This
Summer
This week started with a dash from London to Singapore that had me back at my desk by midday Wednesday with a rather nasty virus, which I believe came via the leafy foothills around Kunming. Most of my meetings in Singapore opened with first-hand accounts of swine flu, complete with stories about people putting themselves in voluntary quarantine and cancelling business trips to potentially risky destinations in places such as Texas and New York. 
Just as conversations three weeks ago would open with inquiries about how London was weathering the recession, most of my conversations in and around Orchard Road started with questions about the impact the flu was having on London. “The biggest impact is that it’s giving the people in the graphics department at Sky News the opportunity to cram more hysterical banners on TV screens,” was my standard response.
Perhaps, after 2003’s Sars outbreak, it’s all understandable. But given that there is no shortage of other viruses lurking in handshakes and air kisses, I didn’t really see why there was so much fuss about H1N1 – particularly when I was doubled up in pain on my flight back to London with a stomach virus that seemed far more violent than anything connected to piggies in Mexico.
Six and a half hours after the start of my airborne episode, the A380 (my first trip on the massive beast, but unfortunately most of the experience was lost due to the time I spent in its capacious bathrooms – a definite design plus) touched down at Heathrow and I shuffled through Terminal 3 to the Heathrow Express.
Unlike Singapore, there were no white-clad medical teams taking temperature readings of arriving passengers (or, if they were, they were doing so very discreetly behind backlit JCDecaux advertising posters or via massive scanners disguised as moving sidewalks). There was the odd passenger sporting a mask but most were clearing their lungs as they usually do after a long flight, hacking and hawking their way down corridors without so much as a handkerchief or the back of the hand covering mouths and noses.
I felt a mild sense of relief that Britain wasn’t making such a big deal of H1N1 because it only takes a few minutes at Heathrow to see that Britain has a whole other pandemic on its hands – the colour purple!
If the World Health Organisation has taught us over the past two weeks that there are six stages to a pandemic, then the purple pandemic that is sweeping Britain has surely now reached stage seven. Purple, in all its hideous shades, is now so widespread as an accent, highlight and dominating colour that there is a very real danger that the next time you pick up this newspaper it will be sickly shade of violet. Can you imagine? Would you read a purple-paged newspaper? What would it say about you? What would it say about the newspaper?
Photo: Salzburger Nachtrichten / AP
From the moment a visitor arrives in Britain, they’ll notice a running theme that starts with some of the navigational signage at Heathrow. Who in God’s name thought purple would make for a useful background colour to direct passengers to connecting flights? I think there’s a very good reason why navigational signs tend to be blue, green, black or yellow – in part because they’re more legible but mostly because they don’t make you feel like you’re being led to a great big Cadbury’s lounge stuffed in some distant hangar.
Pay closer attention at Heathrow, and you’ll also notice that special agents working for Wella or perhaps L’Oréal have been dumping purple hair dye at salons in the Hounslow area. Why? Because no one else in the world wants purple hair other than staff working at Europe’s busiest airport. In the space of just 15 minutes, I counted six people with purple hair working for various companies at the airport. This might not seem like a lot, but I challenge you to find the same number of random men (yes, men!) and women with various shades of purple locks at 5.55am anywhere else in the world.
Board the Heathrow Express and shades of purple are everywhere – perhaps the worst offender being the BBC news bulletins that flash up inside the train carriages. While the BBC is supposed to pride itself on being impartial and balanced, it’s obvious that someone responsible for Pantone’s purple spectrum has far too much influence over the corporation’s various platforms and, most notably, over its presenters.
If BBC newsreaders aren’t wearing some shocking hint of pink, then they’re sporting a flash of purple. Between them and what seems to be Gordon Brown’s lone, limp purple tie, the dominating story seems not to be Gurkhas, Afghanistan or pirates, but the unchecked purple pandemic that few people appear terribly concerned about. If the BBC is truly a balanced news organisation, then it needs to embrace a bit of olive, some dark navy, hot yellows and some sunny orange to level the playing field.
Barack Obama - Influenza H1N1 (Ben Heine after Shepard Fairey)
Purple may not seem a particularly grave threat but it’s right up there with teal (America’s answer to purple) because in theory it’s the safe choice that will neither excite or offend. And therein is the problem – it smacks of mediocrity and lack of courage to do something innovative and bold.
By Tyler Brûlé
Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle
tyler.brule@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/brule
Happy Holiday Style
"Keep in mind that children and elderly are most affected by viruses such as the Swine Flu."
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