Come fly with me
How very common to think that Carole Middleton is common. The crucifixion of the former air stewardess, mother of Ex Kate, for allegedly chewing gum and saying toilet has revealed an extraordinary mean-spiritedness in Britain. Or has it? Nothing excites newspaper columnists more than an opportunity to wheel out the national tease of class. It is supposedly our unique elephant trap; the name of your dog says more about you than cash ever can: dukes have Labradors called Purdey, dustmen have pitbulls called Tyson. Hyacinth Bucket has serviettes, the duke to whom silver napkin rings had to be explained as a 19th-century form of recycling said, while wiping his mouth and tossing down his linen square upon the ancestral Chippendale, that he did not know such poverty existed.
Nancy Mitford intended U and Non-U to be a tease, not a bible; John Betjeman’s ‘Phone for the fish knives, Norman’ is an immaculate piece of mischief, not a lifestyle guide. Do you know anyone in London now, even in Belgravia, who does not have switch-on logs in the grate? So what if Carole Middleton chews gum? Provided she didn’t stick a gob under her chair at Prince William’s passing-out parade at Sandhurst, it couldn’t matter less, and may well have been Nicorette because the poor woman was dying for a fag during the ineffable tedium of the parade, which goes on for hours in the freezing cold, without anyone being able to tell any of the soldiers apart. ‘I bet the Queen longs to chew gum,’ says Nicky Haslam, a modern arbiter of common.
Nicky considers that jetlag is common but air stewardesses are supreme. ‘My dear, anybody who’s anyone has been one, quite some of the most outstanding people we know.’ Lady Bamford is consistently accused of being an air hostess but has the most style, kindness and graceful generosity of anyone in Britain, allied to a powerful work ethic. I doubt anyone turned down an invitation from the former Mrs Abramovich because she was a trolley dolly. Which precisely illustrates how money has superseded class in Tony Blair’s Britain. Forget desiccated old dukes; the hottest guest any hostess — air or otherwise — could get around their table would be a Russian oligarch. British society has always been a slut for ostentatious wealth; think of the American heiresses the dukes could not wait to snaffle up (the 10th Duke of Marl- borough marrying Consuelo Vanderbilt), the arrivistes King Edward VII sponged off. Tudor progresses around the country were basically shameless exercises by the monarchy in ligging off the new rich social climbers who are now old aristocracy (Norfolks, Salisburys).
So there is a long association between royalty and emergent wealth. I am sure the Queen, had she gone to lunch with air stewardess Mrs Middleton, would have been delighted to have been offered the chicken or the beef. At least the Middletons made their money themselves, through enterprise and hard work, whereas Prince William’s wealth that he squanders in extremely common nightclubs owes nothing to his own endeavours.
No one has made the distinction between class and good manners. The snob sneers at moist toilet parlance, and those who deploy their knives as if they were pencils. The classy person doesn’t give a fig and has the good manners to put everyone of any class or nationality at their ease, would much prefer to eat everything with their hands and espouses fish pie in preference to lobster. ‘Pleased to meet you’ is actually a much more genuine and positive greeting than ‘How d’you do?’ to which the asker never wants to know the answer.
The good manners that show true class are those of the grand person sat next to the boring old aunt at a wedding and making a fantastic effort to chat about her begonias as if Chelsea Flower Show depended on them. As we now live in the age of celebrity, this is a dying art. A dying art of good manners and consideration due to a rising class of Jade Goodys, the dragged-up not the brought-up. A dying art of time for other people, and false idols like Elizabeth Hurley prostrating themselves on the altar of Hello! Now that is common. And Elizabeth, your white wedding dress looked exactly like a dolly lavatory-roll cover in the toilet.
By the way, if air hostesses are so de trop, why is Boeing-Boeing, a farce with three glam personifications of the ilk, the hottest ticket in town?