About us

The Prodigal Guide is a lifestyle magazine for those – like Socrates, Victor Hugo, and Oscar Wilde– who believe that

not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued; that

as the purse is emptied the heart is filled; and that

anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

We do our damndest to publish clever, erudite and – most of all – opinionated content about the things we love (that’s mostly cars, films, food, gadgets and watches.) After all, like the Iron Lady herself, we think that

standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.

And as seriously as we take that task, you can rest assured that we’re not about to fall into the trap of taking ourselves too seriously. Like Roald Dahl before us, we know that

a little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

That’s why the advice we follow most closely when cobbling together The Guide for you is also Hemingway’s best:

write drunk; edit sober.

The Prodigal Guide was created by The Prodigal Fool, who now acts as editor-in-chief, with Straight-Six completing the editorial team. The two of them are joined by a motley crew of regular contributors, each with his or her own inimitable set of character flaws.

Editors

• The Prodigal Fool, our founder and editor-in-chief, has certainly earned his nickname. Over the years, The Fool has squandered more money on fast cars, Swiss watches and electronic gadgetry of all kinds than he – or his bank manager – cares to remember. During the day, he holds down a job in the communications department of a financial services firm. In the evenings, he can often be found stumbling out of Dukes Hotel mumbling “just one more Martini; I could have handled just one mmmmm… [thud!]”

• Straight-Six, our co-editor, had a proper job as a journalist for Dow Jones before lowering himself gently into the warm, forgiving waters of The Guide. He’s our resident fanatic: whether it’s devoting five hours a month to detailing his BMW M3, spending more than the cost of his car on a home-cinema system, or throwing thousands of euros at two vintage Rolex sports watches, Straight-Six simply does not understand the concept of restraint. He also – following a now legendary all-day drinking session – once bit (yes, like little dogs do) a dear lady friend of ours.

Contributors

• Patito, our Paris correspondent, is a lobbyist by day and a world-class, champion cocktail drinker by night. Having devoured almost every Martini in London, like a swarm of alcoholic locusts, she had no choice but to migrate to pastures new. In the summer of 2010 she moved to Paris from where she continues to report on the very best restaurants, bars and nightlife that her adopted city has to offer. Watch out Milan; it’s only a matter of time…

 

• Lady B, our resident shoe fetishist, was originally recruited to write about the hotels and restaurants she finds herself in while travelling on business with her City law firm. But her first and most enduring love (a certain Monsieur Christian Louboutin) often gets the better of her, so expect a bit of fashion thrown in for good measure too. Whatever she writes about, she has a distinct advantage over The Guide’s editors: she is occasionally sober during her research assignments so can actually recall details of the subject matter. For this reason alone, her posts are far and away the most accurate ones you’ll read on these pages. Hell, you could even call her a professional. In the non-prostitute sense.

 

• Underthedial, aka Ian Skellern, is our man in Havana, er, Switzerland, and while his professed field of expertise is high-end wrist watches, the poor boy knows zilch about Rolex (so he isn’t much use here), but luckily for us he has travelled a bit and has a fondness for fine food, sublime wine and luxury hotels. He is a Aussie, so his complete lack of good taste and manners goes without saying, but on The Prodigal Guide we like a bit of rough from time to time.

 

• PurpleEagleKing, is our Austrian-born style guru. We first met the Purple One when she responded to our look at Bond’s future: How Bond should be kitted out. She bent our ear for so long about all of the ideas we’d missed in our article that, rather than edit it, we thought it would be quicker and easier to either shoot her or give her her own damn column. We were unarmed at the time so chose the latter. PurpleEagleKing is passionate about good dress sense but you’ll also find her indulging in great restaurants, uplifting music, luxurious moments, fine manners and – in her own words – “making men feel triumphant”. Yes, that last one caught our eye too.

 

• Saffy Girl, was to be our Los Angeles correspondent, but after penning an impressive debut feature on the joys of her Cuisinart wine cooler, she vanished without trace and we never heard from her again. Emails to her have been returned, unopened, marked “I’m not interested in your puerile little website, stop emailing me.” Talk like that is murder. Saffy Girl is short, blonde and cute as a button. We’re offering a substantial reward for her safe return.

 

• Douglas Blyde, our resident foodie, (dammit, did we just use that term without irony!?) is a former documentary man and utterly gripped by gastronomy: driven by a love of good taste and fascinated by that almost nocturnal, nervously energetic breed known as chefs. He longs, one day, to own a pristine restaurant, boutique hotel, almost mythically revered vineyard and a vast chocolate factory…

 

• Big Snoopy, our TV insider, is a director and a producer, mostly of TV documentaries. But what he really always wanted to do was write. He knows his way around an edit suite, a director’s chair and a production meeting. Oh, and he could bore the hind legs off a donkey by pontificating about how others in the world of TV should be doing it differently. So, we thought we’d spare the donkey and give him his own guest column here on The Guide instead.

 

• Dublo is our resident screenwriter. That’s right, a real-life movie screenwriter. If we hadn’t captured him, drugged him and locked him in the basement here at Prodigal Towers, right now he’d be living the Hollywood dream that should rightfully be his, ensconced in a John Lautner house in Malibu. But don’t feel sorry for him. More fool him for drinking that spiked Martini in the first place.

 

And you

• Yes that’s right, you! Do you want to become a contributor? Please email The Prodigal Fool with a summary of your writing experience, what topics you’re interested in and one sample post that you think is ready to be published on The Prodigal Guide. Oh, and we think it’s only fair to warn you in advance: we pay peanuts.