As young arts editor working back in the 1990s, I once snagged an interview with the late French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, during a brief pitstop on a promotional tour. It was a coup. Wanting to give him a quintessentially British experience, involving fuss and fanfare, I took him to tea at the Ritz, whereupon the great philosopher of the hyperreal got himself barred on account of not wearing a tie. Baudrillard was furious. The ruling, he protested, was antique, ridiculous, inane. His mood, formerly genial, turned huffy.
It quickly became clear that the tie problem was altogether more serious that I’d thought: it was an affront to the very idea he had of himself. Whatever else he was, Jean Baudrillard was not a
