We all should know that giving money to charity is a good thing. Wearing the badge to show it is simply vulgar

LAST MONTH Sir Martin Sorrell was interviewed on FT.com and was asked variously about the world economy, China and the future of the media. As I watched the video of this successful businessman earnestly holding forth, another, more urgent question formed in my mind.

Poking out from under the sleeve of his elegant charcoal suit and crisp white double cuff was a tatty piece of pale blue string, knotted with its ends dangling.

I reached for my BlackBerry and fired off the following message to him: “Much enjoyed your interview . . . Just wondered: what was that blue thing on your wrist?”

In a trice the reply came back. “Relic of my new year in Bahia,” he said. He explained that he had made three wishes for each of the three knots and that only when the string dropped off would they come true.

“What were your wishes?” I e-mailed back.

“If I tell you, they won’t happen,” he replied.

It was all most perplexing. Does this arch-rationalist genuinely believe in superstitious claptrap from Salvador about three wishes? And what does it mean when someone who wears the strict uniform of the successful executive displays something so prominently that clashes with it? What is he trying to say?

Is it that Sir Martin, who has often complained that people see him as a boring, micro-managing, number-crunching accountant, is trying to show that under the suit is a creative soul, a hippy at heart?

I thought about the blue string twice in the past two weeks when coming across conservatively suited businesspeople ostentatiously wearing garish rubber charity bangles on their wrists. The message that they were trying to convey was less subtle: we aren’t horrid capitalists – we care.

These bracelets are all a version of the mid- life crisis. I know this, as I’m a sufferer myself. Last summer, for the first time ever, I was invited to Glastonbury and for a full week afterwards I continued to wear the bracelet that gets you entry to the site. How daring, I thought as I arranged my wrist during a board meeting so that my fellow board members could see the grubby piece of golden ribbon.

This, I now realise, was quite pathetic. What I was actually showing off was not that I was a surprisingly cool middle-aged woman, but that I was a baby.

The urge to wear one’s heart – or one’s social life – on one’s wrist is strong among children. Mine would not contemplate leaving the house without at least six things tied around each wrist – a clashing array of dirty mementos of parties and concerts, friendship bracelets as well as rubber bangles professing support to the fashionable cause of the moment.

These charity bangles are the modern version of the black-and-white Ban the Bomb badges we wore when I was at school. We knew next to nothing about nuclear weapons; it was badges themselves we felt passionately about.

If you are a well-paid adult, you should have got beyond making such crude statements. Giving money to charity is a good thing; wearing the badge to show it is simply vulgar.

Office workers try to show difference by subverting their uniform in other ways, just as children do. A bright tie, red socks, a flash of crimson in the lining of a suit – all are the equivalent of the schoolgirl who hitches up her skirt or the schoolboy who ties his tie so that it only descends about four inches down his shirt. With an adult though, it’s not daring – it’s desperate. A man in a loud tie doesn’t say that he is creative and interesting, but that he is tiresome.

At school, we pushed uniform rebellion to the limit – there was one girl in my class who dyed her hair royal blue. Most business people stop before they get to this stage.

Visible tattoos, piercings, peculiar facial hair or non-standard hairdos are all rightly considered a breach too far. They suggest that you don’t know what the rules are – and in business, one needs to prove that one respects rules before one can be allowed to flout them.

Lachlan Murdoch has a tattooed bracelet on his arm, but that is because if your dad is Rupert Murdoch, a different set of rules apply.

If one really wants to prove one is not a boring, number-crunching accountant (although I can see nothing wrong with being such a thing if you are as good at it as Sir Martin), there is a better way than through bracelets, tattoos and ties.

It is to show one’s difference through the words that come out of one’s mouth. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)