Oh wow, you are all so lucky.

Church's are such interesting shoos and one of my favourites. They now make lots of lower end stuff and now have very similar looking goodyear shoos that compare in looks to the old Church's, but these Church's are lower grade.

the british press somehow latched onto the fact that tony blair used to wear an shined up pair of churches oxfords, with cries of ohhh aren't they expensive and so on, I think it probably was a PR misfire in that tony's office released this tittle tattle to prove how thrifty he is keeping shoes for so long without releasing that churches shoes to the majority of the population would still be deemed as high end luxury. the profligacy of tony's policies only dawned on the idiotic masses post facto .. & the country is still struggling to shake off the excesses and wastefulness he encouraged.

so in your mind who makes the best RTW shoe now?

I checked out the Lattanzi RTW on their website, dirt cheap, don’t look anything special to me. If the RTW are cheap and nasty, I wouldn't trust them for bespoke.

Politicians have to walk a tightrope when it comes to shoes, can't be seen as too flash or frivolous these days. Then you had Ken Clarke stating he wore Hush Puppies, smoked cigars and digged modern jazz. He has later rescinded his position on Hush Puppies, advising that he did sport suede shoes, 4 or 5 of the same model, but they definitely are not Hush Puppies. I use to like suede shoes too, until I found out they were a code for having been a colonel in the Guards, or were a sign of homosexuality in 1950s Soho.

Anybody spotted Nigel Farrage shoemaker?