Mr 500,000 Chips

We recently saw a TikTok of the new guy on Dragons’ Den explaining the virtues of obtaining enough money to own a private jet: to maximise the number of what he refers to as his 500,000 chips – the amount of free hours he expects to get in life – “deployable against” enjoying himself (at everyone else’s expense, mind you!) 

This begs the question: “Where does a person go for happiness when they can’t even find it in duty-free?!” Well, for the jaded super-rich, the true meaning of life seems to lie increasingly in the digital realm of inane cartoon imagery investment.

“The further I’ve gotten into the web3/NFT space, the more bullish I’ve become on Bored Apes,” the Dragons’ enfant terrible, Steven Bartlett, tweeted after jumping on the trend, while former footballer John Terry continues to induct peers into his “Ape Kids Club”, whatever the hell that is.

The other day, One Direction’s Liam Payne tweeted: “Hey guys, I’ve decided to start a new Twitter account to just talk about NFTs… I know I get pretty excited about it sometimes.” We clicked through to his NFT account. “For those wondering about my new display picture, it’s my new @doodles piece that I got last week,” one tweet proudly boasts of yet another cutesy children’s illustration. “So cool, right?!” Not really, Liam!

It’s all enough to make us want to start up a nostalgic Facebook group called something like “Who Remembers Proper Celebs?” full of photos of Roman Abramovich doing a benign Harry Enfield grin next to his very own Francis Bacon triptych.

That’s right. That’s where our intrinsic disgust at these spiritually bereft NFTs and everyone involved with them has led us: Roman Abramovich standom.