Cool is about making your actions appear effortless
It comes down to doing something well without making a fuss - whether that's opening champagne (just twist the bottle while holding on to the cork), being calm and confident with strangers, or just resolving to see your mum more often - because supporting your family is always cool.
It's also a lot to do with timing
To be cool, something has to be just right for now. That's why the iPhone is cool - it keeps people effortlessly connected to their virtual lives - and why, back in the self-centred 80s, the coolest gadget was the Walkman, which let you take your choice of music with you wherever you went.
We've been trying to be cool since the 16th century
Baldassare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier served as a code of cool for the 1500s, with advice on how to behave in the Renaissance court and tips on cultivating sprezzatura - 'an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions'.
…but cool was officially born in the 1940s
Hot jazz was showy, big-band stuff, while the new, cool jazz was what the artists played for themselves; entertainment took second place. Trumpeter Miles Davis released his era-defining album Birth of the Cool in 1957.
You don't need to be young to be cool
Melvyn Bragg is still cool at 70 because he's just so informed, so unruffled, so in control and of the moment. On The South Bank Show, he can discuss footballers one week and Damien Hirst the next with equal smooth aplomb. The same is true of Joan Bakewell, a thoroughly modern woman who, at 77, continues to campaign for the elderly while winning awards for her support of gay and lesbian rights.
Looking cool means your clothes should never wear you
The more flamboyant your clothing the harder this is, so keep it classic and elegant. If you do dress up, act like it's nothing. Wearing an outfit to say 'look at me' just isn't cool. But if you can wear something outrageous - a telephone on your head like Lady Gaga, for example - and carry it off as though you're wearing jeans and a T-shirt, then that's pretty cool.
You can lose your cool - and get it back
In the early 70s, Rod Stewart was about the coolest thing on earth: raw, soulful and in the right place at the right time for a post-flower-power return to authenticity. Then he went solo and the albums started to sound like desperate efforts to keep up. Now he's regained his touch with The Great American Songbook: just the right direction for a mature man.
