James Delingpole James Delingpole

Eton vs snobbery

CBBC’s new documentary gives the school the best PR it could ever wish for 

My Life: Theodore Hall, James Yuen and Faramade Bashoron [(C) Blakeway North - Photographer: Satnam Authi]

One of the stranger things about Eton is its near-total lack of class snobbery. Yes, all right, you still get the occasional away match where their supporters will chant at the opposition ‘You’ll be working for our Dads’ but that’s just badinage, not animus.

I doubt it was always thus. Probably there was a time when every Etonian was acutely aware of which of his housemates was in line for a dukedom and which a mere baronetcy. But, as far as I can tell from my own experiences as an Eton parent, those days are gone. Today Eton is quite ruthlessly meritocratic and if you’re good enough you’re good enough, regardless of whether your Dad owns a Chinese takeaway in Leigh-on-Sea or he’s a jumped-up blogger from Brum.

This fact probably came as a bit of a surprise to the BBC when it sent a crew to film three new boys over a term (or rather a ‘half’) for CBBC’s documentary strand My Life. Often — in that earnest, well-meaning BBC way — the strand focuses on children trying to overcome physical disabilities (brittle bone disease; cancer; paralysis; etc.) and perhaps that was half what it was expecting here: three scholarship kids from ordinary working-class backgrounds struggling to cope with life among the posho freaks.

If that’s what they were after, though, their stars confounded them. The series’ executive producer apparently spent seven years begging Eton’s headmaster Tony Little for permission to film at the school. But Little is a canny man and wasn’t going to accede until the moment was perfect. Enter: James, Theodore and Faramade — one Chinese, one white, one black — each of them likeable, articulate, super-bright, working class and about to do the best PR job for the school since Elizabeth Woodville whispered into her husband’s ear: ‘Please don’t raze it to the ground, honeybun.

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