What Every Gentleman Needs
I have worn a suit and tie almost every day of my life. Suits and neckties come in the form of an easy going essay: http://tiny.cc/eys3v. This week I got to thinking what goes with them. I have owned four in the past thirty years and I use one daily.
Every night I put my trousers in my Corby Electric trouser press. I first come upon them in England decades ago where they are in every hotel room. When they came to be sold in Australia my family gave me one as a present. Since that time I have gained newer models.
Established in 1930, Corby of Windsor has supplied quality products to the hotel and hospitality industry for 80 years including leading industry hotel chains such as Hilton, Marriott and Intercontinental, as well as every B & B in Britain.
The design has never changed. Attached to a wall or inside a wardrobe, a large wood door fold down, and inside are two padded side which are heated. Your trousers are neatly folded in and the door folds shut. Electric heat creases your trousers while you sleep. Most also have a shoulder wide coat hanger for your suit coat, and a tray for cuff links and change from your pockets. It is in effect an electric valet stand. Business men and those who must dress in a suit, know the importance of creases in the trousers and a creaseless coat to make a good impression.
The Corby Trouser Press made the international press recently when former world Boxing Heavyweight George Foreman sued Corby Trouser Press over their new cords setting. George Foreman claims the new ‘Corduroy 2010’ model is just a family size George Foreman Grill, without the bit for heating buns, which nobody ever uses anyway.
An irate Mr Foreman cited precedent for his case after Corby was forced to withdraw a 1982 version of its press targeting shorts-wearers after an appeal by makers of the Breville sandwich toaster. He claimed the Corby Trouser Press people were ‘no good bums’ and that their product is ‘only ever used by drunk people who come back to their hotel rooms and want to reheat their kebab’.
We await the outcome with interest!
Another helpful dressing tool is the electric shoe polisher. Beneath the well creased trousers, must be a well polished pair of shoes. Once a month I line up all of my shoes, black and brown, and give them all a good coating of polish. Then each day before leaving my home, I buff them up on the electric polisher.
This give your shoes a professional looking shine with the press of a button. Shoe polishers are also small enough to store in a closet, or even in a cabinet. Mine has a hand height push button for convenience and stability. With a hand height button, you won’t need to bend down to start the machine; instead you can simply stand comfortably and press the button.
A tap of the toe upwards near the polisher, dribbles some liquid shine polish. Most shoe polishers have an optional burgundy buffer for brown shoes and a black buffer for darker shoes. You now have the shiniest, newest looking shoes around.
In the tray of your Corby trouser press lies several pairs of cufflinks, chosen for the colour of your shirt.
When I first started appearing regularly on Television in 1964 I discovered that people either hated you or supported you. So the letters started to come: “I can’t stand your fat smiling face, I watch you every week.” “You scumbag supporting a corrupt and illegal government…” and so on. Then there were those that said, “I know you never ask, but please find $2 to support your work.”
I decided I would reply to every letter, including the hate mail. I also decided I would be different from the American Christian preachers on TV who were always appealing for money. They sometimes took up a large part of the program urging believers to send money to buy more time to have more outlets where they could urge more people to send money to buy more time so they could urge more people to send…. I predicted our Australian people would get sick of that kind of religion.
I was right. Over the next twenty years almost all of those religious beggars went off Australian television.
Not wanting to be treated like them, I decided I would never accept any payment for speaking the Gospel on television and would never accept any personal gifts. I would appeal for support for Christian missions, but only for those I did not operate personally so my appeal would be at arms length from those using the gift.
I would also receipt every one of those gifts to others and send every person who contacted me an annual report with our audited financial statements. After forty years on television every week, I believe I am the only Christian presenter to operate like this.
After thousands of hours of telecasting, and hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail, I had received virtually no hate mail and no criticisms of our financial approach. This has involved setting up a large staff to help me with the answers to people letters, telephone counsellors to answer calls for spiritual help, and a production team to produce the program.
But I did break these rules once.
A lady from Sydney’s north shore, a Mrs Cruickshank, rang me at my home one Saturday afternoon. “Are you the Dr Moyes who speaks on television?” I replied I was.
She said, “I have your address from the telephone book. I would like to come around this afternoon because I have a gift for you.”
I replied, “Thank you Mrs Cruickshank, but I have a policy of never accepting any gifts from viewers. If you want to show your appreciation for our TV ministry, then send a gift to one of the Christian ministries I promote on the program.”
“No. I have a gift for you personally. I want you to have it. You don’t live far from me, so I will come down now.”
“I am sorry Mrs Cruickshank but I do not accept any gifts personally. That has been my policy now for many years.”
“Well I must give this to you, because I have been keeping this for more than fifty years to give to you.”
That got me in! I replied rather patiently, “Thank you Mrs Cruickshank but you couldn’t have been keep this gift for me for more than fifty years, because I wasn’t born fifty years ago!”
Mrs Cruickshank was not to be put off. “I want to give you a gift that once belonged to my father who died a long time ago. It is a pair of gold cuff links he used to wear, and I want to give them to you, because I notice you always wear cufflinks.”
“That is right Mrs Cruickshank. I do. But I still do not accept personal presents or gifts.”
“Well these ones were meant for you and only for you. I have been keeping them all these years. I remember you speaking one day about the significance of names of people in the Bible, and how parents give children names that have significance for them. And you have special names.”
I replied, “Well, the only way my names are special, is that my mother gave me the four surnames of my four grandparents. Gordon was my maternal grandfather’s surname; Keith was my maternal grandmother’s surname; Mackenzie was my paternal grandmother’s surname and Moyes was my paternal grandfather’s surname. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but I guess my mother couldn’t leave out one grandparent.”
“Of course not”, replied Mrs Cruickshank. “My late father was named after his four Irish grandparents in the same way. His name was Grantley Kieran Mackearney Marsh. He died over fifty years ago.”
“Well that is a bit of a mouthful like my name.”
“Yes, But you haven’t grasped the significance. When he died I kept his cufflinks to give to the man who had the same initials as my father had engraved upon his cufflinks. You are the only man I have found in more than fifty years that have the initials, G.K.M.M. I want you to have you cufflinks I have been keeping for you for more than fifty years.”
I accepted them and they fitted in well with my pressed trousers and shiny shoes.
Rev The Hon Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC