Tag: tie

7 Reasons A Cravat Is The Way Forward

With just nine months to go until I become a man, I have been looking at what I shall wear on the day. My cricket whites were voted out in the first round so it looks like I will be going the top hat and tails route. With the cravat. It’s the way forward. Not just for marriages, for all time.

1. Sophistication. When you see a man in a cravat, you can tell exactly what sort of man he is. Debonaire, suave, handsome, wealthy, intelligent and affable. You see how easy it can be to fool people.

2. Silk. No, not the fabric kind, the Robert Kilroy kind. When he founded the now largely unheard of Veritas Political Party in 2005 he set out his vision using the immortal line, “An end to cravats!”. A rather odd call given that the country was then being led by Blair and Prescott. Hardly two men who were in a rush to don a necktie before breakfast. Anyway, since then Veritas and Kilroy-Silk have done little but go backwards which surely suggests one needs a cravat to go forwards.

3. Achievement. The last time I wore something around my neck – apart from a tie and a forearm while playing rugby at Loughborough University – was when I was a cub. And, as I may have said previously on 7 Reasons, I was a bloody good cub. I had badges and woggles and wiggles and dobs and dibs all over my room. I was that good. And really, the only thing that stopped me continuing as a cub, was that I got old. And as soon as I got old I stopped achieving things. Well, badges anyway. Until now I couldn’t work out why. Then I realised. It’s because I am not wearing anything around my neck. If I want badges again, I need to wear a cravat.

4. Handkerchief. The difficulty with a tie is that when you wipe your nose on it, the remnants are there for all to see. There’s really no where to hide it. A cravat though is tucked inside the shirt, which means if you wipe carefully with the edge of the material it can easily be hidden from view.

5. Present. A cravat is the kind of item that can easily be presented to your father, uncle or grandfather should you forget that it is his birthday. You could hardly whip off your trousers and hand them to him could you? But a cravat, of course you could.

6. Unbuttoned Shirt. The problem with a tie – apart from the fact that one in every four features a button that when pressed plays Jingle Bells – is that they are not very practical when it comes to allowing you to breath. It’s not necessarily the tie that has the strangling effect, it’s the shirt. When the top button is done up and the collar closes in around the neck breathing becomes a chore. Either that or the shirt is so big that it makes you look like you’ve been very ill recently. A cravat, though, allows you to keep the shirt unbuttoned. It allows you both to breath and not look ill. And that has to be the way forward. If you want to live.

7. In The Club. Despite extensive research I have not been able to find a single Cravat Club or Appreciation Society in the world. I have found the Odd Sock Society, the Anstey Nomads Underwear Supporters (ANUS) and the Cod Piece Collective, but nothing through which you could celebrate the cravat. How can that be? Well the answer is simple. It’s because the cravat hasn’t had its time yet. It’s ahead of its time. To wear a cravat now is to be a trendsetter. You could be like the guy who bought a Betamax player. Or a Sinclair C5. Get ahead now.

September 21, 2011
Russian Roulette Sunday: 7 Reasons You Found Us

Visitors mean a lot to websites. Visitors are their oxygen. We are no different. At 7 Reasons we like to breath. And we’re not doing too badly on that account, thanks for asking. In the past seven days thousands of people have popped by, either because they are regular visitors or because they have typed something into Google and 7 Reasons has appeared in the search results. All are welcome. Well, nearly all. We’d be lying if we said 7 Reasons hadn’t opened our eyes to the amount of weirdoes that own a computer. There aren’t many, but there are enough. 50% of whom really need to be recaptured very soon. So, in the last seven days, here are the most random, mind-boggling and disturbing phrases people have searched for. And if you want to know where they turned up, just click on the link. Oddly, I don’t think it was quite what they were looking for because no one left a comment or used the rating system.

1. “Meeting Arrive Sweat Enter Room Embarrassing Business” – 7 Reasons To Become An Artist

2. “James Martin Chef Nude Picture” – 7 Reasons To Cycle Naked

3. “Australian Open 2010 Spectator Excrement” – 7 Reasons To Hate Pigeons

4. “MP Moustache Deep Diving” – 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Wear A Tie

5. “Break Wind Sideways Male Female” – 7 Reasons To Be A Bond Villain

6. “Penis White Peeling” – 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Wear A Tie

7. “How Many Pasty Shops In Bolton?” – Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Love Bolton

We don’t know why people searched for any of these things, but as we feel a duty of care towards all of our readers, here is some advice.

1. Seek medical help.

2. Seek psychiatric help.

3. Seek medical help.

4. Resign from your job at the brothel, madam. There are some things that no one should have to do.

5. Seek medical help.

6. Seek medical help urgently.

7. Just go out and count them Brad.

We take the problems of our readers seriously. If anyone needs any advice, on anything, feel free to ask us using the comments section.

January 24, 2010
7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Wear A Tie

1. It causes a rash. When you’re the cool kid at your school, people expect you to do things differently, to be a bit rebellious. To subvert convention, you wear your black, orange and electric-blue striped polyester school tie with the thin end at the front. This means that you have to tuck the thick end into your shirt. You spend four long years at secondary school with a painful rash on your chest. You are cool though.

2. It hampers nudism. If a nudist dons a tie, he ceases to become a nudist, he becomes a weirdo.

3. It is disrespectful to Alan Hansen. Have you noticed something about football-pundits? They all wear shirts without ties. All of them, on every channel. They stopped wearing them at some point in the ‘90s. We believe that this was a football-pundit gesture of solidarity with Alan Hansen whose tie, along with his shoelaces, had been confiscated for his own safety when his “You’ll never win anything with kids” statement was disproved so emphatically and publicly. This is also why they never show the pundits’ shoes.

4. It can be dangerous. Ties can be dangerous, especially around the office.

Having been lured into a bedroom in an Austrian palace by a scantily-clad Jennifer Aniston, James Bond has been hit over the back of the head and knocked unconscious by her unseen accomplice. When he regains consciousness he finds himself in a nondescript office. He is bound at the wrists and ankles. He is seated and flanked by two burly henchmen. He faces the bad guy who sits behind a desk on top of which Bond can see a red telephone, a large rubber-band ball and a paper shredder. The henchmen take hold of him under the arms, pull him to his feet, and drag him to the front of the desk. One of the henchmen inserts the end of Bond’s tie into the top of the paper shredder which springs to life instantly, slowly dragging Bond inexorably toward it. Shocked and intimidated, his tie tightening, with beads of sweat visible on his brow, Bond enquires, “Do you expect me to talk, Bronzethumb?” The bad guy replies, “No Mr Bond, I expect you to tie-die.”

5. It causes moustaches. Hairy-chested lotharios can’t wear ties. They need to wear shirts – preferably yellow – with several buttons undone to expose their hairy-chests and large gold medallions. If lotharios were to wear ties, babes wouldn’t be able to ogle their chest hair and their gold pendants that depict an almost life-sized St. Christopher. Consequently, they would bed fewer chicks and would be forced to grow a Tom Selleck style moustache to demonstrate their rampant manliness instead.

6. It is phallic. It looks a bit like your penis. It points to your penis. Do you really want to draw attention to your penis?

7. It is unhygienic. Ties catch food. Everyone drops food on their tie. If they weren’t wearing ties the food would land on their shirts, which would be good. Then they could just put the shirt in the washing machine and get a clean one out of the wardrobe. Ties are usually made of silk and are always dry clean only, so people don’t remove them after a jam spill, they just rub at them for a bit with a damp cloth until the stain is less visible. The food stain eventually gathers bacteria and people go through life wearing bacteria-harbouring ties. What do people do before they arrive at the meeting? They straighten their ties. What do people do when they arrive at the meeting? They all shake hands. What do people do after the meeting? They become ill and die a hideous tie-bacteria inflicted death. What they don’t do at any point is take their ties to the dry-cleaners. Nobody does. Ever. You don’t either.

November 23, 2009
7 Reasons You Should Wear A Tie

1. It’s Smart. A tie creates a good first impression. Whether you are are going for an interview or taking that rusty bike to the skip, you should always wear a tie. It is much easier saying goodbye to the rusty bike with a tie on. It feels more like a funeral.

2. It’s Sexy. As Jennifer Aniston aptly demonstrates for us, a woman in a tie can be quite lovely. You turn up to an interview like that and you will get that job. You better just hope they don’t give you a complimentary pencil sharpener. Where are you going to put it?

3. It’s Fashion. You may not have heard about it yet, but 2010 is going to be the year of the tie-pyjama combo. That’s right, people are going to start wearing their tie in bed. It’s going to be the ‘must do’ activity so you should probably start now. Pyjama parties will never be the same again.

4. It’s You. The way you wear a tie says a lot about you. Just think of Rambo. The colour also says what type of person you are. Blue indicates a caring and humorous nature. Red shows passion and fire. Black denotes serious intent. Yellow with green dots suggests colour blindness. So remember, ‘Whatever message you want to get across, say it with a tie’. (That’s a great line and now the copyright of Jonathan Lee).

5. It’s Food. A tie is the only piece of clothing that it is acceptable to be seen chewing on. It is to apparel what the biro is to stationary. And of course you are not actually eating the tie, you are just sucking out all the nutrients. It is much healthier than a Snickers bar and does count as one of your ‘five-a-day’.*

6. It’s Useful. Why do you think James Bond always wears a tie? It’s because he never knows when he is about to be attacked. (Between you and me, I don’t know why he just doesn’t read the script. That way he could catch a different cable car than the bad guy. But anyway, he has a tie so it doesn’t really matter I suppose). James Bond and bad guy are in the same cable car. Bond left his gun under some French fancies pillow so he is both unarmed and knackered from all the fancying. Suddenly the cable car comes to an abrupt halt because bad guy’s mate has pressed the ‘off’ button. Bad guy whips out his gun but before you can say, ‘Bloody Hell Girlfriend! Bond is in a spot of bother here.’ Bond has electrocuted bad guy using the latest iPhone app and is whizzing down the cable hanging onto his tie. Genius.

7. It’s Clever. The tie was invented for one purpose and one purpose only. Everything else you have read are simply unforeseen bonus features. The one reason a tie was invented was because it is very clever at covering up jam stains on your shirt. Everyone drops jam on their shirt in the morning and it always lands right in line with the sternum. That can’t be covered with a jacket. A tie is your hero. And in the unusual occurrence that the jam stain is just off centre, well you wear a crooked tie.

*This is a lie.

November 20, 2009