How the Ruling Class Live...
Being the son of a City auditor and a chartered accountant, you'd expect my bloodline to be at least a little posh, but my family history is decidedly less interesting than most on here - no knighthoods, castles or wasted fortunes, my grandfather on my mother's side worked as a railwayman for decades while my father's family lived in squats and temporary housing on the now-disused Hornchurch Aerodrome.

My mother, however, hates this and really does aspire to be posh; until she went out and got herself some 'traditionally Essex' friends last year, she spoke with a cut-glass plummy accent that she couldn't possibly have picked up from anyone in her family (being, as they were, cockneys) and being extremely annoyed at my usual choice of women - oh how her face fell when she saw the inside of the grotty fourth-floor flat my first girlfriend and her mother lived in - she was quite happy with my last ex, though, who lives in a very posh area of Essex, is invited out boating a lot by her very rich neighbours and had as her ex the son of a Lord.

Oh well, I'm still too scared to tell my mother my current squeeze is the daughter of a piss-poor Scouse lorry driver, and I really don't think the fact that her father knows Steven Gerrard's brother is really going to be much of a factor to my football-hating mother.

Oh, and my abandoning my quest to become a doctor to pursue something I actually wanted to do did not go down at all well with her, either.

I love being a disappointment. It tastes lovely.
( Shegetz Chris Kamara's comedy moustache, Tue 20 Sep 2005, 11:54, Reply)