‘An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off; it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead’. So said Nancy Mitford as far back as 1955 in her Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy. More than half a century later, English aristocrats though – just about, even in the era of Prince Andrew – living in a monarchy, are still running about like headless chickens. This time, however, there are camera crews following them offering the entire thing up for public consumption on ITV’s new three-part series Keeping Up With The Aristocrats, the first episode of which aired last night. Are they dead? The jury’s out on that one but they do want you to know that they’re broke.
Promising that most irresistible gambit of ‘exclusive access’ to four of Britain’s most prominent dynasties, Keeping Up With the Aristocrats follows Lord Ivar Mountbatten and his airline-steward husband James (blended family), Princess Olga Romanov (single but looking), Alexandra and Rick Sitwell (never dull) and Lord and Lady Fitzalan-Howard (entrepreneurs to the last). This is not the first television iteration of how the posh live. In 2014, the Fulfords, heirs to the Great Fulford Estate let the cameras in to watch them engaging in all the well-worn tropes of aristocratic life in Life is Toff: treating dogs like children and children like dogs, shooting anything that moves from bathroom windows and of course, rollerblading down gothic hallways fag-in-hand. For all the Downton Abbey and Bridgerton available to us, it seems nothing quite beats a bona-fide aristocrat swearing through the telly and eating hula hoops with their Bollinger (more on which later).
But first, money. Or rather the need for it. Houses eat cash, as each of our aristocrats will gravely tell you, eyes downcast. Princess Olga describes the upkeep of Provender House in Kent as ruinous hence the need for punters to come and look at dusty portraits of her by moribund ex-boyfriends. Lord Ivar Mountbatten and his husband James run a café at Bridwell Park in Devon but it is not enough and they must branch out into pop-up restaurants to keep the lawns looking as they should. The Sitwells at Renishaw Hall seem to have fashioned an entire corporate machine out of their estate including a vineyard and wedding venue and their offer seems the most polished, one might even dare to say in a low bitchy, whisper, the most corporate. So corporate that the Fitzalan-Howards must sup at their table for advice on all things profit-margin. The horror, the horror.
Time and again in the first episode we are reminded that blue blood does not explicitly equal wealth. Appearances are not what they seem, after all: you may own a huge pile like Bridwell Park but you may also be the first member of the extended Royal Family to have married an air-steward. You may equally be Princess Olga Romanov, whose great uncle was the Tsar, but you still spend your days scooping up sh*t and longing to meet a nice chap. As a motif, the struggling aristocrat on their uppers has a strong televisual pull: pictured variously struggling with tablecloths, lawnmowers and wine bottles, the viewer is encouraged to strongly identify with the aristocrat before a to-camera address (usually involving swear words) with all the vulnerability of a lonely hearts confessional. Maybe they’re just like us, we cry from our sofas in our terraced houses.
Alas, no. They are not. And their business model, such as it is, depends on the boundaries between them and us being upheld like the stiffest of baize curtains. Pull the curtain too far and you risk exposing the ugly seams that rather too closely resemble our own. I very much doubt people pay Princess Olga to hear about the Bolsheviks. No, they traipse round Provender House to glimpse the trappings of a life tantalisingly out of reach: snatches of privilege wreathed in the everyday as the bust of her grandfather with a blue wig atop his pate illustrated. Can the upper classes survive an embrace of reality TV? The seduction of the General Public into their houses hangs on them keeping something back. Because if it’s all too obvious, why bother going for a snoop in the first place? Nancy Mitford knew that the more noise aristocrats make, the closer the ultimate death-knell. Even the Kardashian-emulating title of the show is a knowing nod to this fact. By letting the television cameras in, these ‘dynasties’ risk losing the most lucrative asset of all: secrecy.
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