Posh Bird in London

I told you so....

2011-01-16T21:43:00.000Z

Having predicted the return of the posh some time ago (see blogs passim), the Mail on Sunday finally confirmed it with an article by Dylan Jones - editor of GQ and arbiter of all things 'now' - and a countdown of the poshest under 30 year olds. It's a pretty comprehensive list, covering most areas of life and they're only the famous ones. I like his description of Kate Middleton as 'New Posh'. For your delectation: the great posh list.

Finishing school for three-year-olds

2010-06-25T12:57:00.000Z

In the news this week was a story that children as young as three are to get lessons in etiquette because their teachers are so fed up with bad manners.

I like the image of a tiny toddler holding a door open for his mother, learning not to speak over others, writing a thank you letter and getting out of a car decorously – all the while trying not to draw attention to a nappy that needs changing.

The lessons are in fact for all pupils up to the age of 18, which perhaps makes a little more sense (even if it is rather saddening that schools are increasingly expected to teach children how to live their lives, not just read and write). "We want to drive home the message that manners maketh man or or woman," says Ian Hunt, head of Llandovery College in Carmathenshire, where the lessons will be held. "From holding doors open for fellow students to understanding the importance of an RSVP, we hope that our programme puts old-fashioned manners into a modern context."

The story has also reported the college's directive of marketing and admissions, Lyn Jones (who apparently went to a finishing school herself) admitting that some forms of etiquette were sexist and out of date.

What does she mean?

Is a man who gives up his seat on the tube for a woman ipso facto a sexist? I heard an upsetting story about a man who offered his seat to a young woman being told to "F*** off, grand-dad." Who's the one with the bad manners there?

There are some houses where, after a dinner, the women retire to the drawing room while the men stay and drink some port. It is rude, I think, for the men to stay there for more than half an hour or so. But I don't think it a sexist tradition. In fact, I think the women who protest rather do themselves down by assuming the intelligent conversation is carrying on in the dining room. Why is it not amongst themselves? I always ask for a glass of port and take it through with me, as I like to drink it. But I also welcome the opportunity for a quick gossip (particularly if it's been a large party and there's some flirty intrigue going on).

Lyn Jones, it must be admitted, has the last word: "Learning how to get out of a car with your legs together is something you learn in finishing school and probably is something that many celebrities would benefit from today."

Take that Paris/Britney/LiLo and stuff your shirt with it.

Cheese first or pudding?

2010-05-26T16:13:00.002Z

This questions is brilliantly answered by Tim Hayward in today's Guardian: click here

Is etiquette relevant?

2010-05-26T10:39:00.000Z

I'm writing an article about the relevance of etiquette. I'd love some thoughts on this. I'm particularly interested in which points you do want to know and which you don't - eg. how to hold a knife vs what to wear at Ascot. How to address a duke vs when to hold a door open for someone.

I can't do a spoiler here on conclusions drawn before the piece comes out but I will be looking back at past postings and responses. So that's a clue. And of course I'll put the article on here and probably elaborate on it when it's done.

If anyone has any good etiquette questions.....please send them in! Either on the comment boxes here or go to www.facebook.com/jessicafellowes

Posh parking

2010-04-01T17:44:00.000Z

I got a bloomin' parking ticket this morning because I couldn't properly operate the fangled Westminster system (no coins, just texting endless details to the parking shop and blahblahblah). Which reminded me of a story I was told about a rich, rather eccentric, uncle of a friend of mine who lived in the country.

Taking a friend into London one day he parked the car, got out and strode off. 'Er,' said the friend, 'hadn't you better put some coins in the parking meter?' 'Oh no,' replied the rich man. 'They have the most marvellous system here. You simply leave the car and they put an invoice on it for you to pay later.'

Royal protocol

2010-03-30T15:00:00.000Z

On Sunday, dear readers, I was asked to lunch with the Princesss Royal.

Well. Of a sort. A few select journos were invited to see the course she's designed at her home estate for horse trials, and then join her for lunch afterwards. To read more about this, you'll have to see my article for The Lady when it comes out.

But in advance, I thought – I think I know what to do (I am PB, after all) but I'd better just check the protocol. Being the lazy 21st century fact finder that I am, rather than check my Debrett's Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners, I tried to google 'princess royal etiquette greeting' but yielded nada of any use. Luckily, I was able to dredge up from dim memories past, the correct instruction.

The right answer, is, of course, to say 'Your Royal Highness' on introduction and then call her 'ma'am' thereafter (rhyming with jam not smarm). One should also curtsey. I was taught that the grander one is, the lower the curtsey. The grandest person I know could give the floor a quick polish with her elegant derriere, when saying hello to the Queen.

In the event, HRH Princess Royal was completely ungrand (and really rather delightfully amusing). On introduction, I simply said 'Your Royal Highness' and thought I caught a sharp glint of approval in her eyes but you would not have detected any less when the woman next to me said 'Pleased to meet you'. Still, I'm afraid I rather let the PB side down: I just couldn't bring myself to be the only one to curtsey when all around me remained as upright as ironing boards.

One more thing. I've always suspected the Royals of being less than truly posh (they send Christmas cards with family photos on the front, for heaven's sake) but this was only confirmed when I saw HRH eat her pud. She used a spoon! SHOCKER.

And on that bombshell....

Posh Bird is now married

2010-03-18T15:59:00.000Z

Apologies to readers.......I got married last week and what with the distractions of finding the right shoes, buying the flowers, taking delivery of champagne and then being on honeymoon.......there hasn't been a blog for a while. I hereby solemnly promise to love, honour and obey my readers from hereon in. Well, from Monday.

Hold out til then. Please.

Mrs Posh Geezer x

The death of aristocracy?

2010-02-24T17:44:00.000Z

The Duke of Devonshire, one of the poshest dukes around still living in the ancient family estate (the gorgeous – and ginormous – Chatsworth) has declared: "The aristocracy is not dying. It is dead. Coffin's nailed down, it's in the ground. It doesn't exist."

This was made in response to Labour's plans to axe the remaining 90 hereditary peers before the General Election. If they manage to do this in the next few weeks, the Duke has pledged to drop his title. "Because then it would be clear-cut what the people wanted, and it would be confusing to maintain hereditary titles. So, finish that, go back to being called Cavendish."

Of course, this remark shows just how out of touch the Duke is - it's been a long time since any of Labour's plans represented "what the people wanted". But I do see his point. From the Duke's point of view, the 'aristocracy' means - or meant - power, prestige, wealth. All of these things have long since vanished from any association with titles and once you strip away the very last element of an aristocrat's ability to run the country - then yes, of course, you may as well drop the whole thing. Dropping the title would also get rid of the general view that aristocratic means titled and eliminate any presumptions on any side that being a Duke entitles one to privileges.

But of course, even locking out all the hereditary peers, scratching out all the titles and burning the Debrett's Guide to Etiquette and Burke's Peerage on the pyre would not signal the end of class. Each individual British psyche is too deeply ingrained with a sense of natural pride/injustice (delete as appropriate) in its own class to be able to simply forget it.

This has reminded me of a holiday I took in France when I was 17 years old. It was a week with a family, to brush up on my French before taking my A'levels. They were an old family and before the Revolution had titles and land. All this had now gone but their society still mimicked the rules of Les Liasons Dangereuses, only with slightly fewer curtains worn as dresses. The daughter of the family was permitted to mix only with other boys and girls of her class. I joined them halfway through their debutante season. Each night there would be a party in a different house - the parents would sit upstairs, hoping their watered down punch didn't cause any riots. Meanwhile, in a cold, large room, the girls would stand on one side, the boys on the other and to the rhythm of terrible pop songs (Sinitta's "Boys, Boys, Boys" was a hit that year) we would dance formal waltzes. I tried to break out once, dancing on my own in red crushed velvet trousers and three girls looked as if they might faint. Three hundred years of republicanism - you call that progress?

The perfect posh response to a lightbulb in your handbag

2010-02-16T13:17:00.000Z

I was reminded last night of a good story about perfect posh manners...

A few years ago I took part in a vintage car rally from London to Paris via Reims, where we drank vast amounts of Ruinart champagne. The journey home was on the Orient Express, which would have been wonderful had we not all been suffering hangovers on a scale not seen since the days of Court of Versailles. Well, all of us bar one person. Lady Shawcross, the widow of Lord Shawcross, the chief prosecutor of Nazi leaders in the Nuremberg trials, was one of the drivers. She was a surprising entry (everyone else came from the City, on the whole) but a very welcome one for the spectacle she created. She was small and slightly stout but always beautifully, immaculately dressed, with gloves and a hat and a well-pressed suit. She was accompanied everywhere by a rather quiet paid companion, who sat mutely in the passenger seat while Lady Shawcross drove her ancient Mini at speed.

Most of us were simply content to observe her in awe and amusement but one wag on the trip home thought it would be a good wheeze – and a distraction from the pain of our thick heads and sandpaper tongues – to steal a lightbulb from the train and put it in her handbag when she wasn't looking. This duly done, everyone in the carriage watched her for what felt like the length of long courtroom session until she needed to delve into her bag. At last, she lifted it from the floor to the table. We watched agog. Her hand went in and pulled out the offending and, surely, mysterious, glass object.

"A lightbulb," she said, in Lady Bracknell tones. "How useful." And replaced it into her bag.

Posh Bird speaks!

2010-02-15T13:00:00.000Z

I'll be giving a short talk this week about the pleasures and pains of wearing stilettos in the country, navigating muddy paths and how to overtake a tractor (take the train) at a Literary Salon organised by the truly brilliant Damian Barr (of Shoreditch Salon fame). It's at Aubin & Wills on Westbourne Grove on Thurs 18 Feb. Free but there are limited places so go to the Facebook page if you want to be on the guestlist.

You can buy Mud & the City: Dos & Don'ts of Townies in the Country on Amazon for a bargainous £6.49.

Recollections of a naughty grandmother

2010-02-10T16:13:00.000Z

An old friend of mine came round for supper last week and was reminding me of stories about my very naughty maternal grandmother. Far from baking cakes, Kate used to give me whisky and cigarettes when I was a small child and my bed time stories would be about antics in nightclubs where waiters were bitten by pet tigers, or lovers that tried to double cross her and failed. She was tall and glamorous, never with a snag in her tights or safety pin for a button. Even at 80 years old, her legs would be the best in the room and she'd sit in the corner while people flocked to talk to her.

In her earlier years, for almost two decades, she had an affair with an Earl in Scotland. They wrote to each other daily and he gave her an owl. He promised he would wait for her to divorce so they could marry but then suddenly he met someone else and arranged to marry her within three months. She said later she was demented with heartbreak – which means that perhaps we may forgive her the next part of the story. But perhaps not.

On the eve of the wedding, she wrote two letters. One, to her former lover, said: "Darling R–, I am so sorry that you have been forced into marriage with this terribly plain girl...How awful it will be for you to be forced to look upon her plain face when you wake in the morning...What terrible circumstances have brought you to this. My poor love. Etc." The second said: "Dear M–, What simply wonderful news of your marriage. How happy you will be. With very best wishes, Kate."

And then she put them in the wrong envelopes.

Deliberately? But, of course.

U and Non-U: some things never change

2010-02-03T15:39:00.000Z

With reference to blogs passim about how hard it is to find distinguishing marks of the posh, I'd like to draw your attention to this little snippet I found:

"...today, a member of the upper class is, for instance, not necessarily better educated, cleaner, or richer than someone not of this class. Nor, in general, is he likely to play a greater part in public affairs, be supported by other trades or professions, or engage in other pursuits or pastimes than his fellow of another class. There are, it is true, still a few minor points of life which may serve to demarcate the upper class, but they are only minor ones."

Oddly enough, this was not written last week but in 1956 by Alan S.C.Ross in his academic paper for the University of Birmingham: 'U and Non-U – An Essay in Sociological Linguistics.'

It was from this that Nancy Mitford wrote her own article on 'The English Aristocracy', for which she was revered and reviled in equal measure. (So, in fact, it wasn't Mitford who coined U - meaning upper class speaker, and Non-U, meaning not. I'd be pretty cross if I was Ross. But then again, he nearly was.)

Lots of the U and Non-U markers still hold today, although some of the "minor marks" of the upper classes, which include things such as the wearing of braces for tennis, use of the word wireless and how they hold their drink (gentlemen would, apparently, vomit in public but never be truculent when drunk) are no longer noticeable, shall we say.

Ross focuses on the addressing of envelopes (hah!), Mitford is more concerned with the definition of aristocracy (which she boils down almost entirely simply to having a title) and those linguistic things which mark out a Non-U. Those which still exist include:
Sweet: non-U for U pudding
Dinner: non-U for U luncheon (although hardly anyone says luncheon, they do say lunch)
Wealthy: non-U for U rich

Some I always used but didn't know I was being U in saying them:
Britain: non-U for U England (although I do know when to be sensitive about this. One has to move with the times. As you might have thought Liz Hurley would when she recently wrote an article headlined 'A Guide to Mumbai' and insisted on calling it 'Bombay' throughout.)
Home: non-U – 'they have a lovely home'; U - 'they've a very nice house'

But some I didn't know (and henceforth of course will pretend that that was what I always said):
Greens is non-U for U vegetables
Mental: non-U for U mad
Glasses: non U for U spectacles
Dentures: non-U for U false teeth
Ill: non-U against U sick

To confuse things further, Mitford admits that some U-speakers will deliberately employ non-U phrases in an ironic manner (or perhaps in memory of their darling Nanny. It is a truism that the upper classes of the past were entirely brought up by the working classes, which is why they share so many characteristics even now). Also, of course, U and non-U markers change over the years.

Is it time for a 21st century version? Posh Bird throws her hat into the ring...

"Harriet Harman: I dropped my cut-glass accent for Labour"

2010-01-29T12:38:00.000Z

This was the shocker of a headline in the Evening Standard yesterday. Inside was an interview with HH, public-school educated, niece of Lord Longford, who agreed that she had lost her accent along the way because "I sounded like Lady Diana". (Of course, everyone thinks this is fine. Imagine the furore if George Osborne was revealed to have had diction like an extra on Eastenders as a teenager.)

Posh family links, a public school education etc should not preclude you from voting Labour, being left-wing or even becoming a Labour MP. But what I object to is the continuing belief that poshness equals snobbery, rather than it simply being a tribal description. The accent I have in no way prescribes my ethics, political beliefs or moral values. Those things are shaped by my social environment, my own intellectual curiosity, the people I talk to, the work I do.....there's a myriad of influences.

And yet, those who could be effective in striving for a meritocratic society - ie Labour MPs in power - do nothing to help the cause.

How to address an envelope

2010-01-26T12:36:00.000Z

A good friend called me up the other day and she said: "Thank you for your Christmas card. I was so pleased because you're the only person I know who knows how to address envelopes properly. I'm always trying to explain and no one understands." I was thrilled, of course – always good to know that Posh Bird's reputation remains intact – but also surprised as this friend is not at all posh. But she is, however, another generation. Born before 1950, this perhaps explains her knowledge of envelope addressing. Although why her generation chose not to tell their children how to do it is another story. (Largely, I suspect, because throughout the 1960s and 1970s they thought that things like titles, or 'handles', would cease to exist, so why should anyone know how to use them properly?)

In fact, I didn't know how to address an envelope correctly until I was 19 years old. I knew the basics but wouldn't have written to a duchess with confidence. It was only when my grandfather called me up one day, shouting "I am NOT an American!" that the error of my ways was rectified. He resented being addressed as 'Mr', feeling that years of good breeding and Britishness entitled him to be an 'Esq.'. So I was tutored in the ways of envelope etiquette and once learned, it can never be forgotten or relaxed.

For those who want to know - these are the basic rules.

1. To a man, you write: Rupert Fotherington-Smythe, Esq.
(Strictly speaking, you write this to all men except Americans and tradesmen, whom you address as 'Mr' but I don't make that distinction.)
2. To a single woman you write: Miss Arabella Toffington-Love
3. To a married (and widowed) woman, you write: Mrs Rupert Fotherington-Smythe.
4. To a divorced woman, you write: Mrs Arabella Fotherington-Smythe.
5. To a Baronet or knight, you write: Sir Giles Poppy.
6. To an Earl, you write: Lord Poppy.
7. To the wife of a knight, baronet or earl, you write: Lady Poppy.
8. To the daughter of an earl or duke, you write: Lady Celestria Poppy.
9. To the married daughter of an earl or duke, you write: Lady Celestria Fowler.
10. That's it for now. There are further complicated permutations (the daughter of a daughter of an earl or duke is The Hon. An MP is The Rt. Hon. Plus all the Royal stuff) but I'll save those for a rainy day.

The only other thing to note is that even when writing to a couple (eg, Christmas card, invitation or thank you note), the envelope is addressed to the wife only. This is because traditionally the wife organised the husband's diary, and if you stayed with a couple for the weekend she is the one who would have done all the work. As to the question of whether one should stick with the format although the tradition has changed: the answer is yes. After all, I still say please to the bus conductor when asking for my ticket, even though he has long dropped the tradition of saying thank you.

The only problem I find is with rule no.3 as so many women now prefer not to take their husbands names on marriage. Does this mean that they have to be addressed as 'Miss' - when that is ridiculous, surely? And to write Mrs Arabella Fotherington-Smythe makes them look divorced. The only solution, I think, is to drop the prefixes of Miss or Mrs altogether. Although, of course, doing that makes Posh Bird start hyperventilating and there isn't always a brown paper bag handy when doing one's Christmas cards.

Harriet Harman to announce that class is the decisive factor in social immobility

2010-01-21T13:22:00.000Z

Harriet Harman is expected to announce today that class is the decisive factor in social immobility.

“Persistent inequality of socio-economic status — of class — overarches the discrimination or disadvantage that can come from your gender, race or disability,” the deputy Labour leader will say.

HH makes two mistakes here: first, she confuses 'socio-economic status' with class. (What class you are has borne little relation to – certainly not some kind of inevitable consequence of – the money you have for at least two generations now.) Secondly, she seeks to accuse our society (institutional?) racism, sexism and prejudice against the disabled.

While I don't seek to deny that there are still strides to be made before we reach a true balance of power between the genders, races and the disabled and able-bodied, what really makes my blood boil is that she is deliberately using this incendiary argument to gloss over the true inequalities that her government has brought about.

Her speech does one good thing: it shows that Labour are at last acknowledging that under their government, social mobility is the worst its ever been. Those born disadvantaged have a steeper mountain to climb if they wish to escape than ever before: poor diets, high crime rates, depressed morale, poor education and a severe lack of positive role models all contribute. Low-income areas and their residents have become ever more segregated as the middle classes have barricaded themselves apart with gated communities and enormous SUVs with blacked out windows. Money spent by the high earners has been channelled straight back into their own communities with few government incentives offered (as in America) for charitable giving. Not to mention that Labour encouraged vast amounts of non-doms to reside here - bringing their cash to spend on Bond Street but with no sense of community responsibility.

But to suggest that all this is the fault of class is the kind of blinkered, inverted-snobbery response that makes me want to perform acupuncture with toothpicks on Harriet Hardup. In fact, you could argue that in the last century, where class divisions were strictly observed and very obvious, social mobility was not only easier but actively encouraged. It was, then, after all, that the welfare state was introduced, the practice of better education for all for longer was brought in and meritocracy was the buzzword.

Any capitalist society will contain, sadly, the indolent poor and the indifferent rich as well as the self-obsessed middle classes. And in Britain, hundreds of years of dialect and a class structure has left its imprint - we notice the way a knife is held, the h's that are dropped. But these things do not in themselves lead to ghettos, a crippling stealth tax, the reward of greedy, thick bankers and a fearful population afraid to cross over to the 'wrong' side of the street. No, Harriet, those things are the fault of the government - your government. When will you say sorry?

Royals in Oz

2010-01-20T11:14:00.001Z

When even Australia starts feting the royals, you can't help but think that not so much a tide has been turned as a tsunami. Before Prince William's storming visit in New South Wales this week, the idea of a British Royal getting a warm welcome was about as likely as the Democrats losing their safe seat in Massachussets......Oh, whoops. Mind you, the feeling was probably mutual - what with the Queen and Prince Phillip having suffered an alleged assassination attempt down under in 1970. But ol' Prince William's ("call me charming") ability to not only shoot impeccably on a rifle range but shoot the breeze about rap with a 'disadvantaged youngster' (one of those phrases never used in real life but only in the papers, like 'searingly honest' or 'achingly hip') has apparently won the hearts of Sheilas and Bruces everywhere.

And so say all of us. But I still can't help feeling that this young man, nice though he is, has got an awfully long way to go before he can take over the Palace. While Charlie boy may be fed up of his long wait to be King it's better that the more recent public memory has images of him growing organic biscuits and than of cavorting (yes, another of those words again) on the beach with a model. William needs to do some hard work to put some distance between him and the nightclubs before the country feels he has earned his natural right to prime acreage in London. Better get chatting rap down in Deptford next, eh?

A good retort to a posh remark

2010-01-12T11:31:00.000Z

I was reading in the bath this morning (Posh Bird and the ilk always have baths in the morning, preferably with lemon verbena scented soap, rose oils and a toga clad youth to hand over the queen-sized fluffy white towel*), and just about the time I was trying to turn the hot tap with my big toe to warm up a bit, I came across this in Rachel Cusk's novel, 'The Country Life'. It quite put me off my stroke. In this scene, Stella Benson, a paranoid and tricksy 29 year old has moved to the country to work as an au-pair for a disabled, bright, teenager.

   'There you are.' Martin folded his arms with satisfaction. 'That's why things are better off in our hands. We know how these things ought to be done.'
   'Who is "we"?' I enquired.
   'The upper classes,' said Martin, his face crumpled and white, like something botched and screwed into a ball. I caught a glimpse of the cavity of his mouth, dark and moist.
   'I do apologize,' I said sarcastically. 'I didn't realize that was who you were.'
   'Our family,' intoned Martin, 'has lived in this house since the seventeenth century, and in this area since long before that.'
   'Does that make you upper class?' I was becoming quite irritated, in a desultory fashion. 'I'd have thought it just makes you local.'

* (No. Really posh baths mean brown water out of the tap, the hot water running out after half an inch and small, scratchy towels that are frequently mistaken for the dog bed lining.)

A spot of pro-posh marketing, 'Posh Brother' and a play called 'Posh'

2010-01-06T15:30:00.000Z

So, how posh is 2010? With a tv show, a marketing campaign and a play - I'd say, very.

First up is a picture released by Royal Ascot (posh people never call it 'Royal Ascot' by the way, just 'Ascot', and it is pronounced Asket, never never As-cot) which has the Daily Mail frothing. Allegedly due to be sent out with invitations to members of the Royal Enclosure, the snap, taken at Cliveden, has the Duke of Devonshire at the centre, flanked by Bruce Forsyth, Ronnie Corbett, Lisa Snowden, model Lady Martha Sitwell, BBC presenter Claire Balding and socialist, I mean, socialite, Jake Warren (son of the Queen's racing manager). In other words - where's the poshos? Are celebrities allowed in the Enclosure these days? Well, yes. It's not been hard for some years now to find a way to finagle yourself in there and the fun of it is all about the hats and mixing up slebs and Dukes. I'm rather encouraged that modern posh, 2010 poshness, is not about old-fashioned posh rules but about everyone enjoying a posh event. It's just an excuse to dress up, pretend that all one really cares about is the filly at 2.10 and how simply marvellous and practically ordinary it is to be hobnobbing and drinking champagne on a Tuesday. Anyway - more of that in the summer.

Next up is what will come to be known as 'Posh Brother' - Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, have started advertising in Country Life magazine for families "with historic links" to stately homes in need of restoration for a new programme commissioned by the BBC. Francis Fulford and his wife Kishanda, who had a moment in the spotlight with 'The F-ing Fulfords' on Channel 4 a few years ago are already allegedly "champing at the bit" to take part, hoping that the fee might get them a new roof. This would be highly desirable for a lot of families with stately homes but to anyone I know living in one my advice would be - don't do it. Invariably, those who are unable to pay for roofs because they haven't had the nous to work for a bank, open it up to the public, sell it off to the National Trust, are going to be in some way quite mad - as if posh people in vast houses weren't mad at some level anyway - and will in no way come out of a programme made by Endemol without wanting to smash everyone's television sets before transmission.

Lastly, the Royal Court is staging a play from 2 April called, simply, 'Posh'. It's written by Laura Wade, who is probably not unduly unposh herself - she went to a fairly posh sounding school (Lady Manners in Bakewell), did drama at Bristol Uni (pretty posh) and lives with actor Samuel West, son of Prunella Scales ("BASIL!!") and Timothy West, who are quite posh. So Laura probably knows what she's talking about. I'll get more details in due course.

Right. Now Posh Bird needs to battle through the snow. In my poshest snow outfit - big furry hat, fur-trimmed (fake, guys, FAKE) coat and er, Nike trainers. Red Hunter wellies look so much better but have no grip. Be safe out there.

Happy new year, happy new decade!

2009-12-31T11:03:00.000Z

As is my wont at this time of year, I've taken a complete and utter break. Please accept my apologies for PB silence over the last week. I'm currently sitting on a very comfortable sofa at my home-from-home, Stapleford Park hotel in Leicestershire having eaten and drunk my way through the festivities and am now slowly gearing myself up for 2010. Posh resolutions are being thought through.

On the brink of a whole new decade, the newspapers have been summing up and discarding the Noughties (which appear to be encapsulated by Tony Blair, Katie Price, Google and terrorism). What will the Teenies bring? David Cameron, Alexa Chung in a Barbour, the Tablet and oil wars. Perhaps.

But for now, let's concentrate on immediate revelry. If you want a posh new year, get stupidly drunk before midnight, dance a Scottish reel or two on the hour, eat breakfast at 1am and fall asleep in the wrong bedroom, having made a pass at the wrong wife.

Pip pip! Hoorah. xxx

A very merry Christmas from Posh Bird

2009-12-24T10:30:00.002Z

Here's to a marvellous posh Christmas to you all - to include tins of Quality Street, watching The Queen, bought Christmas pud, singing Good King Wenceslas as you line up to open your presents, midnight mass, champagne at breakfast, smoked salmon and carnage.

PB xxx

Star Guest Blog! Novelist Josa Young on being one of the last debs

2009-12-23T10:29:00.001Z

When I was 17 I popped out of 10 years of single sex boarding school, and advanced bookwormhood, to find myself blinking in the light of the deb season. It was a huge shock, and I had no idea what I was doing. I cringe when I think how absurd were my views on how to behave.

Most of the other girls were younger than me as they were either not doing A Levels, or were doing the Season at the same time. Which struck me as plain bonkers. I had done my A Levels, got straight As, and was whiling away the time between working, backpacking in Italy looking at pictures, and going up to Cambridge to read English. Naturally enough, the 'debs' delights' - a range of young men chiefly distinguished by their belief that 1950s attitudes to women, society, work and what you will were the way to go - turned up their noses at me. Which led to disagreements, as I could not for the life of me agree that I was in some way inferior to a chap with no O levels. And anyway it wasn't difficult as I am not very tall and many of them, particularly the Guards officers, towered over me.

Having done nothing but read, I had little idea how to relate to the opposite sex anyway in that strange period between the cure for syphillis and the emergence of AIDS. If one of them made a crude pass at me (there was no finesse), I would kick them smartly in the shins. I was also not used to drink at all, and found even a couple of glasses a bit of a challenge. Having had so much single-sex education, I got on much better with the girls. Which led to another difficulty. Why did they ignore my attempts at conversation as soon as a man - any man, however plain and dull - came into the room?

The good things were visiting, dancing and staying in beautiful houses all over the country. I have a persistent memory of a ravishing hall with open fires burning in white marble fire places on each side, of flowers and marquees, of four-poster beds and grand staircases. In those days people felt it was their social duty to give house parties for complete strangers, and provided dinner and a bed for local dances. I thought I disliked grouse until quite recently, because us young were always fed on nameless game birds hacked off the bottom of the freezer - old when they went in there no doubt. And our hosts could be tetchy - I remember once asking what kind of dog as strange, liver-coloured, squat creature might be, and feeling very embarrassed by the haughty answer: 'It's a labrador, of course!'

The Season forced me to be sociable and put on a good show wherever I went. I was brought up to understand that 'being shy' was extremely rude, and that I was always to try and talk to everyone. At dinner, I was to make conversation with the people on both sides of me and not turn my back and only talk to the interesting ones. But I had no idea what to talk about - I was interested in literature and history and hopeless at flirting. I am afraid I was a terrific wallflower - the tradition of young men in your party being obliged to dance with you had evaporated. I always rushing from room to room trying to look as if I was having fun - there was always sitting on a pile of coats reading a book if things got really uncomfortable. Once the coats squawked when I sat on them, as I had sat upon a semi-naked sleeping couple.

My husband, at 18 and in possession of a modest title, found himself in receipt of invitations from complete strangers at the same time - he put them in the bin having no concept of what was expected of him. I often wonder what would have happened if we had met then.

I definitely don't regret doing the Season - even a very watered down 1970s one. It was a kind of crucible where bits of me were burned away in the flames of embarrassment. And it has provided lots of material for my writing.

Josa Young's debut novel One Apple Tasted (E&T Books) is out now. www.oneappletasted.co.uk

Posh Bird Is Back....with happy news

2009-12-21T09:49:00.000Z

So I went to the Tower of London and I'm so damned posh I was captured. Seriously, they was all, like, this must be the new pretender to the throne and that. So I was banged up and if it hadn't been for my cunning way with a scone knife and a row of pearls I'd still be rotting under the stairs with the princes.

Well, almost.

I went to the Tower and it was really jolly good fun. Lots of armour and ravens and a simply spiffing cafe. I highly recommend it.

But in other exciting news, Posh Geezer and I are now engaged. Hurrah! We're off this morning to Chelsea Registry Office to give our Notice of Intent (so that's what people mean when they say, "...and does he have honourable intentions towards your daughter?"). Promise I'll be back in full PB flow shortly - there's lots of posh stuff to report: bow ties are back, more posh comics on the Royal Variety Performance....plus, a special on what the posh do for Christmas.

Posh Bird is off to the Tower of London today

2009-12-17T09:54:00.000Z

Will report back on the Crown Jewels later today.
PB x

More hot new evidence that Posh Is Back: demand for monocles

2009-12-16T12:00:00.000Z

The meisters of specs at Vision Express have been confused and bewildered recently by a number of enquiries about monocles, so they are starting to sell them in London. They will cost £50 and come in a pouch, with a string to put around the wearer's neck. "It's one of those inexplicable fashion things," Vision's chief executive said last week. "We've had dozens of requests from customers in the past few months, so we thought we'd bring back the monocle on a trial basis. We're as puzzled as anyone by the interest."

Last seen on Bertie Wooster, Patrick Moore, a ventriloquist's toff dummy and a dotty duke or two, the monocle is a hapless piece of magnifying machinery. My grandmother used to have one and I could never fathom the thing - constantly falling out, you couldn't read more than a half a sentence at a time before you had to catch it and try and pop it back on. They were swiftly replaced by glasses that didn't fall off every time you moved your head or coughed and no one looked back.

Until now.

So what's happened - has the country suddenly suffered a case of one-eyed myopic syndrome? Is there a Daily Mail scare we should be aware of? Have years of squinting at iPhones, the tiny text on food labels and celebrities' cellulite in Heat magazine begun to wreak eyeball havoc?

No. Simply put - Posh Is Back. Along with double rows of pearls, Barbours and toffee noses, the monocle is the latest must-have style item.

As India Knight said about this recent phenomenon in her Sunday Times column:

I was thinking how odd this was and then I remembered that the streets of fashionable Shoreditch, east London, are littered with young people wearing Barbours, strings of pearls and — spotted last week — those über-Sloane pie-crust collars. I find it too mind-boggling to analyse — let’s just say said young people weren’t on the way back from a weekend at the ancestral pile — but it rather cheers me up. Being a Hooray may be unhelpful if you’re a politician, but out there on the street it’s never been more fashionable.

(So excited has everyone been about this monocle revival story that it has been reported everywhere from the Daily Telegraph to LA Times and the Huffington Post.) It does make me wonder though - if the trendies of east London are prepared to go back that far in time for their fashion inspiration, what else might be up for grabs? Top hats? Crinolines? Walking canes? Let's just say, I look forward to getting off the tube at Liverpool St and tangling with the Labradors.

A lovely party at the Ritz and a Royal-spotting story

2009-12-15T13:10:00.002Z

I was out at the Ritz last night for their media Christmas party (I do love the Ritz - it should be naff, but isn't. They do everything beautifully, it's still the best tea in London and if you pass by soon please do pop in and gawp at their Christmas decorations. I particularly love the golden-headed deer) and there was plenty of PB spotting to be done, much to my delight.

One good story. A really rather posh woman, in a brilliant sequinned jacket (the pavements of London are lined with sequins this season) told of how she had some very smart New Yorkers staying with her last weekend, so decided to take them out to her favourite Chelsea restaurant. She booked the table late on Saturday morning and grimaced but bore it when told they could have a table at 7pm but would have to be out by 9.15pm. However, when she got there, a few minutes before her guests at 7pm, she discovered her table was in Siberia. "Simply the worst table ever and I kicked up SUCH a fuss. You've never known such a stinker. I even reduced myself to telling them that I knew the owner etc etc. It didn't work. We were stuck with the table."

But when they got there, squeezing to their table on the outer edges of social acceptability they found themselves thigh-by-thigh with Prince William and his girlfriend Kate 'Waity-Katy' Middleton. Their table was in fact in between Wills and Kate on one side, their bodyguards on the other.

This was pretty exciting for my posh acquaintance ("I tell you what, that man has the HOTS for her! I've never seen a man burning up for a girl like that!") but even more so for the New Yorkers who promptly started squealing: "Oh my gawd. I just CANNOT WAIT to go back and tell the Upper East Siders that even at the WORST table in a restaurant, you get to sit RIGHT NEXT TO ROYALTY!!"

PS And I now know Will's pet name for Kate. And no, I'm not going to tell you. But it's very sweet. They're a real life genuine couple as our New Yawk friends would say.

What time is lunch? And tales of a wicked grandmother

2009-12-14T10:07:00.001Z

Yesterday, PB had a delightful friend over to lunch. She had been a (much younger) friend of my grandmother's and we had lost touch for several years and are only just recently reunited. Now in her early 70s - although she could easily pass for ten years younger - I was so excited to see her and be reminded of my grandmother, who was wicked in the best possible sense (and sometimes in the worst).

Before I digress, my friend told me that she had had an etiquette panic sparked by me saying to come for lunch at '12.30 for 1pm'. The polite thing, of course, is to always arrive 10 minutes later than the specified time - but this built-in vagueness threw her off course. And did I mean that at 12.30 there would be champagne before lunch? So although she was coming to my tiny flat, she suddenly feared there would be a chic crowd downing Ruinart. The real question in her mind was - did that mean she needed to wear her pearls? In the end she compromised, arriving at 12.40pm and with pearl earrings on. Such are the beautiful manners of her generation.

All of which brought to mind my grandmother, Kate - my mother's mother - who I don't think was especially posh (upper middle, probably) but was always immaculately, beautifully dressed and had the crystal-clear diction of the war generation. (When, as one funnyman put it, they seemed to ration vowels as well as eggs: "Do come up to the hice for tea" etc.) Kate was 40 when she had my mother, so even when I was little she was really pretty old and not at all grandmotherly. I used to like staying with her because she would feed me cigarettes and whisky and tell me wild stories, such as the man who would insist on bringing a tiger to her nightclub ("until it went for a waiter and I really couldn't have it anymore"). She married three times and in between had an endless stream of lovers. She often recounted how she would tell her husband she was off to get some bread for breakfast, pop to see her lover for half an hour and then come home saying, "sorry darling, the queue at the baker's was just so long".

Funnily enough, although a stickler for manners, I doubt she had much sense of time and I can't imagine her worrying about ten minutes here or there. If she turned up to a party, that would be the right time to appear (actually, I seem to remember that 'arrive late, leave early' was her maxim) whereupon she would sit in the corner and wait to be feted. This worked until she was 80, her shapely legs still beautifully stockinged and in heels, glass of avocaat in one hand, cig in the other. "Put another record on, darling."

The Wonder of Whiffling - joyous English words

2009-12-11T14:35:00.000Z

I've lifted some posh-appropriate words from 'The Wonder of Whiffling and other extraordinary words in the English language' by my good friend Adam Jacot de Boinod. Adam takes us on a tour around the language of the British Isles, finding words you always wished existed but never knew...Here are some words that Posh Bird wishes she had known when describing the less pleasant members of her species.

Posh mannerisms:

bespawl (Tudor-Stuart) to bespatter with saliva

sirkenton (Ayrshire) one who is very careful to avoid pain or cold and keeps near the fire

smell-feast (1519) one who haunts good tables, a greedy sponger

slapsauce (1573) a person who enjoys eating fine food, a glutton

yaffle (1788) to eat or drink especially noisily or greedily

admiral of the narrow seas (17C) a drunkard who vomits over his neighbour

stalko (1802) a man who has nothing to do and no fortune to support him but who styles himself as a squire

For describing the looks of a toff:
stridewallops (Yorkshire) a tall, long-legged girl
endormorphic (1888) being short but powerful
simous (1634) having a very flat nose or with the end turned up
mimp (1786) to speak in a prissy manner, usually with pursed lips

What they wear:
prick-me-dainty (1529) one that is finicky about dress; a dandy (of either sex)
galligaskins (1577) loose breeches
excruciators (19C) very tight, pointed shoes [what woman doesn't have a pair of these?]
caxon (1756) a worn-out wig

STAR GUEST BLOG! Lucy Pridden, posh fashion and shopping journo, on the return of the Barbour

2009-12-10T12:48:00.000Z

Wax Lyrical

I had my first fashion epiphany on the Kings Road aged 12. It was the Eighties and Sloane Rangers ruled. I was in town for the Feathers Ball - the highlight of the teenage Sloane’s social calendar. It was Saturday afternoon and my best friend and I were dolled up to cruise the King’s Road in stripe shirts with the collar turned up, frosted lipstick from Boots 17 and our pièce de résistance, brand spanking new Barbour jackets.

Twenty-something years later and I am again considering purchasing a waxed jacket for fashion purposes. There is nothing wrong with my original – it is still going strong and looks pleasingly worn in – perfect for country life, but it wouldn’t cut it on the Kings Road anymore. You see, even Barbour have had a makeover. Alexa Chung wore a Barbour Bedale jacket at Glastonbury and suddenly every fashionista worth her salt is after one – despite the fact that by and large the nearest thing to the real countryside they have experienced is a muddy field at the aforementioned music fest.

This time the rules are different – the jackets are fitted and worn in the style of Belstaff biker jackets and like Hunter wellies, which were also an integral part of the original Sloane wardrobe – black has usurped green as the colour of choice. You should wear your jacket undone over a vintage tea dress or tightly belted with skinny jeans, big shades and an even bigger bag and remember to give boot cut jeans, cashmere and flat shoes a wide berth unless you want to look like a Euro.

Barbour isn’t the only purveyor of these fashionable jackets, but they are the original and still the best. One word of warning before you rush off to buy yours – wear a ‘fashion’ Barbour in the country at your peril – locals will brand you a nouveau, if you are not mistaken for a Russian or a WAG.

For stockist details visit www.barbour.com

Posh Bird at Cliveden

2009-12-09T11:19:00.000Z

Last night I was whisked away for a surprise by Posh Geezer to Cliveden. One of Britain's most beautiful stately homes, it now belongs to the National Trust and von Essen hotels but gained infamy as the setting for the Profumo Scandal. It was given by William Waldorf Astor to his son and daughter-in-law, Nancy Astor, for their wedding present in 1906. Nancy became famous as a society hostess and as one of the country's first women MPs when she successfully won her husband's seat after he was forced to give it up on gaining a place in the House of Lords. They gave the house to the National Trust in 1942 but she lived there until her death in 1964.

It is astonishingly beautiful - there are dining rooms of a grandeur matched only by the interiors of a Venetian palazzo. We were hugely lucky to be staying in what was Lady Astor's bedroom - a vast, high-ceilinged room with 8 tall windows and a terrace big enough for a birthday party. White panels hid the doors to the wardrobe and bathroom. There was a plump sofa, a white, ornately carved tall mantelpiece and the bed...Oh! Them were the days. The most comfortable I've ever slept in - one sort of sank in and was firmly held all at once. No modern duvet nonsense either - just soft white sheets, pure merino wool blankets and a heavy cover.

We had drinks and a vicious game of Scrabble in the Great Hall (where the 1908 portrait of Lady Astor by John Singer Sargent hangs) and then a delicious supper in a long red dining room.

All totally heavenly and totally posh. It was a different world in which the very rich and powerful were entertained there 100 years ago. But as Cliveden even then had a reputation for excellent staff, good food and general spoilingness; and as the feeling even now is of staying at someone's house, I think the only difference now is that the guests write a cheque when they leave.

www.clivedenhouse.co.uk

PS You know it's a truly posh hotel not by the liveried staff or the linen napkins, but because they welcome dogs. Woof to that, I say.

Posh Bird in the Evening Standard

2009-12-09T11:06:00.001Z

In case you didn't find a scrappy copy on the tube last night, the Posh Bird blog was plugged and I was quoted in the Evening Standard Diary:

TOP HATS off to writer Jessica Fellowes. Her blog, Posh Bird in London, is an excellent read for beleaguered Etonian future Cabinet ministers and anyone else concerned about Gordon Brown’s personal attacks on Dave Cameron.

Hot topics include “are posh people thinner?” and jaunts in castles. Jessica is the former deputy editor of Country Life and niece of very posh writer Julian Fellowes who has brought posh to Hollywood famously in the form of Gosford Park.

“There’s a class nerve out there, and I’m hitting on it,” says Jessica. “As something of a posh bird myself, with antennae on alert, it’s become increasingly clear to me that Posh Is Back. With the Tories aiming for victory next year, the posh have started coming out again, braying for the first time in over decade. Posh style is in — mounted antlers on our walls, Barbour jackets on Hoxton trendies. You can even spot the Hermes scarf knotted around the heads of women under the age of 75.”

Apropos the class war, she asks: “The question is: can [Gordon] Brown rally the country to fight? Or will we declare ourselves conscientious objectors now we’re all middle-class?”

Posh Bird answers your dilemmas

2009-12-08T09:21:00.002Z

I've had some posh queries recently (see below). What fun. Please feel free to post any of your posh agonies here and I'll ease your worries in the manner of Nanny - with a hot flannel and caution to buck up soon.

Dear Jessica, please can you solve a problem for me. I think I am posh, take yesterday, for example, I cycled from Lina's Italian Deli in Soho to Harrods in pursuit of a white truffle for a 'food happening' (dinner parties, I feel are declasse) I'm holding on Monday. I was delighted to be one of the eight lucky Londoners who got hold of one, despite it being £81 and basically a mushroom. However, my boyfriend says no matter what ridiculous things I do I cannot ever be posh because I went to a comprehensive (although this was many years ago). I would be grateful if you could solve this matter once and for all. Am I posh? Yours, hb xx.

Dear Am I Posh, now that many posh families have lost their fortunes to older sons who snorted it up their nose/crashed it into a tree/married a whore, several posh people go to comprehensives. So this may not hold you back. However, I fear that use of the word 'declasse', spending more than £80 on a mushroom (do you KNOW how much horse feed you can get for that?) and, worst of all, engaging in a 'food happening' may render you Upper Middle at best. Aspirational at worst. I suggest you cook shepherd's pie for a 'kitchen supper with friends' forthwith and you may regain some poshness. Yours, PB xx

dear posh bird. could you please clarify the status of brown sauce in bacon sandwiches and also whether marmite should be kept in the fridge or not. also could you please confirm exactly how many vegetables should be served with roasted meats, or is that just a roast? or roast lunch? who knows? i feel one of those christmas stocking books in the offing miss fellowes....

Dear Wants A Christmas Stocking Book - brown sauce is not posh although one feels it should be. It's one of those things that, like racing on the telly, white bread and gin, is a taste shared by both the working and upper classes. Marmite is kept in the cupboard. Roast lunch (never dinner) traditionally was served with a few overly crunchy potatoes and overly boiled carrots. But now posh food is all about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and serving organic produce straight from the garden (or Waitrose). Butternut squash, parsnips, cabbage fried with bacon, roasted garlic and all other manner of exoticisms that my grandfather wouldn't have recognised are positively de rigeur. PB x

The life of Lady Maureen Fellowes, 1917-2009

2009-12-08T09:03:00.001Z

Yesterday was my step-grandmother's funeral. Born in 1917 the eldest child of the fourth Earl of Gainsborough, she is the last of an era. I adored her. She had the silliest giggle, talked about people in history as if they were friends and was so undomesticated she once tried to cut a raw egg in half when told to separate the yolk from the whites.

Maureen was married by Cardinal Hume to my grandfather, Peregrine Launcelot Fellowes, in 1982. My own beloved grandmother had died just a couple of years before, but Maureen, while never grandmotherly in the baking-cakes sense, was quick to make my sister and I feel part of her family. She was very small, and quite round by the time we knew her, but would gamely come to Ireland and come for trips on our motor boat, clambering in and out like a child on a rock climbing exercise. She much preferred getting the number 19 bus in Chelsea to see her hairdresser, where she would chat merrily away to whoever she found sitting next to her. But her favourite place in her later years was a comfortable armchair by the fire, where she would sit and regale me with the tales of her youth.

Think of the parties that populated F Scott Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh's novels (to whom she once sat next to at dinner and didn't like very much) and the chinless wonders of PG Wodehouse - and that was her life. (She married very late for her generation - about the age of 27, because she was having too much fun in the meantime.) She would tell me of going to three balls in a night, and finishing off with a Chinese supper at the 100 Club at 4am. She would go to fabulous house parties at the biggest stately homes around England ("where I'd always have the best room and be able to take my own maid, because I'd always be the grandest there").

Completely uneducated, she was nevertheless absolutely fluent in French and Spanish (the latter because of an adored Spanish grandmother who couldn't speak English) and had a passion for the opera, theatre and history. (I got the highest mark in the school for European History in my A'level papers, which I put down entirely to having spent a week with her before the exams when she told me all the stories as if history were a particularly racy novel.)

Maureen's two daughters never went to school either, because she much preferred to have them at home where they could all have fun. The youngest was still having her silk stockings put on her legs by her own lady's maid when she was 18 years old.

Of course, I suppose one must say that we are glad such privilege is over now. But Maureen was never silly. She was almost defined by her Catholicism (although never pious and quicker than anyone to point out the church's faults) and throughout her life did a lot of work for charity, particularly local hospitals, where she would visit the patients to chat to them, encouraging her daughters to do the same regularly. She was huge fun, loving and all for the family. Had she been born in a terraced house in Manchester, she would have been exactly the same, only with a northern accent. I shall miss her hugely.

Posh in the news: Gordon Brown launches his class war

2009-12-06T22:56:00.003Z

Gordon Brown, a desperate PM, fighting an opposition with no policies to attack, has made what can only be his last-ditch attempt to win favour with voters who despise him for his leadership qualities, fake smile and bad spelling. At least, he pleads, I'm not a toff. We're not over-privileged ponces in top hats trying to fight a war on the playing fields of Eton (which is where he accuses Cameron of drawing up his economic policy).

Matthew Parris, as always, writes perceptively on Brown's latest tactics in The Times - recalling the crude attack in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, when Labour sent on to the streets 'toffs' in top hats. He warns that the Conservatives must not rise to the bait - but also concedes that it could be a successful point scorer.

This was responded to the next day by Minette Marin - 'Toff-baiting, the dangerous sport that will hurt you too'. She raises an interesting question - one that will be discussed at length over the next few months:

The only important question here is whether toffs — any toffs, of any party — are fit to represent us politically. Those who suggest not have to explain why. Is it that toffs have no right to represent us because of their class guilt or our class hatred? Or is it that they are not capable of representing us, because they are too limited by their background? Is there something about being rich, highly educated and well travelled that makes them unfit for office?

Next up: Janice Turner admits to a small crush on Zac Goldsmith. And why not, when she has this to say about Etonian charm?

When an Eton education truly takes, it bestows an aura of otherworldliness, an appearance of getting what you want without pushing, being above the scramble and petty change-counting of commerce, Conservatism as nostalgia, Conservatism that actually wants to conserve something.

But she ends on a depressing note. Recently, she met at a dinner party a woman who had just been accepted onto the Tory party's candidate list. Lives in Notting Hill, weekends in Oxfordshire. That sorta thing.

So why did she get into politics, I asked. I thought my question was neutral: it was perceived as hostile. She shrugged, told me that she’d voted Blair in ’97: “Now the parties are all the same,” she said. “We all agree on everything, don’t we? Who gets in now, it doesn’t really matter.” And I suppose to her it doesn’t. To those like her it never will.

In other words - those who are in it, are in it to win it. Sigh. I do fervently hope not. (Go back, my friend, and read Marinette Marin's column on why we shouldn't write all toffs off, tempting though it is.)

Still - even the Observer, who one might think would be up for a quick game of stab-the-posh are deriding him. See Henry Porter, who cautions that a rallying call for class warfare is only ever going to miss the point. "As a nation we've always been more interested in character."

And a major Focus spread: Resurgent Brown ready to declare class war on Tories

(By the way - interesting stat - key in 'posh' to the Guardian search engine and get 8505 results. And not all of them derisory.)

Haven't got round to checking News of the World yet but what's the odds on them running an article shortly on Posh Totty in the House of Commons? Pretty good, I'd say. What, what?

Posh Bird on Facebook

2009-12-04T17:00:00.001Z

Find me here for a Posh Bird agony aunt session and some marvellous responses to Posh Bird dilemmas.

Posh Bird on Facebook

Posh Bird in a castle

2009-12-04T12:52:00.000Z

Yes! A real live castle! Very posh. I was, they were. No one said 'toilet' and and we sat in the yellow drawing room of the East Wing. (I love drawing rooms, despite the fact that nothing in them is drawn, except for the curtains). There were two teams of staff - East Wing and West Wing. Sometimes the staff cross over. No one mentioned whether this caused any bipolar mental difficulty. But you suspect that it might.

There were home-made mince pies, head bakers, head chefs, a live-in archivist and an assistant household manager. There seemed to be more assistants than heads, in fact. There were christmas trees - 57 of them! - and as many sets of lights. "No more candles on the trees, except when it's just family." They all had posh names and a completely posh love of lowbrow culture ("all I want is a xmas special of Strictly Come Dancing").

I can't tell you any more because I'm writing it up as a big feature but I just thought I'd give a little castle-licious taster.

Tonight I'll be staying with posh people in East Angular. More on that tomorrow.

Are posh people thinner?

2009-12-03T11:19:00.002Z

Zoe Williams writing in today's Guardian praises Delia Smith for her retro-style. Slightly too formal wear and never licking a spoon or using 'just a bit' of something. Quite right, too (Nigella's last series, which involved her going to the fridge in the middle of the night to eat cold custard straight from the bowl bordered on the obscene).

Then this:

She mentions the fact that double cream is highly calorific, and therefore should only be used as a special treat (it has become very unfashionable to admit that some food is more fattening than other food. I suspect this is a snob thing; that rich people don't do it because they are kept thin by, I don't know, horseriding, bone structure, inadequate central heating . . . If rich people don't do it, then it is not posh, and the rest of us shouldn't do it).

Again, it's someone confusing 'posh' with 'snob' but I don't mind. It's quite funny here. It's also alluding to the idea that we all would rather be seen to be doing what posh people do.

I do actually think that people were a bit thinner in the old days partly because their houses were so much colder, especially those who lived in draughty country houses. I.e. the posh.

Think I'll turn the thermostat down today and then I can have scones with cream and jam for tea.

Posh Christmas Countdown

2009-12-02T13:02:00.000Z

I see from peering into windows in Snotty Hill (residence of PB) that some people have already started to put up their Christmas decorations. Unless they are garnishing the public wing of their stately home – cf. Castle Howard, Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth – this is absolutely not posh. Ditto fairy light and neon Santa extravaganzas on the front of your house (not even done at Buckingham Palace - but wouldn't it be wonderful if they did?).

Of course, for children, this can be maddening. We weren't allowed to put our Christmas tree up until Christmas Eve when I was growing up and I can remember thinking that this was a devastatingly long time to wait. Particularly then as one suffered a sort of festive, tinselled overload - an explosion of glitter and presents that was too much for a small child to handle. I'd end up so overexcited that I wouldn't be able to eat a single scrap of the Christmas dinner. One year, my naughty uncle gave me a champagne cocktail before the dinner. I'd deliberately starved myself all day so that I could really tuck in.

I don't need to spell out the effect of a brandy soaked sugar cube in a glass of champagne on an eight-year-old's empty stomach, do I? I slept throughout the whole thing and woke up in time for my mother to give me a five pence she'd rescued from the pudding.

The only thing right now the posh are doing for Christmas is opening an advent calendar (preferably chocolate and cheap - this is when we miss Woolworth's). Some misguided souls will have had photos of the children taken for their cards but I'm afraid this is deeply non-U. The Royals do it. 'Nuff said.

Posh Bird in Soho - a party, a pop-up club and a bed at Groucho's

2009-12-01T12:44:00.000Z

Posh Bird had quite the Soho night out last weekend. My father worked there in the 80s when it was still a proper sexshop dive (there was a sign on the buzzer below his office, which said, "busty, blonde model" which I remembered thinking, even at the age of 10, was a rather odd way to get modelling jobs). Then in the 90s it got trendy as the film companies and advertising agencies got richer. I used to hang out at Madame JoJos's, Soho House, the Boardwalk, the Limelight and Raw (strictly speaking off Tottenham Court Road but cool enough to be almost Soho). Late night coffees in Bar Italia and early morning breakfasts on Old Compton St were de rigeur.

But in the Noughties, the mainstream crowds moved in and I rarely would go there on a weekend night. During the week is still fine - cocktails upstairs at Quo Vadis (since the divine Sam and Eddie Hart took over), a bit of music at Ronnie Scott's, a meeting at Soho House or catching the flicks at the Curzon Soho. But weekends are reserved for the coked up bridge 'n' tunnel crowds. Not for me.

Still, I had a happy occasion to be in the area this time - for a friend's wedding party. Posh Geezer and I tottered off to the Union Street club, which I like a lot. It's not too poncey, with red glossy walls and a relaxed atmosphere. Afterwards, we popped into the amazing pop-up members club at House of St Barnabas, which was set up by Quintessentially's Ben Eliot. Every single rug, glass, oil painting, cushion and fork has been begged, borrowed and stolen by the very clever and extremely fun interior designer Russell Sage. It's got the air of an impromptu party in a half-abandoned house. Lots of people are going to miss it when it closes on December 21st.

Finally we rocked up to the Groucho, where we were staying for the night. I'd been very kindly asked by the PR if I wanted to try out their club rooms. I have to admit that the room itself is a little basic if you're used to 5 star country hotels (what, moi?) but not if you're used to squeezing into central Manhattan. The bed is comfy, there's a decent bath, a big telly, an iPod base plugged into the speakers and the service is truly impeccable. I was a difficult PB, demanding chips, batteries (for my radio, don't be naughty), an A4 envelope and tea. It's not really meant to be providing full room service, but they did. And for £135 a night, I don't think you'll find much cheaper or better in deepest central London. You even get the joyous Soho atmosphere: lagered-up shouting until the early hours. At 6am, I took a peek outside. The washed down streets reflected the street lamps and a neon sign glowed - 'Sex Shop Basement'. Ahh. Familiar comforts.

Posh or Not? Depends how you like your bacon.

2009-11-30T16:33:00.000Z

A friend of mine got called a "posh tw*t" (in the nicest possible way) by her new friends on a writing course because she prefers sushi to pizza. Apparently that's one way to tell.

Another tells me that it all depends on where you keep your ketchup (in fridge is posh, in cupboard is not).

Or it might be according to how you order your bacon. Laura Lockington (author of the sublime 'Cupboard Love') said her grocer judged someone's poshness by the way they ordered their bacon. "If a woman asks for streaky, I call her dear. If she asks for back, I call her madam."

PS If you like your bacon in a sandwich with ketchup - that's better than classy: it's classless. Simply tops.

Posh gatecrashing (and a bit on posh jewellery)

2009-11-30T12:57:00.000Z

Last week, Posh Bird's Posh Geezer held a wine tasting evening at Cartier in Bond St. Lots of jolly quaffing of fine bordeaux and burgundies – not to mention Cartier's own champagne – and ogling of the jewels. All very posh indeed.

(Posh jewellery is not, surprisingly enough, always inherited. Although the engagement ring is ideally a family heirloom, as is the tiara, it is perfectly acceptable to buy your wife her wedding ring, a ring for the birth of each baby and assorted trinkets over the years to keep her sweet. It is not, however, deemed at all right to buy a woman jewellery unless she is your wife. Otherwise, it rather smacks of 'mistress'. Although I don't think a silver bracelet could really be said to be a gaudy exchange for sexual favours.)

There were only about 40 of us select few, all of whom were personally known to the PG. Which is why initially he had slightly questioned the need for a clipboard Nazi on the door. Turns out - he was wrong. At least eight people tried their luck, insisting to the man with the list that they had been invited firmly by [insert made up name here] and should be let in forthwith. It didn't work for any of them but I rather liked their pluck.

Which makes it all the more amusing that the bouncers at a party hosted by newly elected Barack 'Most Powerful Man in the World' Obama failed to spot the thrusting Salahis who had blagged their way in.

Reminded me too of my favourite gatecrashing technique, which I used to get into nightclubs on the guest list, when I wasn't on the guest list (couldn't stand queuing). I would confidently tell the clipboard girl my name and that I was from the Mail on Sunday (the last bit, at least, was true) and then chat to my friend, as if completely unconcerned. After a minute or two, she would say, "I'm so sorry but you're not here." I'd say, "Yes, I am." Spell out my name and leave her to check it again. When she came back again to say - as she inevitably would given that I had never given my name to anyone at the club bar her just one minute before - sorry, but no, you're still not there. I would then say: "I don't understand. I told my PA to call today and get it all sorted. She told me that she'd done it. For god's sake. That bloody girl. It's the last straw. I'm going to fire her on Monday. The one thing I ask her to do....etc." Clipboard Nazi would feel so sorry for the poor (fictional) PA that was going to get a bawling out on Monday if I was deprived of my mojitos and a shimmy to Faithless that she'd let me in. Worked every time.

Shotgun Socialism

2009-11-28T12:10:00.001Z

Great piece by Nick Foulkes in yesterday's Evening Standard about 'shotgun socialism'. New Labour stalwarts Peter Mandelson and Cherie Blair were reported in Charles Moore's diary in the Spectator to have been at a shoot at Waddesdon - one of Britain's grandest stately homes. Both Bleugh and Mandy deny having picked up a gun let alone shot down a feathered friend. But the fact remains: a socialist of the 20th century would rather have been run down by a tractor than spotted in plus fours on the moors.

But Mandy and Bleugh are quite different socialist creatures, although, like unhappy families, in their own way. Cherie is a classic aspirational, inverted snob. Addicted to power and money, she simply wants to do whatever keeps her in the realms of the Rich and Powerful Great and the Good. Not only does she trade on her status as an ex-PM's wife, she wants to create the illusion that she is also a Lady of the Manor with a long and glorious history by buying up antiques from auction houses around the country. I can't picture Arthur Scargill bidding on a French dresser, can you? She makes my blood boil not because she buys her own furniture (the famous put-down made by a senior Tory of Michael Heseltine - proper posh people inherit everything, you see) but because she is not true to herself. In fact, she is so far from herself she wouldn't recognise herself if she gave herself a stinging slap.

Mandy, on the other hand, has never made a secret of his love of champagne, grand houses and fine yachts. For all his devilish smirks (and unelected status), people rather grudgingly admire his ability to get things done. From the start, he's let everyone know that he wants power and he's going to get it. In short, he's an operator - that's why he was at the shoot.

It is this last point which Bleugh and Mandy have in common. They know that posh is back (see PB blogs passim). When the Tories get in next year, it's the Lords who live in statelies (and rent their grounds out to big banks for shooting days) who will be the new powerbase. Neither of them want to be left on the side of the beaters. It's a brace of pheasants for them.

Posh Bird in Chelsea

2009-11-26T14:37:00.000Z

What's so unusual about that? Lots of posh birds in Chelsea, all the bloomin' time.

And that's where I thought I was going at first, when I was chatting away to my NBF, Ken Monkou. He said he wanted to meet me as he was down in London for a few days, and when I asked where he'd be, he said: "Chelsea." So, I asked where we should meet then and he said: "I can meet you at Fulham Broadway tube station." Which threw me for a second, as I was expecting an answer that contained the words 'Sloane Square' and 'Oriel's' (ultimate posh bird hangout, if not mine). Also, any fule no that despite the frequent sightings of red corduroy trousers and jumpers worn on the shoulders, Fulham is not Chelsea. I said: "I'm coming by car." In that case, he said (good anecdote this, isn't it?), come to the main reception.

Ah. Chelsea. (The sportsmen among you will have spotted that our lovely Ken was a star Chelsea footballer not so long ago.) As in, Stamford Bridge. Y'know. Come on the blues. (Or is it the reds?).

So just to prove that Posh Bird really can be posh anywhere, orf I popped to Chelsea FC in my clapped out Land Rover.

Where, of course, just to prove that I'm wrong about nearly everything, nearly everyone there was posh. From the girl in a tulip skirt and studded flats discussing the picture framing in the Main Reception to the chi-chi Italian waiter in Frankie's.

Really, Chelsea is absolutely marvellous.

Posh Bird spotted out and about in London

2009-11-25T21:51:00.000Z

Just for fun - a real life pic of Posh Bird in this month's North West magazine at a party (which was boho-posh being in Notting Hill n'all) with her own Posh Geezer.

You should know though that the truly posh would never deign to appear in social pages of any form - not even Tatler's. They believe that one should only be in the papers three times in a lifetime: 'hatch, match and dispatch' (ie announcements of birth, engagement and death).

Posh Is Back - part 23054: The Hermes Scarf - and how to wear it

2009-11-25T12:59:00.000Z

First of all, Laura (posh) Tennant wrote a piece in last weekend's Guardian about the Hermes scarf. (And when Grauniad start writing about posh things, then you know what THAT means, yes, my sweets: PIB). Apparently, there's a book out about the the silk squares of picturesque loveliness. She mentions that British women of a certain class wear it knotted under the chin (a la HM The Queen) but fashionistas were queuing up at the Hermes pop-up store in Liberty's last month to find out the chic-not-mumsy way to wear it. She doesn't divulge what this was - as a boob tube? Round the leg? I'll be off to Dalston soon (the new Shoreditch, doncha know) to try and find the answer.

You can see the article here

One answer might come from Leeds, where Posh Bird's Cousin is at uni. She reports on an alarming number of posh fashion forwards springing up (there will be a full report and pictures soon). She writes:

"Read one of your blogs about the 'posh' look coming back into fashion and then on my way into and around uni I saw two boys in quilted Barbours, another boy in tweed and a girl wearing a quilted Barbour with a brooch on it and an Hermes type silk scarf knotted at her neck and hanging over shoulders with the corner pointing down her back. I thought you might be interested to know that it's not only happening in the capital but also in Leeds!!"

What not to wear in the country

2009-11-24T14:55:00.000Z

Not to throw names all over the floor but I've met Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster, at a small dinner party in LA. And I liked them. He likes hanging out with his mates, simple food and football. She's very pretty and sweet (much more girlish than she looks in photos, when she's towering over her husband), worrying about her diet and wishing her husband didn't insist on inviting all the ex-wives over at Christmas. Not much different from most of us, except for about £50 million and the ability to sing Hot Legs without blushing. Apart from the fact that, like all celebs, they never ask you a single question about you or your life, they were lovely.

In other words - they're try-harders. Which means they often get it wrong. Here they are in the South of France, kitted out in head-to-toe tweed. It's an outfit that wouldn't work in Nuneaton, let alone Nice. I know what they were thinking: brown is right for the country. Tweed is a classic material. And a three-piece suit is always dapper. But all together at once - it's wrong. As wrong as an all-in-one Burberry catsuit. Or a peroxide mullet. Can't help liking them for it, though.

Click here for more: Rod and Penny in Nice

Called posh? Not posh

2009-11-24T11:09:00.000Z

More on poshly named things that are not posh at all:
www.theposh.com - the website for Peterborough United FC
www.poshbingo.com - 'the UK's most stylish online bingo site' (check it out - it is quite posh actually, with poodle cartoons and swinging bird cages)
www.posh.co.uk - 'posh windows and conservatories' (turn the volume UP - hilarious 80s pop singer warbling about designing posh conservatories to reflect your style - LOVE!)
www.posh-restaurant.com - an Indian. No flock wallpaper but a lovely chintz sofa in the waiting area.
www.peterposh.co.uk - formal wear for hire. No place that hires 'lounge suits' can ever be posh.

Called posh and actually quite posh:
www.poshpaint.com - the likes of Farrow & Ball etc, which posh people really do paint their houses with
www.poshgraffiti.com - I like this - a young girl who has designed big letters, posh decorations, posh rocks etc to sprinkle about your home

The singular crossbreed that is 'posh bird'

2009-11-23T10:35:00.000Z

Talking about this blog last week with my dad he asked: "Aren't you too posh to be a 'bird'?" But my point is that I am quite posh but not too posh and I need the bird bit to show which level I'm really at. In other words - if you met me, you'd probably think I was fairly posh. It would surprise you at least, as many are, to hear that I'd been brought up in Deptford. But you'd be equally flummoxed if I told you I was staying the night at Buckingham Palace (which I'm not, by the way).

But perhaps I don't need the bird bit. Because there's also exists the paradox in which anything called posh is almost by definition not - any brand name with the word 'posh' in it is more likely to come from the school of Hyacinth Bucket: i.e. suburban chintz and inverted snobbery. From Victoria 'Posh' Beckham to poshbingo.co.uk ('Britain's most stylish bingo site').

More posh-brand spotting to come.

STAR GUEST BLOG by Geraint Anderson, aka Cityboy

2009-11-20T16:19:00.000Z

There was a time when the City was the sole preserve of chinless wonders. These ex-Etonians would cavort around the Square Mile in pin-stripe suits and bowler hats meeting chaps they’d fagged for and chatting about cricket. The average working day would begin at 9.30, involve a three hour boozy lunch at ‘the club’ and end at around 4.30pm. It was a tight-knit club of clipped vowels and polite manners where a gentlemen’s word was his bond. This week yet another nail was hammered into that arcane world as Cazenove, by far the poshest City firm and ‘stockbroker to the Queen’, agreed to be taken over by the American behemoth JP Morgan.

The rot really began when Maggie Thatcher implemented ‘Big Bang’ in 1986. This was a concerted effort by the grocer’s daughter from Grantham to wipe away the over-regulated elitist old boys’ network and open up this rarefied world to all in sundry. Worse still, Johnny Foreigner was allowed to buy all our quaint old partnership stock broking firms. Soon oiks (some of whom hadn’t even been to public school!) began to enter the hallowed gates to untold wealth and before you could say ‘loadsamoney’ a whole generation of nouveaux riche Cityboys was born.

Within a few years nearly all the old stock broking firms had been acquired by rapacious foreign banks and these guys really meant business: twelve hour days, profit margins, getting in on time - all that crap. These uncouth Nazis also had the temerity to believe in something called ‘meritocracy’. It was a dark day indeed for Tarquin and Rupert when over-bearing yank bosses demanded results and didn’t care a jot about which school they’d attended. These arrogant scoundrels didn’t even respect the fact that you never had butter with brie or that house pronounced correctly rhymed with lice.

Soon the posh boys were being pushed out by diligent, clever middle class types and super sharp barrow boy traders. Inevitably, these Stella-swilling chavs would reveal their poor upbringing and cause problems. Indeed, one Watford boy called Nick Leeson would show his contempt for all things posh by causing the collapse of Baring’s - Britain’s oldest investment bank. It was almost as if he was on a one-man mission to finish the job Maggie had begun! All the trends suggested that the number of upper class stockbrokers was on the decline and that they would experience a similar fate to their fathers and uncles who had once monopolised government.

But the rumours of the demise of posh folk in the City proved to be greatly exaggerated. They have shown a remarkable resilience and I came across numerous diminutive chins and double-barrelled surnames over my twelve year City career. Nepotism and the old boys’ network have helped ensure their survival and the kudos that an Oxbridge education confers still matters to City firms. I always used to wonder why these already rich upper class chaps didn’t just bugger off back to their estates and take up a traditional country pursuit (like developing a smack habit) and so let some poorer folk have a piece of the action. However, a couple of Hoorays once explained to me that their families were often cash-poor and asset-rich and hence a fast buck in the Square Mile was still a very attractive option.

So, posh folks can rest easy in the knowledge that they’re still a major force in the City and look likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future. They are also uniquely qualified to survive in the current climate of banker-bashing for surely no social group is more used to resentment and envy than our aristos who’ve seen their economic and political power steadily usurped by uppity social groups over the last century. The public hostility they’re currently experiencing must surely just wash away like raindrops off a well-oiled Barbour.

Geraint Anderson is author of Cityboy - Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile

See more on his website: Cityboy

Posh Bird looks at some art

2009-11-20T12:12:00.000Z

There are, of course, quite a few posh art galleries in London. I'm not thinking so much of grand institutions such as the National and the Royal Academy, wonderful as they are. But more of those tiny galleries dotted about St James's, overhung with Victorian illustrations or watercolours of Venice. They are usually manned by either a smart young gel trying to break into the art world, who has had this job forced upon her by a well-meaning godparent. Or they are presided over by a man in a tweed jacket and egg-stained tie who secretly longs to be either an academic or a roue with a loftspace in New York, where he would gain success as the eccentric Englishman with an amazing talent for spotting emerging artists. They certainly didn't imagine they'd end their days trying to make the sale of three paintings to Japanese tourists pay for six months' rent.

But now for something completely different...Those who fancy good art in a posh setting can hotfoot it to the Hempel Hotel in Craven Hill Gardens. Rather an odd hotel this - it was fiercely modern when it was done up by the formidable Lady Hempel in the 80s but now it's white walls and Zen-ish stone water effects look rather dated. Still, it has a gorgeous garden and now a gallery in the basement. Previously incarnated as the restaurant, with a highly polished granite floor, it is - as curators say - a great space. Last night was the opening of its second exhibition, the UK debut of Irish artist Conrad Frankel. He has done oil paintings of antique photographs of children and adults in their Sunday best (aspirational posh?), in which the sitters stare out at the observer with a rather creepy, intense manner (the result of having to be still for four or five seconds while the picture was taken). The result is intriguing. If you go, you can have a decent cocktail in the bar upstairs, which is a definite improvement on the vast majority of London's galleries.

See more here: Art Work Space at the Hempel

Dominic Lawson applauds McIntyre for being unashamedly posh comedian

2009-11-18T17:04:00.000Z

The Daily Mail picked up on this piece by Lawson in The Independent (funny that - now they share 'back offices'...). Anyway - it's a good 'un. He applauds McIntyre's bravery in calling his children Oscar and Lucas and remarks on his more-than-passing-resemblance to a country estate agent. I like this quote of the smiley comedian's best, from an interview in last week's Sunday Times, where he defends himself against the 'alternatives': "If only I'd had a more troubled upbringing. Richard Pryor's mother was a prostitute. I was never on fire, while shooting up. All that happened was that some people came round for pasta. So I talk about pasta."

See the full article here

Posh Bird Style Spotter

2009-11-18T13:38:00.000Z

So this morning I decided that from now on I'd hit the streets armed with my camera. Or, at least, I'd have a camera in my bag when I happened to have to go out for a meeting anyway. Because I thought I could really prove that posh is back by spotting posh-looking trends on, y'know, people on the street. Within seconds of looking – I had someone. Standing right next to me on the Piccadilly platform of King's Cross (not the world's poshest or trendiest place, you'll agree) was this vision. I knew he was trendy – even Posh Bird is up on these things – he was wearing jazz shoes, skinny-skinny jeans, 80s-style faded denim shirt, a gold watch and an Adidas bag slung on his shoulder. All topped off by a genuine quilted Barbour jacket. What could be posher than that? It's back! It's BACK!

STAR GUEST! Jessica Ruston, author of 'Luxury', on being posh and a blockbuster writer

2009-11-17T10:33:00.000Z

I should say, before I begin, that when the delightful Jessica Fellowes asked me to write a post on here about being a posh girl writer of blockbuster novels, I had a moment where I panicked that I was Not Posh Enough. My parents work in the arts, rather than being landed gentry, after all. I put the milk in first (I know, SHOCKING. But it tastes nicer). So in an attempt to discover what the barometer for posh was, I turned to twitter (as I do for so many things now). What words marked you out as posh, I asked? And answers came there many. Garage, tooth, bath, praline, glass… Ah. By the pronunciation of scone shall you be known, it seems, and if you go by this benchmark then I am definitely posh.

So. What’s a nice girl like me doing writing a book like LUXURY – which, although it is hopefully well written is firmly in the realms of commercial fiction, containing as it does plenty of sex, money, ambition and betrayal? (Not that these themes run contrary to the concerns or pastimes of the posh…).

Despite the insurance of a number of decidedly un-posh tomes in recent years – see Kerry Katona’s Tough Love, for instance, books are, in and of themselves, a relatively posh affair. There are plenty of people who think that books are ‘not for them’ – that bookshops are intimidating places where they won’t know where to begin and will be looked down on for not knowing their Bookers from their Left Foot from their Right Ho Jeeves. I had a drink with a friend the other day who told me that he had read one book in his entire life. One. This is not a stupid person, or someone who could not get any pleasure from books if he were to find something he enjoyed – rather, someone who doesn’t see himself as a reader and who thinks books are for other, posher people.

Some of the best ever blockbusters have been written by deeply posh women. I can only aspire to the success, not to mention cut glass accents of doyennes of the genre such as Penny Vincenzi, Jilly Cooper, and Shirley Conran. And it’s not just blockbusters – how much poorer would the world be without the heavenly novels of Nancy Mitford, or Joanna Trollope’s canon of books that are known somewhat irritatingly as ‘Aga sagas’ but which are far more incisive and astute than that slightly patronising moniker would suggest?

But while these writers are light years ahead of me, I hope I can begin to follow in their green wellied or LK Bennett heeled footsteps (depending on whether they are in town or the country) and create books that people will want to read – not because they feel they should, or because they will learn something from them – but just for the sheer and simple pleasure of being told a jolly good story. And if the person telling them that story does so in a voice that would never dream of rhyming garage with marriage, then so much the better…

*Editor's note: see more of this delightful girl on Jessica Ruston's website

Not a time one wants to be posh and blonde...

2009-11-16T17:02:00.000Z

Just because it made me laugh, I'll tell you this little tale. But if you saw me on the Euston Road yesterday at about 7pm, you probably hated me. In my knackered, 21 year old Land Rover Defender, I broke down in the middle lane of said road, at the junction by St Pancras International. Horns blaring doesn't even cover it. Eventually, after several phone calls to breakdown service and the emergency services (briefly unsure which one I wanted), I was rescued by a policeman and his nifty panda car who kindly towed me round the corner and out of harm's way. Finally, the car was rolled onto a pick up truck and delivered back to Snotty Hill. As experiences go, it was really rather thrilling.

And why do we drive such a ridiculous car in London? Partly because we love it. Partly because the alternative (a cheap Ford Fiesta) is too awful to compensate. But mostly because it's knackered. All the best posh things are utterly clapped out.

Posh Is Back Part 3 - WGSN.com

2009-11-16T10:09:00.000Z

Juliet Warkentin is the Content Director of WGSN.com. And for those of you who don't know, WGSN is the website fashion magazines and designers all over the world subscribe to for its fashion forecasts. With a team of analysts, trend-spotters and writers they analyse where your buttons will be sitting in two seasons' time, whether sequins are for daywear or nightwear long before you've started rooting in your granny's wardrobe and are more influential than any LiLo, Zoe or Moss for dictating fashion.

Juliet - who is most lovely and funny - likes the blog. She, too, thinks posh is back. If there was any uncertainty before - you can rest assured now: it's back.

See her blog linking back to this one: Juliet's Creative Intelligence Blog

Posh Is Back Part 2 - The Times says it

2009-11-16T09:59:00.001Z

There was an article in Saturday's Times newspaper in the News/Trends section that endorses Posh Bird's current world view. Sitting in a bigger spread on the interior design trend for putting stag antlers on walls* was a short piece by Luke Leitch entitled 'Sharp End of a Sloaney New Dawn'. In it he says there's a growing vogue for wearing Barbour jackets and Hunter wellies in town as well as country. I, of course, am rarely to be parted from my own red Hunters (see Posh Bird in Venice) and on Saturday night I noticed that a trendy 17 year old I know was wearing skinny jeans and a navy blue quilted gilet, with a navy cashmere scarf around her neck. I kinda liked it as a look - part cool, part mucking out the horses.

(Will try to get Times link up here soon, for some reason it's not working right now.)

Pictured here are resin antlers from Graham & Green, £118, "for that special man in your life".

*PS This 'trend' is of course as old as stately homes themselves but for a great modern example of it in a country setting, take a trip to Stapleford Park Hotel in Leicestershire and see the Old Kitchen, done by the brilliant designer Russell Sage. It's a small, grey room with angular ceilings and every single last inch is covered in mounted antlers of all sizes.

Another toff comedian (and his signet ring)

2009-11-14T17:18:00.000Z

How could I have forgotten? Marcus Brigstocke, of course - to add to the growing roster that is now Armstrong & Miller, Miranda Hart and Michael McIntyre. And you thought posh people couldn't take a joke.

I've met Marcus a few times and he's a thoroughly nice chap. Very tall and with a quite posh voice - there's some hint of a regional accent there but I'm not sure what it is (like all posh people who talk with a largely flat range, I'm absolutely hopeless with accents). He went to Bristol University (quite posh), is married to his uni sweetheart (pretty posh), lives in Clapham ('Nappy Valley' - quite a lot of posh-aspirationals there), loves skiing (posh sport) and wears a gold signet ring on his left hand little finger. This is the dead giveaway for a posho. I spotted it on last night's Have I Got News For You and wondered if it was its first outing - now that the posh are allowed back on the telly n' all. But I think I can see him wearing it in some Youtube clips from his stand-up as far back as 2007. Although it must be noted that it is firmly hidden in all his official press photographs (see www.marcusbrigstocke.com).

Signet rings can mean middle class (which is how Marcus would define himself if he stooped to such self-labelling at all) but only the top layer. The only signet rings that don't send out this particular signal are the ones that are shiny yellow gold-plated, with a single initial and some studding details on the circular edge.

But the thing to really celebrate is that he is a (nearly proper) toff with proper left wing political credentials. And I don't mean your boho/hippy 'we adore backpacking in India and let's all free Tibet' posh lefties. I mean your proper eco-saving, anti-violence, pro Labour stance (he has a nice line in class angst too). Go Marcus.

Diana Jenkins - poor little rich girl?

2009-11-13T08:42:00.000Z

See today's Telegraph for a quote from me - and a link to this blog - on the sorry tale of Diana Jenkins. She claims to have been driven out of London by the snobbery of its socialites. But I'm not sure that one can feel too awful for someone who, when she thought it would get her on the right side of people, bought a huge diamond ring. Surely that's the sort of club you don't want to be a member of?

But I do acknowledge here that there are snobs - of course! - in London. Plus there's issue of the huge cultural divide between us and Californians: over there they will become your friend quickly and easily, whereas here....well, I'm sure you know the rest.

Telegraph story on Diana Jenkins

PS Before anyone gets on their stallion and starts charging at me, please do remember that to be posh does not necessarily mean you are a snob. In fact, the posher you are, the least snobby you ought to be - you should have good manners and nothing to prove or be chippy about. So there!

21st century posh - why posh is back.

2009-11-11T16:16:00.001Z

Once again we find ourselves on the brink of a new decade, poised to overthrow the old regime and usher in the new. A British revolution – a mild-mannered sort, which is less blocking-roads-with-lorries and more resigned-shrug-at-the-Post-Office-queue – is in the air. But the funny thing about it this time around is that it’s ringing in the old guard, not the new: posh is back.

The end of the 90s were an exciting time that saw the daring antics of the YBA, the Mancunian posturing of Britpop and a young, fresh, highly ambitious and media-spinning New Labour in government. But the beginning of this next decade is better symbolised by London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, with his speeches of piffle and crumpled, ill-fitting suits. We have long accepted that our opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics will most likely be delayed while Boris hunts down a match to light the flame. And we rather love him for it.

For a long time the posh have had to skulk round the back corridors of power. Being posh was hardly the key to open doors – more likely they would get slammed in your chinless face. But now, as one niece of an Earl said to me: “For ten years, one hasn’t been able to get a direct line to anyone in government but as of next year, one will be able to have the PM to lunch.”

One can hardly paint the posh as an oppressed minority but there’s no doubt that they have had to keep their naturally loud, braying voices to a hush. Afraid to be too posh in case they couldn’t get in to Oxbridge or get a job at the BBC. There wasn’t a single posh artist, writer or comedian who had a hope of getting decent PR let alone a review in The Guardian.

In fact, Armstrong & Miller, the comedy duo who now have a Friday night prime time slot on BBC1, were told ten years ago by a senior henchman at the Beeb that they were “too posh” to ever have their own show. Posh stand-up comedian Michael McIntyre has been propelled to stardom in little over a year, and tall, posh comedy actress Miranda Hart, who has been slogging on the circuit for ten years, has just debuted her own tv show on BBC2. Where are the likes of fast-talking, anarchic comics like Ben Elton? He’s just announced he’s moving to Australia.

In the media, the Sun has pledged its allegiance to the Tories. Hardly surprising, given not just Murdoch’s inclination to back the winning horse, but because the outgoing editor and News International executive, Rebekah Wade, has just married Charlie Brooks. A racing journalist, he has just written a piece for GQ on why it’s cool to be an Old Etonian again (see blogs passim). What with him and the missus hanging out with Cameron and Johnson, not to mention their Gloucestershire neighbours Matthew Freud and Elizabeth Murdoch, whose address book contains every famous, hip person alive. Up against that lot, staid Brown hasn’t a hope (although, Mandy, with a nice line in self-deprecating wit against his champagne-socialist tendencies, might).

Not that the posh of the approaching Teens decade is the same as the Sloane Ranger of the 80s. This time, the posh go to work, preferably starting their own businesses: ‘posh-preneurs’ is a phrase I used in an article for the Telegraph last year, which has been picked up by Schott for the New York Times. The best example of this is found in the food industry: with current emphasis on local and organic, who better than the landed gentry to sell the farm produce? From the future King of England’s Duchy Originals to the long legs of Maria Balfour (niece of Sir David Frost) with her instant dinner party delivery and Lord Ivar Mountbatten’s chickens sold in Marks & Spencer. All heartily backed by the posh foodies, of course: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Valentine Warner (my cousin) and Tom Parker-Bowles.

And where the posh of the 80s wore clothes that only they would wear and were deemed pretty silly even at the time (pink jeans and Wellington boots splashing in the Sloane Square fountain) this lot are cutting edge in ways that are terrifically hard to copy. Take trendsetter Violet Naylor-Leyland, hostess of club nights, who, when asked what is fashionable, gave the ultimate boho-posh answer and said, “I wouldn’t know because I dress like no other human being on earth.” Posh models such as Rosie Huntington-Whitely and Poppy Delevigne are hot, as is Emma Watson, who may or may not be posh but certainly looks it.

But what is the face of the New Tories aka New Posh? Is it Cameron – who is, truthfully, 21st century posh (eco-sensitive, politically active, married to a posh bird with good dress sense) but tragically stuck in the baby-faced, gormless look of the old posh. He never looks casual without his tie – he just looks as if he forgot to put it on.

I think it might be Boris: shabby he may be but he is posh without pretence or pretension. He isn’t patronising and he’s showing willing by getting down and dirty on his Mayoral tasks. Because you must be sure of one thing - to be posh is not the same as to be a snob. Still, whether it’s Boris or Dave we watch enter Number 10 next year, there’s no doubt: it will hail the new era of posh, what?

Posh foodies in The Lady - more than posh Pot Noodle

2009-11-10T13:00:00.003Z

I'm rather loving writing for The Lady. It's a little bit like a female 'Spectator', only with more pictures of flowers and rather off-putting ads for hearing aids and special mattresses. I've got another piece in this week's edition (look out for the poppies on the cover and a fetching pic of Rosamund Pike). Unfortunately, for reasons of space, they cut out some of my suggestions, so I'm putting them up here instead. If you fancy a bit of toffish deliciousness (with not a bit of pot or noodle in sight) - here's where to go...

Dorset Cereals www.dorsetcereals.co.uk

Have you noticed how Dorset Cereals have taken over? They look all homemade and crunchy but they’re as ubiquitous as Frosties. It’s no surprise then to learn that the men behind it have all worked for major brands – Peter Farquar, Old Etonian, was for years with Coca-Cola. On relocating to the West Country, he and two others bought this tiny brand and turned it into big business: 11,000 boxes are sold every day. “But we’re still keen that we speak personally to our consumers,” says Peter, (who by the way, denies being posh, as only the posh do, and then when I ask if he means the Fifteenths/Nineteenths when he says he was in the Royal Huzzars, cries: “No – we’re much posher than that!”).

Mr Bunbury Cakes, www.mrbunbury.com

Mr Bunbury cakes are newbies – the company began just a year ago – but they are already causing taste sensations with their brownies for grown-ups (made with 50% Madagascan chocolate), Millionaire’s Shortbread and outrageously scrummy biscuit cakes, for when you can’t decide which way you want to go. Owner Nick Fox has excellent posh foodie credentials, having learned his trade at Gü and being related to one of the co-owners of Prestat. His three young children – six, eight and two – “form the tasting panel and as a result we’re bringing out a new milk chocolate brownie next year.” Buy online or from one of the bigger Sainsbury’s stores.

Orkney Rose www.orkneyrose.com
Rose Grimond is a young woman with a mission – to bring the excellence of the Orkneys to the South. Up to 20 local producers, who couldn’t supply outside of the islands under their own steam, are powered to restaurants such as The Fat Duck and The Anchor & Hope. Look to Rose to provide you with the poshest, most delectable brunch you could find: “unadulterated, unprocessed black pudding, bacon and kippers – if you like that kind of thing.” Who possibly couldn’t?

James White Drinks www.jameswhite.co.uk

When Christmas looms large put Big Tom at the top of your shopping list. A few bottles of this spiced up tomato juice in the kitchen means that at any given moment (what is it about the festive time of year that means drinking straight after breakfast is a sign of normality rather than alcoholism?) a splash of that with more than a splash of vodka will keep you sane and your guests out of your hair. Owner Lawrence Mallinson (“I went to Marlborough – that’s probably not posh enough, is it?”) loves his juices, and it shows.

Prestat Chocolates, www.prestat.co.uk

Who knew Willy Wonka lived in Acton? At least, that’s the site of the magical Prestat factory, which is a five-year-old’s (or even 35-year-old’s) dream. The charming (Downside old boy) Nick Crean, co-proprietor, took me round the chocolate-smeared machines and fed me truffles (dark, milk, hazlenut praline), chocolate squares (raspberry and wasabi mustard a memorable combination), chocolate buttons and oozing banoffee rounds (“we get a lot of students writing to tell us that those are the best thing they’ve ever tasted”) until I was in danger of taking on the persona of Augustus Gloop. No surprise, then, if I tell you that Roald Dahl was a fan of Prestat. Luckily, you don’t need a golden ticket to enjoy them too.

More posh comedy - Miranda Hart

2009-11-10T10:37:00.003Z

Last night was the debut of Miranda Hart's new sitcom on BBC2 - 'Miranda'. I first spotted her on the under-the-radar but funny tv show 'Not Going Out'. Recently, she hosted an episode of 'Have I Got News For You.' Brilliantly.

She's on here because she's tall and posh. And I just love her. She has a nice line in self-deprecation (turning her 6'1" of height and slightly, er, mannish looks into physical comedy) but is not averse to pointing the finger at her own kind. In the sitcom, she owns a joke shop which is run by a bossy friend, while she spends her time dodging work. Her mother – Patricia Hodge – plays a typical toff, desperate to get her daughter married orf and with no patience for loving expressions ("We're not Spanish, darling"). Miranda goes out at one point for lunch with ghastly posh girlfriends from school, who scream instead of saying hello and call each other ridiculous names (Tilly, Bunty, Kong...).

It's slapstick in parts (she falls over a lot, which one really should be too sophisticated to laugh at but Miranda thankfully knows no one is), is a little bit clever in others but is mainly wryly observant, leavened by what is obviously a very sweet temperament.

Throughout the episode I also couldn't help but think - does this mean the time for poshos has come again? What with Armstrong & Miller, and return of OE-cool and the Tories bracing themselves for leadership...Will the Tens be the decade that sees 'The Return of the Toff'?

Crikey.

(Go to www.mirandahart.com for more info and watch the programme on BBC2, Mondays at 8.30pm.)

Posh fireworks

2009-11-09T15:27:00.002Z

It was fireworks night last week. I love a bit of fizz, bang, pop myself but couldn't find a decent display on anywhere. There's a local park that does it but I have distinct memories last year of being made to file to the viewing site via a narrow path with chicken wire high on either side and a general nervousness that someone was going to put a catherine wheel in my pocket.

Anyway, as luck would have it I was told at the last minute about the show at Cleveland Square. "It's not a football scrum like the local park one," said my informer. "You only see one sort of person there - it's all Notting Hill blondes and their spoilt children." PLU, in other words.

So off we trotted and it was simply lovely. Bought the tickets – £8 for a green wristband – from the pub round the corner then, along with about 2,000 others, we piled into the private, communal gardens. Open for one night only, if not exactly to the masses then to the posh massive (massif?). Toff music pumped on the system - 90s hits with anthemic choruses, like Blur's 'Parklife' – a huge bonfire warmed our faces, and mulled wine was on sale for a couple of quid a plastic-cup-pop. All around us the tall, grand stucco'ed white houses looked down on us smugly, as the light show danced on their facades. There were private parties on the balconies and some of them even had small back gardens that led directly into the square; so the guests could be part of the Cleveland Square event without having to actually get into the scrum.

There were indeed hordes of blondes with caramel highlights and lots of children dressed in yummy Boden outfits. Everyone smiled, oohed and aahed at the fireworks ("the sparkliest you'll ever see", I was promised - and they were right). We bumped into some people we knew - of course. PLU, you see.

And then we went home. But this is the worst bit. Now that I've been introduced to this snippet of posh insider knowledge, I won't be able to help myself in future: I'll pretend, just like all the other Snotty Hillers, that I *always* knew about it and will be slightly shocked at anyone who doesn't. Come Nov 5 2010, you'll hear me: "Aren't you going to Cleveland Square? Don't you know you that one? Oh. [Pause] I thought you would. Well, you really must try it. It's such fun."

OK to be an OE

2009-11-05T17:00:00.003Z

This month's GQ magazine features an article by Charlie Brooks. For those who don't know, he's the posho who recently married Rebekah Wade (formerly Editor of The Sun and now top henchman at Murdoch's News International). Brooks's day job is as a racing journalist for The Telegraph. The sort of job, in other words, that puts one rather in mind of the actor who was asked by Peter Cook at a party if he was doing anything these days. "I'm writing a novel, actually," said the actor. "Ah, neither am I," replied Cook.

Anyway, I digress etc. This piece is a jolly romp about why it's finally OK, after a "lonely, secretive life" hitherto, to admit to being an Old Etonian. ("The only person I knew who was reckless enough to admit he was an OE was the late Daily Mail diarist Nigel Dempster. And he went to Sherborne."

Now that OE David Cameron is likely to change his pre-initials to PM in the near future, all sorts of cronies are popping up. There's Boris, of course ("[without whom] this renaissance would certainly not have been possible; because Boris proves the point that there is no such thing as a stereotypical OE."). Rory Stewart – who I am a little hot for – a young man who has already racked up an OBE, a Harvard professorship and serious time in Afghanistan. (Next foolhardy mission: to become a Tory MP.)

Those with rather fewer democratic tendencies include Prince Dipendra of Nepal who massacred several members of his family from cousin to King. Let's hope fellow OE Prince William doesn't follow in his bloody steps. (No, all you anti-monarchists out there - I'm not going to say otherwise - we'll have that argument another time.)

Simon Mann, recently home and sure to be pointing not so much a finger as a heavy load of artillery at Sir Mark Thatcher, also learned his survival skills at the Slough Grammar.

Plus a plethora of others - Bear Grylls, Hugh Laurie, John Carver, Johnnie Boden, Jeremy - sorry, Jay – Jopling and more. Much more than this.

The question is somehow still begged: is it - is it really - OK to be an OE?

More to follow...

Posh Bird in the Country

2009-11-04T14:19:00.003Z

Had a few days borrowing a friend's house in the country for the tail-end of half-term. Proper country-like. Dogs, chickens, guinea pigs, fish, cats and tiny kittens to feed and an ancient pony to cuddle (that was the instruction). An Aga, on which I cooked endlessly - red velvet cake, pumpkin soup (even roasting my own pumpkin seeds - only to leave the soup on the Aga all night so that the cream in it curdled, rendering it totally inedible), roast chicken, home made pizza, home made bread. Plus there were chilly but bright walks on the farmland, around the woods, shouting at the dogs. All bracing and refreshing stuff.

But the bit I'd forgotten about being in the country - what it's like living there as opposed to just weekending - is that you are never alone. There was a constant stream of people coming in to deliver vegetables, collect vegetables, check the post, mend the Aga, dig the ditch, test the tractor, plough the fields, do the washing, pop in for a chat, drop off something from the church that 'might be of interest', check on the pony, sell a granny....Well, they might have done that last one. I think by that point I'd gone upstairs to hide under the duvet. The city might have a population of millions but it's a much less crowded place to be.

Toff Media Part 2

2009-10-31T15:37:00.002Z

Do you think they have signs in the office saying "You don't have to be posh to work here - but it helps!"......?

Toff Media

2009-10-30T22:01:00.002Z

I've just watched the latest episode of Armstrong & Miller (excellent as ever, especially the camp Northern Irish Royal 'expert' who knows nothing at all) and just saw at the end credits that it was made by Toff Media. This turns out to be a Hat Trick backed company (Hat Trick is one of the most successful comedy production companies - from Who's Line Is It Anyway? to Have I Got News For You) formed by Ben and Xander in order to produce 'snugly fitting bespoke comedy and drama'.

I have to be a part of it! Comedians who call themselves toffs! Comedy doesn't get toffer than this! How can I join? Stand outside their offices in Soho looking suitably toff-ish and spouting knock-knock jokes? All suggestions and tweed loans gratefully received.

Dinner Parties

2009-10-29T10:50:00.003Z

The Daily Telegraph reported this week that the dinner party is officially extinct: it's now all about the informal kitchen supper, al fresco dining, 'pot luck' dinners and a general foodie-free-for-all. There have been comment pieces by writers thrilled that the hostess no longer has to worry about caramelising the onions in time, the guests don't have to agonise between bringing flowers, wine or a scented candle and no one is left perturbed by stiff linen napkins, pouring the wine in the wrong glass or passing the port to the right.

In one sense - yes. This kind of formal dinner party is over - the one where the hostess strains to impress with her knowledge of olde worlde etiquette and cordon bleu dining (which involves a lot of sugar cages and not a lot of taste) and the guests struggle to maintain a classy froideur whilst hoovering up several bottle of Chateau Plonk.

I ruined my 20s by being far too serious about being a grown-up: my only social aspiration was to throw a really successful dinner party. To have a dinner party, in other words, would testify that I was A Sophisticated Adult. I would blow all my money on foodstuffs from Harrods and crystal glasses from Peter Jones, for a bemused set of family and friends who only really wanted a bit of spag bol and chatter, followed by some drunken dancing until 4am. (I usually managed the drunken bit but quickly sobered when an arrogant young heir asked which bedroom he would be going to that night - mine or my flatmate's?)

But dinner parties now are no less frightening - in fact, the lack of formality means there is no structure on which even the least socially able can hook their hang-ups. A supper party in 2009 means we must source the best local food, cook with the ability of a divine cross between Nigel, Jamie and Nigella, invite a mix of old friends and the newly powerful, have everyone lounging around in an enormous kitchen (at least before everyone was hidden in the dining room, away from the carnage and the hastily unwrapped Marks & Spencer ready meals) which has been artfully decorated in the manner of a bohemian artiste who has not only inherited stag heads and armchairs covered in ticking but has picked up clever little pieces from her frequent trips to Delhi and Peru. No one can leave early because all the children are asleep in the garden in a Cath Kidston tent and, besides, the drugs come out at midnight.

Come back Margot and Jerry - all is forgiven.

The Lady

2009-10-27T17:09:00.002Z

Possibly the poshest publication of all, The Lady, has recently undergone a revamp with Rachel Johnson (sister of Boris) at the helm. For almost a thousand years, The Lady has been the place for posh people to find their staff. Occasionally they'd also book a villa in Tuscany or Provence through the small ads too. The rest of the pages were basically ignored, except possibly for the occasional person who ordered a pair of fleece-lined slippers or a walk-in bath. Now it's rather glossy and groovy, with top contributors - including your very own posh self. See my article on dos and don'ts for townies in the country this week. And my piece on posh foodies next week. OK, yah?

Posh Bird in Venice

2009-10-27T15:59:00.002Z

I forgot to get pictorial evidence but in Venice this weekend I wore my red Hunter wellies. From Stansted airport to Treviso and onto a taverna for supper - all the while, stomping in wellies. Looking at the Grand Canal - in wellies. It rained but even when it stopped raining and the sun was blazing, I had to wear the wellies home again. Back to Treviso, a Ryanair flight and to Stansted - where I was met by my man in our knackered Land Rover Defender. You can't get much posher than that, eh?

Armstrong & Miller: no longer too posh

2009-10-19T08:39:00.003Z

The BBC comedy duo Armstrong & Miller were told sometime in the late 90s that they would never get their own tv show because they were "too posh". Now their latest series, on primetime BBC1, has been both eagerly anticipated and received. Hurrah for the boys.

Their most popular running sketch is two RAF men with the look and diction of the Second World War but the language of modern teenagers ("So iz you saying you iz going to shoot us all up with guns and this and that and everything else?"). The point they make is clear: the respect we had for the brave young men of the war is aeons apart from our feelings towards modern teenagers. And yet, perhaps all that is different between them is language (all that is different between *anyone* is language). Those young men in 1940 were just as insouciant, foolhardy and determined to resist authority as they are now.

...Or were they? Are the questions more about leadership, upbringing, education, a sense of belonging, purpose and direction? Have we once again placed upon the issue of class the greater social ills of our country? Iz it, you know, because I is posh?

PS I can't make a link work but if you go to www.youtube.com, type in 'armstrong & miller RAF' and watch the one about the broken leg...

Posh looking-glass

2009-10-16T13:56:00.002Z

I really rather like this - good present for a posh person: they like kitsch things that also secretly make them feel, "Ha haa -it's only because I'm actually really posh that I can ironically find this amusing". This looking-glass (or mirror as the non-posh say) does just the trick. It's by Giles Miller (www.gilesmiller.com)

Why Jeremy Clarkson is a toff OR Why posh doesn't mean snob

2009-10-15T09:43:00.004Z

Jeremy Clarkson has written a very funny column (sorry - I know I shouldn't find him funny, but I do) on why appreciating Monty Python marks him out as a toff. The argument basically revolves around the idea that being clever is a toff thing, or rather - that enjoying cleverness is a toff thing. Well...he sort of says that. But then he makes the classic mistake of using 'toff' and 'snob' interchangeably, as if they are one and the same thing - and this is my basic problem. Being a snob is not the same thing as being a toff. There are some frightful snobs who are also toffs - but most people (toffs and non-toffs alike) can't bear them - think they are at best irrelevant, at worst mentally ill. There are hordes of toffs who are not snobs. Noticing what is u and non-u is not actually snobbish - it's simply putting things in a box (not to say that that is any less worse, but it is a different thing.) Plus there are plenty of non-toffs who are terrible snobs: intellectual snobs, arrivistes, aspirationals, the type who send their children to a certain school because someone Royal went there, the ones who won't speak to someone who pronounces 'perfect' like the song, the snobs who are offish with anyone driving a Toyota. That lot can push off.

So Clarkson is a sort of a toff, I think. And probably a bit snobbish, too. But mostly - quite funny.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article6869288.ece

Leopardskin - surprisingly posh

2009-10-15T08:48:00.004Z

I had a funny moment last night. I went to a very grand house on a very grand street in Chelsea, owned by a woman on her second marriage to someone frightfully grand and rich (think 'Dukedom' and you've got the right ballpark). Anyway - her study (only posh people have studies, right?) was almost Magic Eye-dazzling for its leopardskin. A vast, red trimmed leopardskin rug (not real animal skin) covered the floor. And leopardskin-covered small armchair sat in one corner. There were some other leopardskin trimmings dotted about but I could hardly absorb it all in one eyeful. Everything else was posh-as-you'd-expect: huge, plump sofa covered in a softly-coloured taupe wool material, a wooden hot water bottle on a side table (?), small pieces of tasteful Italian art, a desk littered with papers and paperweights. But, really - all one could see was leopardskin.

It reminded me of the time I was sent to Chingford for three days by the Mail on Sunday to track down all of David Beckham's teammates from when he was eight. It turned out not to be that difficult as, bar one dead and one who lived in Hertfordshire (and only then because he was paid to live there - he was a footballer for the local team), they all still lived in Chingford. We went to one of his old friend's houses and in a tiny lounge at the back of the house was a room with a leopardskin-covered chaise longue, with leopardskin lampshades and small crystal bowls of boiled sweets on the nests of tables. I realised that, rather touchingly if you think about it, David and Victoria Beckham lived in the exact same house only 50 times bigger because they have £50 million to spend on it. So they are totally true to their roots, no matter how pretentious all the snipe-y media like to pretend they are.

And, as you know, Victoria Beckham is also known as 'Posh'. Turns out, with all that leopardskin, she really IS.

Posh Test part 2

2009-10-13T14:54:00.005Z

I've just found a posh test: http://poshtest.com/quiz/

It's quite funny and reasonably accurate (I come out as 67% posh, which I think is about right). But there are quite a few things there that they think mean posh and I think mean not posh at all. For example: taking your shoes off before you enter the house is absolutely not posh. Nor is hiding loo roll under decorative cover. (And the person who set the test has immediately given themselves away by calling it 'loo roll' and not that horrid T word; so maybe these are double-bluffs). Some of the questions are really rather witty: cf muddy Land Rover, garage as pronounced 'garahhj' (my friends used to fall about laughing when I talked about 'garahhj music'), having a 'study' in your house....

Suck it and see.

The posh X-factor & posh foodies

2009-10-10T14:42:00.004Z

It's the 300th anniversary of Tatler this week. So I was asked to write a big piece about new posh, old posh, bohemian posh, u and non-u things. I thought it would be dead easy until I got down to it. I called a few poshos and we tried to define posh (see this blog passim) and realised that all the old benchmarks of poshness no longer hold the answer: not accent (think Guy Ritchie), not schooling (hardly anyone goes to Eton), not etiquette knowledge (few realise to address the envelope to wife only), nor even family history (you can get posh in just three generations).

In the end I decided that - appropriately enough for these times - poshness comes down to a sort of posh 'x-factor', or 'toff-factor'. An indefinable quality that is the only means by which you can know whether someone is truly posh or not: might be the high forehead, might be style, could be manners. The only truism is that when you ask someone posh if they're posh, they'll hotly deny it.

That done, I then settled down to write a piece about 'posh foodies' for someone else. And, my, that was fun! I could have done that for weeks on end. I decided that I really love truly posh people. They're always hearty, terribly enthusiastic, shouting down the phone about their really excellent cakes. And why shouldn't they be that way? Most have had a life of privilege - top schooling, rambling houses, fresh air, dear old Nanny, strong sense of identity and that cushioned feeling that life is never really going to be too hard. And for all their stiff upper lips, the fact that they've never had to waste energy on worrying about the roof over their head (beyond it leaking every generation or so) means that they're actually rather good with the big stuff of life. If you have heartbreak, terminal illness, blackmail, or are generally just feel a bit down in the dumps - seek out a posh person. Within half an hour they'll have you eating mashed banana in front of It's A Wonderful Life before telling you to buck up and get outdoors for a bracing walk. "It'll all be fine in the morning." It always is.

Saloniversary OR Is Shoreditch the new posh?

2009-10-01T09:08:00.004Z

Last night, to Shoreditch. A blissfully unposh part of town. But maybe Shoreditch House itself is the epitome of 'new posh' - if you take posh (see discussions passim) to mean 'the ruling class', or at least 'arbiter of current high society etiquette' (not so catchy). Anyway - it's all deeply trendy, with bad mannered bar staff, people crammed into one room, padded shoulders knocking – one woman's studded t-shirt nearly took my eye out at the bar. Everyone looks furious, but whether this is the face of Hoxton-cool or just the side-effect of the recession, which is putting everyone in a bad mood, I don't know.

Thankfully, we were gathering for the most unpretentious of reasons - though at first it may not sound like it. Damian Barr's 'Salon' - which started exactly a year ago with an audience of just 30 and the chick-lit author Jenny Colgan doing a reading. Last night there were nearer to 300 in the room - Jenny read again, as did returning authors David Nicholls ('Starter for 10') and Geoff Dyer ('The Colour of Memory', 'Geoff in Venice') - who were so funny they caused many a woman, and likely some men, to fall instantly in love, despite their ramshackle appearance and the confession of one that he was so unhip at school he had the nickname "Biff, as in 'Spina Bifida". Bringing people together in a room to discuss books sounds hideous but Damian says it's all about the love of reading, which is something quite different. Hence highbrow and lowbrow are all in the same (Hendrick's) gin-fuelled, pizza-fed mix.

If this is the new posh, then I'd like to be Queen.

Town vs Country

2009-09-29T11:51:00.003Z

I've just been phoned by a fellow journo to get quoted in a piece he's doing for the Sunday Times - part of which is about why country people hate townies. We covered houses (townies pushed up all the prices, importing poncy architects and interior designers), village life (non existent when half the houses are owned by townies who are only there a few days a month), wardrobes (townies are the only ones to be spotted wearing Barbours and Hunter wellies - country people wear trainers and lumberjack shirts) and county rivalry (similar to postcode shorthand in London).

The one thing we didn't mention - class. Perhaps because when two quite posh journos are discussing a piece for Sunday Times Style mag about the trials and tribulations of being a Snotty Hill townie with a pad in Dorset, there is a basic assumption of lower-upper-classness. But actually, I know that this particular journo, while he hobnobs with all the poshos, he doesn't consider himself at heart to be One Of Them. (Actually he tells a funny story about staying with Bryan Ferry when he was married to the very posh Lucy, which illustrates how posh people in the country always disappear after lunch and you have to awkwardly find something to do totally on your own for hours until they re-emerge in an outlandish outfit demanding a game of tennis.)

Or maybe because there's a certain assumption that all of the countryside is basically quite posh (untrue - apart from the fact that they do posh things like hunting, shooting and fishing), and that townies who go there are posh.

Or maybe........just maybe.......(tiny hopeful voice)......class isn't uppermost in our minds anymore.

Stuck for an answer

2009-09-22T11:18:00.005Z

How rude can I be despite/in spite of my supposed poshness? I was invited to a dinner party last week and the hostess put out place cards with our names written on, even though there were only seven of us there. Two days after the party, I received in the post an 'At home' invitation card - obviously, it was late and also, it was a bit much for just a small supper party. These things are a bit non-U but she was American, so I think the rules are different. They are vastly more mannered and polite across the pond. Plus I was rude to her brother and had to apologise the next day. So I think, frankly, had she served up toe jam and asked us to hold hands and sing hymns before the starter, I'd have to concede that her manners were better than mine.

In this instance - was I posh, or not?

Posh or not?

2009-09-16T09:24:00.002Z

Here are some of the old-fashioned posh or not tests...

How do you pour tea? Milk in first - not posh. Tea first - posh

Do you use fish knives? Yes - not posh. No - posh.

What do you call that bit of cloth on your lap at supper? Napkin - posh. Serviette - not posh.

How do you pronounce 'perfect'? As in the song ("It's got to beeee....") - not posh. 'Perfickt' - posh.

What do you call that lovely smelly stuff you spray on your wrists? Perfume - not posh. Scent - posh.

What do you look in to check your lipstick? Looking-glass - posh. Mirror - not posh.

How do you pronounce 'portrait'? Por-trayt - not posh. Portrit - posh.

....All of which rather assumes that poshness is about pronounciation and the use of some archaic nouns. Is this really the case? To be discussed.

What does 'posh' mean?

2009-09-14T11:35:00.002Z

Before going further with this blog, I need to address the question of what posh is. Port-out-starboard-home is one theory for the origin of the word, indicating the side of the ship the First Class passengers sat on as they voyaged to Trump Tower. And as First Class in them days (ie Titanic) meant people with money and the only people with money then were people with class, then for years, posh meant rich and upper class.

In the 21st century, having sold off all their big houses, paid enormous death duties and lost a few elder sons to drugs and insurance scams, most posh people aren't rich. At least, money cannot be a defining factor in their poshness. Which also means that poshness cannot be about size of house or location because some of them can only afford a bedsit in Fulham. I think a posh person prefers to live somewhere tiny but smart than huge but degenerate but it isn't a general rule. It probably is true that there still aren't many posh people in council flats.

So does it mean class?

But class is itself a rather moveable feast, with plenty claiming to have hauled themselves up by their father's bootstraps from working to middle class. And it is generally agreed that in three generations a family can move from middle to upper class (because of a peerage or because the rich-but-unposh bloke married the poor-but-posh bird and sent their kids and their grandkids to public school).

Hmmm. Public school (which means Eton and Harrow and not fee-paying schools generally for reasons I can't quite fathom but might have something to do with fags and boaters). So could posh be about educashun? Emphatically not - the posh were barely educated until the 1980s. The poshest women I know were positively refused access to school and the boys would spend their time either playing cricket or beating off advances from the music tutors. It's better now but that's to do with civilization not the posh.

Is it about voting Tory? No. The best posh people were proper bohemians from the 1940s onwards and advocated fighting in Spanish civil wars, living in a commune and inviting drunk hobos to live in a shed at end of their garden. In other words, they voted Lib Dem, if they voted at all. Or they just voted for peace, man.

Why am I posh, then? I was brought up in Deptford in a terraced house by left-wing hippies. I went to a private school (not public, note), but only because I've got a hearing problem and couldn't hear the teacher in the trendy open-plan classrooms of the local state school. I work for a living and am about as far from rich as a windfall apple from the top of the tree. Yet if you met me, you would call me posh. Why?

Coming up next - the posh or not quiz.

"Would you mind taking your shoes off?"

2009-09-10T13:47:00.001Z

Yes! I mind terribly. (I really mind in airport security queues but even more so in houses). It is distinctly un-posh to not let your guests keep their shoes on because you are worried about slightly marking your laminate flooring. Also, posh people have terrible feet with no nail polish. The whole thing is just ghastly. The fact that my LK Bennett boots once caused permanent damage to a £20,000 floor is really neither here nor there, quite frankly.

Still, this morning, I acquiesced. But only because I'd had my bath this morning.

Tom's Kitchen

2009-09-09T13:56:00.002Z

Had a meeting this morning with two very posh birds who are sisters (one lives in Switzerland, the other has a permanent blonde quiff). We were due to meet in Tom's Kitchen (posh breakfast place in Chelsea Green) but the meeting was slightly delayed because they were house sitting for their mother in Eaton Square and the mother's dog had to be rushed to the vet because – and this is the reply I got when I asked – it was "just very old". One sister was insistent that they put the dog down there and then despite the fact that the dog's owner, their mum, was away. This is a totally posh response to an animal crisis. I was very impressed. We then had mint tea and croissants.

How to join the RAF

2009-09-08T15:38:00.001Z

A very simple test.

Ask your candidate to say the following words after you have spelled them out.
A-I-R

H-A-I-R

L-A-I-R

Then ask him to say all three words in one go.

"Air-hair-lair"

"Air-hair-lair to you too! Welcome to the RAF."

Posh Bird in London

2009-09-08T15:32:00.002Z

There's nothing special about being a posh bird in London. I'm so posh, I could be posh anywhere. In fact, for years, I was posh in Deptford. If you can be posh there, you can be posh in...Catford. I'm serious, I have the ability to be posh in Lewisham.

Anyway, now I'm posh in Snotty Hill, which you would think was very easy. But actually, it's a lot harder - because too many people in these parts think they are posh, when they're not. And they're constantly pushing their posh credentials on to you and you just want to point out that the very fact they feel the need to wear pearls while out jogging/dress their nanny in a uniform/marry a man called Rupert means that they're not really posh at all.

I'll be blogging on this type of trial and tribulation as the weeks go by....not to mention posh spotting, posh etiquette, posh voices, modern posh, posh people, too posh to push and David Beckham.