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"Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear,
but forgetting where you heard it."
-Laurence J. Peter
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"Read not to contradict and confute,
nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."
-Francis Bacon
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People in the western world are inclined to think they have a better society than the ones where there still are
systems in place that divide the population, like the caste system in India. To hold one or more parts of the population
in lesser regard than other parts of that same population, westerners tend to think, is old-fashioned and discriminating.
We have left the feudal system behind us, and any nation that has a caste or similar system is supposed to be backward.
But are we westerners really that forward, then? Perhaps in some ways, but certainly not in all. Take British society, for
instance. Nothing against British society, I liked briefly being part of it, but letīs see how progressive it really is.
Officially the Brits have left the system of the class society behind them. And you certainly do notice less of it in
everyday life. You donīt ask your friends anymore about a personīs class. Is he upper class? Lower class? Middle class?
Upper middle class? Lower middle class? But that doesnīt mean the classes donīt exist anymore. Whether you want to or not,
you do still belong to one of the classes. And it usually shows.
Speech, for instance, is one of the indicators. Sometimes a deceptive one, but still itīs one. Apart from the John Majors
of this world - who has a lower class background,
but who "kicked himself upstairs" and acquired the accompanying way of "speaking posh" -
one can often tell someoneīs class by simply listening to him or her speak. Most people do not try to obscure their origin.
Many are proud of it. Take TV gardening guru Alan Titchmarsh. When in Gardenerīs World he says "And Iīll be here, in
me Hampshire garden ...", he does so on purpose. Heīs not ashamed of his origin, as some other people are. An
acquantaince of mine, for instance, very consciously speaks English the way the English speak it, although she was born in
Wales. Having been born in Wales is nothing to be ashamed of, I think, but she thinks otherwise. And do you think this kind
of motive had anything to do with Richard Burton, who I believe was born somewhere in the Welsh Rhondda, acquiring his
very English sounding accent? As for people with a hot potatoe in their mouths, as it is sometimes called,
it makes sense that they are easily recognised as being upper class, or aspiring to become upper class.
Margaret Thatcherīs way of speaking, for instance, is an (in)famous example of this.
Naturally, the friends and acquaintances you surround yourself with are an indicator as well. Much has been said about
"noblesse oblige" and "old boys networks", and most of it is probably true. When Queen Elizabeth decided to have the garden
outside Windsor castle redesigned for the Jubilee Year, she of course had to have a designer with a double-barrelled name,
"blue" blood, and the metaphorical hot potato in his mouth. (A designer, by the way, who to my amusement was just as frustrated
by the way the Queen manipulated his design and kept having it changed, even when the work already was well
underway, as any non-blueblooded designer would have been...) Apart from qualifications - to be fair, the man who got the job
had done a lot of work for the National Trust - someone who says "me garden" when he means "my garden"
would, of course, never have done.
For and old boys network you donīt go to the pub. You go to a club. And not just any club. Which club you belong to, defines
your class and image. And so do a lot of other things. Even something as simple as the papers you read. Newspapers in Britain come in two sizes. No, not two sizes each. There are roughly two classes of newspapers, with
subsequent subdivisions in each class: quality newspapers and "tabloids". The former are full size, and the latter half the
regular size at the most. Of course these smaller papers are handy, especially if you want to read them on the train, plane
or tube (the subway, if you are linguistically more inclined towards speaking the American variety of the English language).
But you donīt buy a newspaper for practical reasons. Your choice of newspaper is largely determined by your class or
the image you want to project of yourself.
Upper class people have The Times, of course. And for lower class people there
are papers like The Sun (with the infamous page three nudes). And for those of classes
in between, there are papers like the Daily Mail, The Independent, The European, The Daily Telegraph, etc. Everyone knows
the difference between these papers, and so do the papers themselves. Everything they write, is carefully aimed at their
specific audience. If you compare articles about the same subject from different papers, the differences are extremely
obvious. Take this fictional, but very illustrative example, for instance, from my favourite comedy.
In the BBC series Chef! Lenny Henry is Gareth Blackstock, the highly acclaimed chef of posh restaurant
Le Château Anglais.  He is very good - the best chef in the world, according to Gareth himself: he earned his
restaurant two Michelin stars - but he is, as he puts it himself, "a prick who just happens to be good at cooking".
His social skills are, well, non-existent. If I say that he likes to criticize anybody and everybody,
I am putting it mildly. He doesnīt just criticize, he runs you down, he tramples on you, he doesnīt take any prisoners.
The thing that is so funny about that when "members of the staff havenīt given of their best", as he puts it, he
"gives his opinion" - in his case the understatement of the century - and is, in doing so, extremely eloquent.
He is exceptionally creative in his descriptions and metaphores. He is, in short,
a joy to listen to for those who are interested in original and creative use of the English language.
In one episode he is so absorbed in telling off Everton, the "kitchen menial", that he completely forgets about the
camera that was installed to make a TV documentary about his kitchen and his cooking.
When previewing the documentary together
with Gareth, the documentaryīs director says: "You're quite frank with your staff, aren't you? I'm a bit worried about the amount of bleeping."
And heīs quite justified in his concern,
for the number of words that had to be bleeped out was considerable. Gareth suggests doing away with the bleeps
and airing the program at a later time than originally planned. But the director pensively replies:
"I don't think there's a slot late enough. It would be on breakfast television." In the end, though, that is the solution they decide on.
The documentary is shown without the bleeps.
I know youīve had to have patience with me for two paragraphs, but we now come to the part about the newspapers. You see,
a documentary like the one I described, would hardly have gone unnoticed by the press in Britain.
So the next morning, the kitchen staff are in the kitchen comparing newspaper articles about the "docco".
And of course they have quite the range of British newspapers, ranging from The Times to The Sun.
Hereīs what they read.
Lucinda, from The Independent:
"It was easy to see why the crayfish went into hiding.
Any sane being, finding himself in Mr. Blackstock's kitchen, would doubtless urgently seek a means of escape.
Being plunged into boiling water seemed the least terror that might be in store.
Mr. Blackstock's impressive repertoire of luridly obscene expressions were nearly all new to me.
A special BAFTA award for best swearing in a documentary should be minted at once.
Whatever one's opinion of decency or cooking, it has to be admitted that this was quite riveting television!"
Piers, from The Guardian: "He swears like a trooper with a PhD,
cooks like an angel, treats people like dirt, and is the most interesting thing to appear on my tv set for a very long time!"
Otto, from the Daily Express: "I say: give the foulmouthed, bigheaded, boring buffoon the big E!"
Everton, from The Sun or The Star: "BBC Bosses Ban Bullocking Blackstock!"
That really says it all. The screen writer has captured the difference between the newspapers perfectly. And with that,
the difference between the classes of the readers. Even in Chef! the differences between the classes are evident:
Souschef Lucinda, who speaks with something of an Oxbridge accent, quite appropriately reads The Independent, which,
in status is a good second after The Times.
Everton, the kitchen assistant who doesnīt know paté de foie gras from meatloaf,
and whose origins are found in the ranks of poor Jamaican immigrants, reads The Sun.
No, we westerners do not distinguish between castes, or anything like that - or do we ... ?
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Disclaimer
This column is only for the purpose of entertaining, educating or
giving food for thought. Any persons, characters, countries, institutions or groups
mentioned are - as a matter of principle - fictional: any resemblance to existing ones is
purely by chance. ;-)
If the content of this column offends anyone, please accept the
columnist's apologies: no offense was intended.
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column noun
1a: a vertical arrangement of items on a page
b: a vertical section of a printed page
c: an accumulation arranged vertically
d: a department or feature (as of humor, sports,
literary reviewing, or gossip) in a newspaper or periodical, under a permanent
title and generally reflecting the writer's individual tastes and point of view.
2: a supporting pillar
3: a form, structure, or formation shaped like a column
(Webster's Dictionary.)
Relevant reads:
 
Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth to the Modern Age
 
Caste, Class, and Democracy: Changes in a Stratification System
 Class
 
Class: A Guide through the American Status System
 
The Making of the English Working Class
Tabloid Journalism
Tabloid Tales: Global Debates over Media Studies
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