ray wing, saddleback pork chop – combined with outrageously affordable prices, has major collectors and museum directors clamouring for a table in its…

Texas hold’em, blackjack, roulette – think those games are beholden to chance? Professional gamblers now argue otherwise. Adam Kucharski’s new book The Perfect Bet reveals how teams worldwide are racing to crack the seemingly uncrackable. Here’s what we learned. SPORTS BETTING Where football results were once regarded as unpredictable, whole hedge funds are now dedicated to in-game betting – such as the London-based Fidens syndicate that launched in 2011 and now manages over £5 million. Winners’ lessons: Analysts have discovered that the clichés in football are mostly wrong, including the idea that attackers are vulnerable after a goal. The effect of red cards is also vastly overestimated by bookies, apparently, and the most valuable players are those who produce the most shots rather than the most goals. BLACKJACK Everyone knows about card counting from the…