How to beat the class system

Helen Osborne

CLASS ACT by Lynda Lee-Potter Metro, £.17.99, pp. 250 The groom at least had made some effort,' wrote Lynda Lee-Potter in her Daily Mail column after the paper had blown up a registry office snap of my wed- ding on its front page. I was mortified by this blatant lack of appreciation for my bridal rig and have ever since suspected her own ability to rise to a sartorial challenge. However, after all this time, I have relent- ed: in Class Act she perceptively categorises my late husband as a true gent.

Rightly regarding class shenanigans as more of a funfair than a battlefield, Class Act is chirpy, chippy and blessedly unfash- ionable. Subtitled 'How to beat the Class System', she explains how Lynda, a fat and plain child from Leigh in Lancashire, strug- gled up from the social basement to the first landing where 'you can't be too thin, too rich, live in too big a house or have too much land'. Too true.

At home there was the cliché lavatory at the bottom of the yard and a tin bath in front of the fire, and an ambitious mother — 'a born actress with stunning legs' who shoved her only child upwards into the local Grammar and then to drama school in London. There she married the doctor son of Air Marshal Sir Patrick Lee Potter (the hyphen creeping in as a clerical error).

can't think what he sees in you, love,' said her mother, proudly. Lynda may have quavered but she has never looked back. `Tin baths are only romantic when they are part of your past.'

Much of Class Act is slapped together from interviews during Lee-Potter's long slog at the journalistic coal-face with snobs, bounders and eccentrics, and her personal trawl through the social minefield of pro- nunciation, of fish knives, serviettes and artichokes. So, how did she beat the sys- tem?

Despite the fact that this is screamingly polit- ically incorrect advice, you should first lose your regional accent .... I got on the train with a Lancashire accent and got off at Euston without it .... I had to speak very slowly for a very long time.

And, if necessary, 'always fornicate upwards'. Her mother would have had something to say about that.

Then, it seems, good manners, panache and confidence will get you anywhere. She has a salutary dinner-party story: one guest mentioned that all students at a nearby uni- versity were either footballers or whores. Another guest said that actually his wife was a student at the said university. The raconteur didn't even blink but merely looked interested and said, 'Oh, really, what position does she play?'

The Lee-Potter rancour is reserved, quite rightly, for the 'wretched scrounging class,' and — somewhat hysterically — for the Queen Mother and Prince Charles. Myself, I'd have had a crack at the craven bourgeoisie. I once knew someone who, when his mother was staying, would explain that she was the cleaning woman if she happened to answer the telephone.

Her Tacky Toffs include Michael Winner and Woodrow Wyatt. No quarrel there. Nicholas Soames, on the other hand, has True Class. When his daughter was born he said she was 'the size of a decent salmon'. So, too, had Les Dawson. If the Duke of Edinburgh was at the same dinner, he would cry, 'Where's Dawson?'

The Duke of Devonshire observes, 'On the turf and under it, all men are equal.' Lynda from Leigh is a bit uneasy in the sporting field area. (Nowhere are class dis- tinctions more clearly demonstrated than on a shoot'), so I'll chip in with my own favourite story. Girlfirend goes shooting with new boyfriend: 'Down, you bitch,' he yells at his labrador; girlfriend drops to the heather.

Sanctimonious sociologists will scorn all this, New Labour will hate it, but Class Act could become the Gideon Bible for loyal readers of Lee-Potter's column as they fill out the questionnaires — 'Are You Too Anxious to Please?' Are You a Social Climber?' Are You Posh?' Are You a Snob?'

But watch out if you live in Bournemouth:

There are more snobs, social climbers, rich northerners, bidets and jacuzzis per square acre in Bournemouth than anywhere else in the country.

It would be a duller world without the whole caboodle and we can all quibble; that's part of the fun. Naff, for example: egg sandwiches have never been naff; prawn cocktails are classy again. As for Smart Pets, chocolate labradors — at the top of her list — which I've owned and loved for 25 years, have certainly lost some of their sheen since Bill Clinton and Buddy were seen cavorting on the White House lawn as a diversion from the Lewinsky busi- ness. Poor Buddy, it's not his fault that he's let down the clan.