Since when did skiing become an exercise in vulgarity

Endless showing off, competitive spending the slopes have gone downhill, darling

- Henry Conway

Next week hordes of Brits will flock to the slopes, brats in tow, for their half-term skiing trip.

Skiing used to be quite smart, but that genteel mix of jet-set, fading aristo and solidly middle-class family ski holidaymaker has been horridly invaded. Social media shows the slopes awash with ski yobs. Not your classic, slightly drunk but avoidable high-street yob - even worse, a yob with loadsa money, sullying the Alps with Botox, waxed eyebrows, voices that can set off avalanches and, ugh, a mid-level Insta following.

Long gone are the days of Capucine, in sable bobble hat and pearls in The Pink Panther, glamming about Cortina, or Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy mink snood in 1963's Charade, smoking on a terrace in Megève. Skiing these days is less about avoiding ice patches in the middle of the slope and more about zooming quickly away from a particular type of non-entity influencer in shapewear trying to get the perfect tits'n'arse shot. The ski yob seems to manifest as either this amateur influencer or Only Fans star, or the ubiquitous tech bro skier. I'm not sure which is worse.

Ski hooliganism is not concerned with the piste, it's all the adjunct slopeside ghastliness.

Party-lunch and après-ski culture in certain parts of Europe have become too much to bear. I love a lunch, I've practically made it my profession, and a ski-side mountain repast is one of life's great pleasures. Tartiflette, a vinaigrette-heavy crisp salad and glass of Grüner Veltliner, served in a wooden hut with little red and white gingham curtains is, to me, mildly arousing.