And Mr Laughs did indeed change – into a black roll-neck top, for his appearance on Newsnight.
First The Beatles are seen in black and white, wearing black roll-neck sweaters and Beatle boots in what looks like an out-take from A Hard Day's Night.
This was a new world for the moptops (which were by now a little shaggier, creeping over the tops of their black roll-neck jumpers, over the collars of their suede jackets – did they ever look better?) and on Rubber Soul they mirrored it with cheek and a little distance, but never with cynicism.
In those days Mr. Dileo drove a black Rolls-Royce, a gift from his employer, with the license plate "THANXMJJ".
De Ludinghausen told me about a princess who wore only black and white, arriving alternately at Saint Laurent in a white or black Rolls.
Mr. Jones, who is black, rolled his eyes when he said that he works in a shipyard building named for the Confederate States of America.
Public transport being what it is, Monkey was beaten to the bubbly by a large black Rolls-Royce with the telltale numberplate RCD1.
When Kate Middleton, whom we must now call Catherine, or Princess William, or the Duchess of Cambridge, stepped out of her hotel and into a black Rolls-Royce, she looked, as a soon-to-be-princess probably should, beautiful.
A black Rolls-Royce with a sticker price of $350,000 was parked directly outside a main entrance to Merrill Lynch this week, with the bull in the company logo looking out at the car almost forlornly.
Formalities over, he suggested lunch and we were ushered into his gleaming, black Rolls-Royce, which purred gently down the street, turning left into Piccadilly and then into the tiny Air Street, where it stopped outside a Spanish restaurant.
"When he's in Azerbaijan," Huseynli said, "Mr. Ibrahimov always drives in his black Rolls-Royce.
