Keep It Under Your Hat

You know what really winds me up? Course you don't, haven't told you yet, but I'm gonna, ohhh I'm gonna, I'll tell you alright, don't you worry bout that, you ready? Okay, here goes…

Right, so last December I'm out doing a bit of Christmas shopping, I'm wandering through the town centre, minding my own business – generally browsing up a storm – when all of a sudden this greasy little guy breaks away from a passing group of teens, stops dead in his tracks, points straight at me and shouts, "Ha! Check out Pete Doherty, man!" Now he had caught me slightly off guard to be honest, so I just sort of stood there for a minute staring blankly back at him as he triumphantly lapped up the weasely cackles coming from his band of cronies, before eventually slipping back in amongst them and shuffling off into the distance.

I genuinely didn't know what to make of it at first. Pete Doherty? What was that supposed to mean? He had definitely been pointing at me. Was it because we're both pale? Cos it's true, I am kinda pasty – always have been – but then, it was winter and nobody's exactly a bronzed god around that time of year, so I wasn't having that. Could be a sweat thing. There's no denying it, Pete's a pretty sweaty guy and while I like to think that I'm not normally, I was Christmas shopping and that's tough y'know, there's usually quite a lot riding on your decisions – especially when you're buying for women, because you're essentially out of your element. What might explain it then, is the fact that just previous to this incident occurring, I had been in this feminine looking shop searching for a feminine gift to give to someone, well, feminine (nah, nah, don't worry, it's nothing like that) and I had my choices narrowed down to either a small, but finely crafted ceramic duck (see?) or a big tub of sorta moisturising-relaxation-goo type stuff which looked like crap but smelt like heaven. Hands up, I'll admit it; I was seriously torn on that one for the first three and a half hours or so (look, I did say I was out my element) therefore it's entirely possible that all the pressure had got to me a little and I was now unknowingly sweating. I took off my hat and checked my brow…nothing, so I was ruling that out too. Then it hit me. My hat. I was wearing a pork pie hat.

So that's it, is it? It's come to this. If I choose to wear a pork pie hat, it has to be because I'm attempting to emulate a self destructive young indie musician with a heroin habit which – depending on your opinion – is either systematically destroying his talent, or else always outweighed it in the first place? It can't just be cos it suits the shit outta me? Y'know, if I'd been in the mood or the shape to chase after that gang – and I hadn't been completely convinced that they would've happy slapped me half to death if by some miracle I'd actually caught them – I might have explained to those giggling gimps that traditionally, the pork pie hat is only really connected with one sort of addiction and basically the clues in the name. That's right, when a person wears a pork pie hat they're, perhaps unwittingly, paying silent tribute to a legacy of rebellion and non-compliance stretching back much further than any recent troubled tabloid star with a guitar. What's more, in an effort to stop people attributing my headwear to some passing fashion fad in future, I'm taking this opportunity to officially document the secret history of the pork pie hat, right here, once and for all, just for the record.

You see, though it didn't actually come into existence until the early twentieth century, the origins of the pork pie hat date back as far as North America's first wave of lobbying for National Prohibition in the nineteenth century. It's a little known fact that, along with the supposed evils of alcohol at the time, pork pies were also being accused of having an almost equally negative influence on society. This was largely because, like alcohol, the consumption of pies during this era was staggeringly high, making these two vices in particular a target for both the Methodist and Baptist churches, who considered the excessive intake of each to be symptomatic of the sin gluttony. It's for this reason that still to this day, when overweight people are being taunted, reference is often made to their fondness for pies. Likewise, most people don't realise that even the famous British football terrace chant 'Who Ate All The Pies?' ironically has its roots on the other side of the Atlantic. The derogatory lyrics are said to be an exact recounting of the mercilessly repetitive cross examination inflicted upon one Robert Pinkerton – a famously stout, petty thief from Massachussets, locally rumoured to be of illegitimate birth – by the prosecutor Franklin Tudor-Grape, as he stood trial for a butcher's shop robbery in 1876.

Anyway, thanks to the Eighteenth Amendment of The Constitution, alcohol was finally banned in the U.S by 1920 and pork pies were to follow suit a year later when it was discovered that some bootleggers were soaking the pies in hooch and allowing customers to suck them dry before eating the evidence. To strengthen their case for widening the ban, the authorities hastily commissioned and released a flawed (and since disproved) scientific study, identifying the pork pie itself as a powerfully addictive opiate. Hence just as the outlawing of booze had lead to the creation of underground drinking clubs, so the clamp down on pies lead to the invention the pork pie hat. First credited to infamous bootlegger and mobster Johnny Toenails in 1923, this new variety of hat allowed people to safely transport illicit pies down to the local Speakeasy without fear of arrest, simply by positioning them under the hat (leading to the popularisation of the expression 'keep it under you're hat.') The genius of this new design was it's low centre of gravity and narrow brim, which meant there was little chance of the wind catching it, blowing it off and exposing your crime, as was known to happen in the early days of those daring enough to attempt to 'snack stack' as it was called, under a top hat for example.

There you go. Now you know how the pork pie hat came about. That's all true that is.