The Fly was out buzz­ing around recently, and was hor­ri­fied to hear someone at a sup­posedly upmar­ket bar (for its type) politely ask a gen­tle­man to remove his hat. Why might this be? he asked. Appar­ently it was a “secur­ity issue”.

No hats, mate!

Are the water­ing holes of Wel­ling­ton des­par­ately afraid of tommy guns in trilbys? Sem­tex in som­brer­os? Flick-knives in fedoras? Appar­ently not, because the gen­tle­man in ques­tion was later approached by the apo­lo­get­ic bar man­ager and provided with a glass of wine on the house, because the rule was devised to deter chavs rather than chaps: a rash of base­ball caps at apeish rather than rak­ish angles had promp­ted a revi­sion of the dress code.

Fair enough, one might say, but numer­ous punters were hap­pily served while wear­ing the afore­men­tioned ersatz sport­ing headgear, and one rum cove was even spot­ted wear­ing some­thing more appro­pri­ate for a llama her­der than a man-about-town. While one can sym­path­ise with the man­age­ment look­ing askance at our com­pan­ion’s attire (and really, a Gatsby cap and club col­lar is so nou­veau riche), surely if they mean to enforce sar­tori­al stand­ards it would be bet­ter not to hide behind “secur­ity” con­cerns and just be open about it.