Coffee, Tea or Me?
 | |
| Author | "Trudy Baker & Robin Jolly" Ren Salto (ghostwriter) |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Vilmos Vencel |
| Country | Gylias |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Imperial SA |
Publication date | 1967 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 325 |
Coffee, Tea or Me? is a 1967 book credited to fictitious flight attendants Trudy Baker and Robin Jolly, written and edited by Ren Salto. It depicts the anecdotal lives of two lusty young stewardesses (the term used throughout the book), interspersed with epistolary elements such as dialogues, quotes from internal documents, and lists related to the life of a flight attendant.
Upon publication, it became a bestseller in both Gylias and throughout Tyran. It was later adapted into an animated series and a musical. Jokingly referred to as "Gyliair's greatest commercial", it is credited with consolidating the glamorous image of flight and flight attendants in the Jet Age.
Style and content
Written in the first person voice of Trudy Baker, the book describes a kind of glamorous lifestyle from the stewardess' point of view, working for Gyliair over the course of two years.
While it emphasises the sexy aspects of the job, it also recounts difficult experiences, such as disruptive passengers, unruly children, sexual harrassment, and the exhausting nature of the job's emotional labour and disrupted sleeping patterns.
The anecdotes are interspersed with various lists related to the stewardess life, such as the following:
- Neighbourhoods in cities where they usually live
- Bars in cities they usually frequent
- Preferred hotels during layovers
Specific chapters are dedicated to the occupation's jargon (including the notion of "stew-bums"), the inner workings of Gyliair's workers' self-management and the flight attendants' trade union, a "stew's-eye view" of the "liveliest" cities in Gylias and Tyran, and humorous observations on the stereotypes of flight passengers based on nationality and occupation.
One chapter details the full list of tasks that occupy a five-hour flight, complete with sarcastic retorts to unreasonable passenger demands and complaints.
The book includes illustrations by Vilmos Vencel, who portrays the flight attendants and female passengers with his trademark "refined raunch", and also designed the cover. The ghostwriter, Ren Salto, is acknowledged in the credits solely as "editor".
Development
The idea for the book came from Imperial SA founder Sári Gábor. After returning from a trip on a flight where she saw the Jørna Winther comedy Tre fyre ved navn Mads, she noted that there were not many works about flight attendants.
Ren Salto was assigned to the project, and introduced to two Gyliair flight attendants who thought they might be able to write a book together. Ren recalled that when he sat down with them and wrote down their anecdotes, "I realised they didn't have enough to sustain a book." He ended up asking them for more information about the day-to-day aspects of the job in order to have more material.
Ren took the initiative to interview more flight attendants, collecting more anecdotes and information. He improvised a standard list of questions, including "Where do you live?", "Where do you have fun?", "Where do you meet up?", and "Where are the liveliest places you've been to?". He combined all the anecdotes and certain elements of personal information into the two fictitious narrators, Trudy Baker and Robin Jolly.
He borrowed the book title from "an old dirty joke", which he reproduced in the introduction to the 2007 edition:
"So this stewardess enters the cockpit and asks the captain, 'Coffee, tea, or me?'
He answers, 'Whichever is easier to make.'"
When the book neared publication, the question of authors' rights came up. Ren understood that he could not be credited on the cover, since the central literary device was that the book was the memoirs of two flight attendants. However, the number of flight attendants interviewed, as well as the inevitable authorial embellishments, complicated the matter.
Ultimately, Imperial SA decided the simplest solution was to assign the moral rights to Gyliair collectively, and the royalties were divided evenly: half went to Ren Salto, and the other half to Gyliair.
Edit Gábor, who commissioned Vilmos Vencel's illustrations, recalled that Gyliair was "very apprehensive" about the project: "They didn't put any obstacles in our way, but they weren't excited about it happening either. I think they found it embarrassing." Gyliair's Director of the Management Board, Estelle Launay, gave the project her blessing after reading early drafts and being satisfied that flight attendants were depicted respectfully, and not objectified or exploited.
One of the flight attendants interviewed later appeared in Rasa Ḑeşéy's documentary Our Clothes, and stated: "I read the book, and recognised what I said. They played fair, they kept the essence of what I said and made the language prettier. I wish I was as funny in my interview!".
Reception
Coffee, Tea or Me? received good reviews at the time of publication. The National Inquirer wrote that the book "breezes through its sexy anecdotes with good humour and a big heart", and praised the "charming" authorial voice. Free Gylias commended the book for "shining a spotlight on the sheer hard work and guts necessary to make everything look so easy" in a job like that of flight attendant.
Silhouette's review praised the "scrapbook sociology" of the notes and lists included, and ended with the tongue-in-cheek hope that publication of the book would "lead to skyrocketing rates of courtesy, good behaviour, and considerate propositions" among airline passengers.
Upon publication, Coffee, Tea or Me? quickly became a publishing sensation and international bestseller. It distributed over 5 million copies worldwide, and was translated into 15 languages. It attracted reviews in international publications as well, such as Cacerta's High Society and Delkora's Dagbladet Arbejderen. Many of these reviews focused on the book's sex appeal and glamour; Dagbladet Arbejderen's review is notable for highlighting the trade union and labour solidarity themes instead.
Legacy
The title phrase became a "beloved and omnipresent cliché" in Gylias, as Susan Wallace wrote in Silhouette. As early as 1970, Denise Sarrault observed in one of her columns that "inviting someone for coffee, tea, or me?" was used as a proposition regardless of sex. Keie Nanei suggested in 2002 that the phrase was especially popular among men because "it can't be misread as aggressive", demonstrates a self-deprecating sense of humour, and can be used to convey a slightly old-fashioned image if necessary.
Coffee, Tea or Me? became a shorthand symbol of the glamour of air travel in the Jet Age, an era marked by luxurious service and a presentation of flight attendants as a prestigious "crème de la crème of young womanhood". Carmen Dell'Orefice wrote in The Travelling Companion that the book "caught something in the air and wrapped it up in a complete package". Several airlines drew inspiration from the book for their advertising, such as Royal Tennai Airlines' promotion of the Tennai Boy ideal, Royal Cacertian Air Carriers' emphasis on its service quality, and Air Delkora positioning itself as a "people's airline".
Radix wrote in 2007, on the book's 40th anniversary, that it was a "wonderful time capsule", and while its "effervescent tone" and "sexual escapades" were good, what made it enduring was the sociological importance of its lists and "sweet air of worker solidarity". The article noted important documentation of how Gyliair functioned as a worker-run airline, highlighting their rule of no phone calls at night "decades before anyone talked about the right to disconnect", and the honour system used by stewardesses to "gently ignore the official rule of no drinking 24 hours before a flight".
Gylias Review similarly noted that retrospective articles in international publications tended to take a more wistful tone — exemplified by titles like "When Flying Was Fun…And Glamorous" —, particularly in countries that had undergone various degrees of airline deregulation.
Gyliair received a windfall from its share of the book's royalties, which it used to give its entire workforce bonuses. It didn't renew the book's copyright in 1977, leaving it in the public domain. When the Filomena Pinheiro government began urging Gyliair to bring its operating deficit under control, its then-Director ruefully called the decision "a great short-sighted blunder".
Silhouette wrote that the book made Ren Salto "Gylias' most famous ghostwriter" and "a folk hero among stewardesses". He even married a flight attendant, and the marriage lasted until his death. The book spawned a "mini-cottage industry" at Imperial SA that produced similar books for other feminised occupations — including nurses, elevator attendants, tray vendors, and telephone operators, and paid dance partners —, written by Ren and illustrated by Vilmos, with the same breezy tone, sexy escapades, and epistolary elements.
Adaptations
Animation
An animated series based on the book was produced and aired on GTV1 in 1968–1969, lasting 10 episodes. Ren supervised the scriptwriting, and Vilmos served as the character designer. Trudy and Robin were voiced by famed orgone film actresses Máiréad Ní Conmara and Victoria Douglas, respectively, who practically reprised their typical roles of "honourable cocktease" and lively soubrette.
One of the producers commented that the team initially struggled with translating the epistolary elements of the book onto the screen. Ultimately, they settled on having Trudy and Robin break the fourth wall and tell them directly to the viewer with a wink.
The team were greatly pleased with how certain scenes translated to the screen, such as Chapter 7. In the respective episode, Trudy looks directly at the camera and tells viewers with a hint of tired sarcasm:
"And we know what you're all thinking as you file off the airplane past us. Who, what, why, when, where are we going to swing tonight? Yes, sir, here we are, those swingers of the sky, about to tear up hilly old Senik and have an orgy on a houseboat in Castiglioni and drink ourselves silly and still show up tomorrow morning with our smiles, hair, and uniforms in place, sans wrinkles and ready to serve you in the best tradition of our airline."
After a brief silence, she gives a sly smile and adds, "Well, you know… you're not altogether wrong.", winking at the audience.
The animated adaption was very popular on airing and received critical acclaim; Downtown praised the series, writing "[it] glides through its risqué situations with class and finesse." It would be extensively sampled, particularly by Neo-Gylian Sound and city pop acts.
Musical
A musical comedy based on the book was produced in 1969, with music by Charlotte Böttcher and lyrics by Evelin Tanli. It opened in June 1969 at the Maveás Municipal Theatre and ran for 300 performances, becoming one of Gylias' most popular musicals. An original cast recording was released on Imperial Records the next year.
In the introduction to the book's 2007 edition, Ren describes this adaptation as "the most intriguing performing rights proposal" he received, and he was very proud to see his work brought to the stage by a "legend" like Evelin Tanli.