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Thursday 21 August 2008

Brown is the new black

Nick Foulkes on the lure of credit cards

We read that Britain is a nation in debt; indeed debt is one of our cherished national characteristics — nothing like slapping down the plastic and getting that shot of instant gratification. I am not sure that there is a word that does for credit cards what philately does for stamps, but there should be because I collect them and have just added what must be the equivalent of some sort of rare first-printing Penny Black. At least I hope that I have, as I have only just filled in the paperwork, and the card is not black, but brown.

Credit and charge cards are indicators of everything from your financial health to your self-image. Like it or not, a card sends a message. Whether Coutts or Co-op, a card says something. Remember the time that black Amex Centurion cards came out? I can, and I can also remember the envy I felt when I was not invited to become a holder of this card — I felt like a political donor denied a peerage. I had loyally spent my way through thousands of pounds brandishing my American Express card everywhere from Cartier to the forecourt of my local Jet station and as a long-standing platinum cardholder I felt entitled to a nice black card.

It is all rather silly in retrospect and I even toyed with the idea of busting myself back to a green card, which I fondly envisaged proferring with the throwaway lie, ‘You know I was offered a black card, but when I looked at what it cost I was so shocked I went back to green.’ But in the end force of habit and laziness kept me on the platinum. I couldn’t tell you what it costs a year now, but I am used to it, even though the benefits, airline lounges and travel insurance, do not amount to much.

In fact I thought that, at 43, I had grown out of my credit-card envy, and that was when I received a silk matte package that stank of modern plutocracy. I tore it open and out tumbled some documentation, on which the Harrods lettering glowed in gold.

I was being invited to become a holder of the Harrods American Express card. Forget the mere Centurion card, offered to any old high-net-worth individual; this was a card among cards. My hands trembling, I flicked through the literature and read it so quickly that at first it seemed as though I was being told that Oscar Wilde had held this card.

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