How poshist are you?
Jamie Laing, new Radio 1 presenter, has been called 'too posh for radio'. Imagine the fuss if someone with a different accent had been given the job and called 'too common'...
Ironically, one of the reasons I wanted to start this newsletter was to write about things that weren’t necessarily posh. For years now I’ve been banging on about Labradors and signet rings and the correct way to eat a pear (with your left hand, according to Debrett’s, don’t for heaven’s sake embarrass yourself by using your right), so I thought ‘Well, why not give something else a chance? There’s quite a lot going on in the world. You could try writing an anecdote that doesn’t even involve a castle?’ I didn’t mean to leap to Gaza or the woeful state of government immediately. But there’d presumably be some middle ground - Rishi Sunak’s choice of trainer, perhaps, or whether or not people who watch TikTok aloud on public transport should be imprisoned.
And yet here I am, writing about something posh. Sorry! Next week I’ll have a stab at Russia’s foreign policy. But this week, it’s Jamie Laing, who’s been called ‘too posh for radio.’
Do you know about Jamie Laing? He’s the blond one who started his telly career in Made in Chelsea, went on one series of Strictly, hurt his foot and had to quit, went on another series of Strictly and got to the final, launched a sweet brand called Candy Kittens, has made various podcasts, and is occasionally and wrongly referred to as the McVitie’s heir. (‘I’m not heir to anything,’ Jamie clarified in an interview last year. ‘We sold the company a long time ago but I don't know where that money went. I haven't seen any of it. It's pretty upsetting. I'm hoping one day I find it. I don't even get free biscuits.’)
Yesterday, he also kicked off a new job as a co-presenter on Radio 1’s Going Home show, and has been busy defending himself from accusations that he’s ‘too posh’.
‘It’s a misconception that I just swanned in here,’ Jamie told The Sunday Times over the weekend, discussing the backlash that his new job has sparked. ‘I’ve been trying to get this job for eight years, constantly grinding, constantly asking to do little slots. No one is given a job here because their mum or dad helped them into it. You have to earn your colours.’
He’s such a nice guy, Jamie. I first met him during an interview years ago in a London hotel suite, where the Made in Chelsea cast were collectively wearing so much fake tan for the photoshoot that they turned the bed and bath brown. ‘Let’s get acid! Let’s get coke! Let’s get porn on the TV!’ Jamie said happily as he skipped around the suite in a pair of boxer shorts and red heels (as I wrote then, he was only playing up for the cameras).
Yes, alright, alright, he went to private school and he sounds posh, but he’s worked hard and he’s good at what he does, which is being funny and likeable and entertaining. I could see that then; anyone listening to Radio 1 yesterday afternoon would also have heard what Jamie’s co-presenters dubbed ‘his golden retriever energy.’ The station is aimed at teens and twenty-somethings. Do they give a stuff where Jamie went to school so long as he’s upbeat and cracks a few gags? Should being posh really have barred him from the Radio 1 gig? Imagine if someone else had landed that job but they had a different accent and background. It’s unlikely that anyone would have screamed they were ‘too common’.
It’s pure poshism! These days, we’re not supposed to be rude or mean or snobby towards anyone else, and quite right, unless they’re deemed posh, in which case, fair game. If someone’s posh, the prevailing view goes, they’re despicable human beings and they deserve everything they get. #Bekind, certain people chant, unless we’re talking about a posh person because the posh are trash and deserve to be trashed. (If there was one bum note in Netflix’s One Day, for example, I would say it was Sylvie’s parents, who made out to be so awfully posh they were almost villainous caricatures when everyone else was so note perfect.)
Look, I get it. We haven’t been served well by posh politicians in recent years, and some posh people are awful. Some posh people snog their dogs because they can’t form relationships with their own children and still refer to it as ‘Keeeenya’.
But some posh people aren’t that bad. Some posh people are perfectly charming and really quite normal individuals who shop in Sainsbury’s and don’t even own a pair of red trousers. And I’m not thinking of anyone in particular here, but *some* posh people are quite nice even though they have incredibly silly names. So shall we lay off them for a bit?
Pic of the week
You might have seen this picture already, or a variation of it. Victoria Beckham on crutches after she broke her foot in the gym. But today we’re talking about the crutches, not VB, because those crutches were made by my brilliant pal, Amelia. Almost 20 years ago, when she was 19, Amelia had a quad bike accident in Scotland and broke her back, which, as one doctor tactfully put it after multiple X-rays, left her back and hips looking like someone had ‘taken a hammer to a meringue’. She was told she might never walk again. But because she’s not a giving up sort, Amelia embraced the rehab process and so met her first pair of crutches.
Pretty soon, she discovered that crutches were uncomfortable, unstable, blistered her hands and clicked noisily. ‘I noticed this when I was in hospital because docs were wary of giving me false hope about walking,’ Amelia tells me, ‘and any time I tried to eavesdrop on their conversations about my prognosis, my crutches meant they heard me coming and stopped talking.’ (This bit about eavesdropping gives you a good insight into Amelia’s determined character.) ‘Clicking became a constant reminder of what I’d lost - my independence - because they drew attention to my injury.’
So, with the help of Clare, her mum, Amelia set about designing her own pair and this subsequently became her business, Cool Crutches. Need a left-hand crutch? A right-hand crutch? A crutch with hand cushioning? An unclicky pair of crutches so people don’t stare as you approach? Want a leopard-print crutch or a little diamanté number that you could twirl above your head if you’ve recently suffered a leg injury but still need to be on stage later for a spot of baton twirling? Want to design your own pair of crutches? Not a problem. Just upload your design and Cool Crutches can do that for you too. VB, obviously, went for a black pair because she’s VB. But other celebs – including Amanda Holden, Vogue Williams and Prue Leith – have picked Amelia’s nattier, brighter designs. The business is now 17 years old and they do walking sticks too. Isn’t that a magnificently positive thing to come out of an awful accident? I think so.
Recommendation of the week
It’s an app called Yuka. I’ve ignored the debate about UPFs (ultra processed foods, nothing to do with aliens) for ages because frankly there’s always someone in the news banging on about sugar or fasting or some mad new diet where you’re only allowed five and a half almonds for breakfast, and I get sick of being lectured about what we should and shouldn’t be eating. But I’m now the last person in Britain to be reading Chris van Tulleken’s best-selling book, Ultra Processed People, and do you know what? Although some of the science goes over my head, it is quite gripping about the chemical, gummy crap we’re shovelling in when we reach for another biscuit, even biscuits that we think are healthy. So my recommendation is this app, Yuka, which is FREE. Download it and zap any barcode on any foodstuff and it’ll immediately give you a score out of 100 and list the additives that it contains and what those additives do to us. Mum and I genuinely spent most of our weekend zapping everything in her house (‘Have you done the mayonnaise? Have you done the Mini Cheddars?’) and were largely repulsed by the results. And yesterday morning, I went to Sainsbury’s (LOOK HOW NORMAL I AM) and stood for half an hour zapping in the bread aisle. Gripping, I promise.
Nonsense of the week
Knole Academy in Kent is the worthy winner of this award today. When I first saw last week’s headlines - ‘school allows pupils to wear false eyelashes to protect mental health’ - I assumed it was one of those slightly made up or exaggerated stories. But now I’ve read the stories and headmaster’s letter, I’ve discovered it’s true. Mr Collins (the headmaster, not the Pride and Prejudice one) told parents that the school was ‘increasingly seeing attendance affected by students taking time off to have false eyelashes removed or refusing to attend school [without false lashes] through mental health considerations.’
Mr Collins has subsequently changed the uniform policy to allow false eyelashes. Silly. Silly silly silly. And unfair, actually, because when I was a teenager and decided a nose piercing was a terrific idea, the teachers at school made me wear a large and unsightly plaster over it in lessons (I couldn’t take the stud out because the hole would close up, I’d insisted with what I thought was inarguable logic. Fine, retorted Mrs Best, put a plaster over it). When one of my brothers dyed his hair peroxide blond, his teacher made him wear a woman’s hat in class. If you break the uniform rules at school, teachers are allowed to have a little fun and make you look like a tit. It shouldn’t be the other way round.
Honestly I swear you make me laugh every time. Posh or Not! And I am most certainly not! I was entranced by the walking sticks /crutches thing - do you remember those crutches that the hospital leant you, that you jammed into your armpit and it hauled your shoulder up higher than the other one and hurt like hell. The bruising in the armpit. Horrifying. No decent padding. Dreadful. I once saw one of those old wooden crutches abandoned in a vacant lot in Melbourne and I bet the poor bugger who was using it just said, Sod It and hurled it over the fence. Limping away regretfully!
It's a funny thing about school uniform/dress code policies - they're usually justified as preventing distraction, yet the enforcement is invariably far more attention-getting than the actual offence!