Wordy Wednesday - Exclusive

Over the weekend London hosted the Gulf Luxury Goods Fair. This fair is aimed at wealthy Arabs, and is full of things that they couldn't possibly live without. For some reason I wasn't invited. Admittedly I'm not a wealthy Arab, but it would have been nice to at least have been invited. It's not as if I'd have embarrassed anyone by actually showing up. Still, no-one likes being excluded, especially a blogger who delights in keeping his readers up to date with all the latest products. Luckily, the fair got a mention on the Aimilia Show.

One of the leading attractions was the £90,000 iphone. "So what?", I hear you ask, "Apple products are always ludicrously overpriced." However, with this one not only do you get some bog-standard electronics in a fancy case, but the fancy case is jewel encrusted. This doesn't seem entirely sensible on an item that you're likely to misplace or get mugged for, but maybe that doesn't happen in the Gulf. Or maybe if you own a significant proportion of the world's oil, you just shrug and buy another one.


If, like me, you're on a more modest budget, you will be interested to learn about the cheaper items. Such as the new Jaguar. Starting at £52,000, it's only around half the price of an iphone. In fact, I'm not sure why they bothered to turn up to the fair. Surely no-one with a £90,000 phone is going to be seen dead in a £50,000 car? Perhaps you'd buy such cars for your servants, to save them risking them pranging one of your 30 Rolls Royces whilst running errands.

If I was an oil magnate, I'd have servants like that.

Those in a frivolous mood could do worse than get a £150,000 novelty watch. A lot of people could easily afford this if they traded in their house. They showed one on the news that has a built-in fruit machine. You'd have thought there wouldn't be much of a market for such a thing in the Gulf, where their religion frowns on gambling, but I suppose they're allowed fruit.

With all these amazing offers, it's perhaps just as well I didn't get my invitation. At least I'll be able to afford to eat again this month.

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Footnote:

FADKOG readers might be interested to know that in response to this post, google gave me adverts for Arab dating. Maybe I'll try it. Though I'll insist that my potential dates have to own at least one jewel-encrusted iphone...