When I was just a ladette, my careers officer told me that "a job is not to be sneered at, Miss Booth", after I had wrinkled my nose at his promise that "a girl like you could find work in an office as a secretary". The title "careers officer" was a complete misnomer, like the legend "Jobcentre" was in the late Seventies. He had no career to offer a comprehensive-school brat, and the Jobcentre had no jobs to offer, either. Careers, it seemed, were reserved for the sons of millionaires and ministers. Still, maybe the poor guy found his job depressing and had once dreamed of joining the circus or being a Hollywood swashbuckler.
According to friends at the time, boys fared little better, and came away from their fifth-form interviews chanting the mantra "army, police or prison, army, police or prison". Unless they were black, that is - then the mantra was "prison, prison or sport, prison, prison or sport". The promise to try both showed the grim humour needed to cope with a suddenly bleak-looking future.
A recent survey revealed that many 18-year-olds nowadays can expect to have six "careers" during their lives. Not jobs, no. Careers. At first, the news stunned me and seemed extraordinary. We know the Prime Minister bangs on about "lifelong learning", but six careers? I looked back over my own 12 working years and realised with a shudder that I'm already on "career" number four. A quick dinner-table poll last week revealed that many of my thirtysomething peers have also dawdled, scrabbled and meandered their way through three or four careers in just over a decade.
With another 30 or 40 years still to go, we'd better get a grip. The TV producer next to me nervously vowed to try harder for the all-but-extinct "BBC long-term contract". Everyone else vowed to dream much harder about that "book deal worth millions".
My friend "Danny" would laugh at our anxieties. He is the most successful career adventurer I have ever met. That Grandpapa ran a small South American state for a decade or so meant Danny was loaded from the start, and thus did not have to contemplate any job or starvation. Still, his attitude that "work is just a high-adrenaline sport, darling - exciting because it is treacherous" is enviable, if not admirable.
Danny started his working life as a Tory wonk in the Thatcher years. Like his Millbank successors, he left university unfettered by pesky ideals and could therefore shift freely between Downing Street and Liverpool Street. After his beloved Maggie fell, he spent a couple of years acting as "manager" to 20-year-old models and TV presenters. For the first half of the Nineties, he was a fixture outside Soho House, purring loudly into his mobile: "Of course they loved you, darling. Everyone loves you, you are perfect . . ." He later toyed with e-commerce, and sold up just before stocks fell. So I was shocked when a mutual friend, reporting on the "Erotica" exhibition at Earls Court, told me breathlessly that Danny and his wife had obviously fallen on hard times. She had spotted them minding a stall that sold "sex aids".
Last week, I met up with Danny. I was dying to hear the full story and, as ever, he had a goody to tell. He and his wife had found themselves in between careers and, during a brainstorming session, had come up with these latex, make-you-own-vibrator-at-home kits. They had ordered the necessary equipment and the specialised rubber from an internet site, and had "practised". It is, he assures me, very simple. The woman pours warm latex on to the part of her boyfriend she wants to immortalise. The rubber sets quickly - and bingo! With a battery-charged base unit added, you have a hubby-shaped toy to play with at your leisure.
In their plush Kensington bedroom, Danny and wife made 1,000 sets to sell to the public at £25 a head. At the exhibition, they took orders and payment for more than 10,000 kits. "I made a fortune, darling, an absolute fortune."
I bet his careers officer wouldn't be at all surprised.
