To the chagrin of many a Tory MP, Professor Les Ebdon, had been named head of Offa — the Office for Fair Access —, a government watchdog created in 2006 to anesthetize public reaction to further increases in tuition fees. For those ensconced to the top Right quadrant of the political compass, that appointment was little more than a barbed thorn in their finely swathed rumps, one that amounted to a direct contravention of their decent sense of class values. For Ebdon was vice chancellor of one those ‘new’ universities, the type that tended to attract the largely ‘underprivileged’ sort and could not, as such, be considered a respectable place for higher education. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of its student cohort was compiled from the sort of families whose parents had not attended university, good Lord! But the malheur des malheurs was that Ebdon’s appointment suggested that there existed sectors in the government that were actually serious about opening the doors of higher education to the… well to the ‘disadvantaged’ (one didn’t like to say ‘lower classes’ after all).
This was a story that Dr Walter Mountebank had been following with quite some interest over the course of the week, delighting in the delectable hypocrisy of it all, smirking at the frisson of nerves that was now flittering, like so many fans at a debutante ball, around the higher echelons of the corridors of his own university. For Ebdon meant to test the mettle of every £9000-degree fee by questioning the willingness of each university to embrace the great unwashed, to scrub ‘em clean with a good dousing of civilization, and that simply was not in the original plan, was it? They had all said that they would encourage them to come, but there was rather a large difference between the saying of the thing and its being done, was there not? But this also raised a more fundamental problem — how would one tell who was really ‘disadvantaged’ and who was just a bit scruffy? And what quota would have to be suffered before Ebdon’s Offa would deem an institution politically correct?
The Conservative response to Ebdon’s appointment had more than a little of the old class division about it, one that seemed to fly in the face of Cameron’s aim to de-toff his party by divesting of them their double-barrelled surnames. But the initial pleasure gleaned from ingesting this marvellous piece of hypocrisy was soon to be found repeating on Dr Mountebank, leaving a rather unpleasant after-taste lingering in his mouth. That week, he happened to be lecturing on the health of the British class system and this could, at times, be a rather tricky lesson to teach, depending on the social make-up of the class itself. Of course, it was difficult to tell who had come from which stratum of society these days. The fashion for adopting a hybrid accent that suggested an ancestry rooted anywhere from the west of Reading to the Thames estuary in the east, picking up a sprinkling of London multiculturalism en route, had largely flattened out the traditional class markers. Even those who had clearly been educated in private institutions liked to add a sprinkling of ‘Mockney’ or ‘Jafaican’ to their flat Home Counties pronunciation to give it a little street cred. The new accents, coupled with the ubiquitous fashion for low-rise skinny jeans revealing either scrawny buttocks or flabby midriffs, had pervaded every social layer, from new superclass at the top to age-old ‘underclass’ at the bottom. If youth culture was seeking upward mobility through working-class chic, then perhaps, as Melvyn Bragg had postulated a few nights previously on BBC2, the social classes were indeed dead.
Yet amid the assemblage of neo-80s-clad students sprawled across the chairs of the lecture room 3 there remained those perceptible markers of difference. For the most part, the students could be said to be indistinctly middle class, although all that seemed to mean these days was that one was more prone to a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and a bowl of kalamata olives than pork scratchings and a pint of lager. But there were always a few who fell outside of the generous parameters offered by the term ‘middle class’, such as Tiffany Trefusis-Silk, who often stated her distinction from the rest by sporting a polka dot neckerchief and unapologetically large pair of riding boots freshly spattered with paddock mud. And it was always those that at the bookends, so to speak, that Dr Mountebank feared offending in his representation of the British classes, for Walter was acutely aware of his own unavoidable bourgeois classification and thus just as alert to any difference from his own bookish complexion.
The class had started on rather a tempestuous note, at least by normal standards, when Dr Mountebank decided to tackle the habitual ennui of note taking by throwing the students a question. “In pairs, I’d like you to discuss…” — a shared look of sceptical surprise circulated the room — “the social class to which you belong”. Mild resentment at this imposition upon their passivity and some lacklustre shuffling into pairs preceded the hesitant murmurings of a discussion beginning. Most turned their attention to the forthcoming drinking activities planned for that night, while a few others reached for the tail-end of conversations left dangling when Dr Mountebank had previously entered the room, but a few deigned to engage in the task with something that looked like commitment. Perhaps it was unfortunate that on that particular occasion Tiffany Trefusis-Silk had been sitting, in her flesh-colour slacks and navy loafers, next to Darren Bogue. “And what are you Bogue?” she asked, her phrase forming in her mouth as naturally as if this were some new man servant who had been found lolling about the place. Bogue slouched lower in his chair, wiped his nose with the back of sleeve, and stared with convincing disinterested into the yonder, before replying, “Working class darlin’”. Trefusis-Silk, unsure of what to do with this fascinating piece of information, continued by asking Bogue whether he lived in one of those council places and what precisely it was that they liked to eat. This line of questioning left Bogue feeling rather spiteful, so that when asked to feedback to the class on the outcome of their discussions, Bogue had summed up the situation nice and concisely by stating that “Daddy pays for her privileges. Cameron pays for mine”.
Having papered quickly over the rift, Dr Mountebank began delivering his lecture on the levelling effect of the World Wars on the British classes. But as he proceeded, he found himself inadvertently drawn towards the area in which Tiffany Trefusis-Silk was sitting, her usual detached neutrality replaced by a flush of disdain. In an attempt to appease her offence, he found himself reaching for softer, less Marxist-sounding terms that attempted to conciliate the innate revulsion of that class hovering above his own for his lesser kind, yet the rictus of disgust remained etched upon her manicured features. As it deepened in intensity with every passing phrase, Dr Mountebank began to fear that a phone call from Sir Trefusis-Silk questioning the content of his lectures was imminent and that his sought after professorship might well find itself conveniently buried at the bottom of the human resources pile for quite some time yet. And so it was not without some relief that Dr Mountebank realised that Tiffany Trefusis-Silk had simply nodded off and was snoring quietly, mouth ajar, with her head balanced daintily on Bogue’s chair, utterly unperturbed by his threat of class overhaul and entirely comfortable in her superbly soft leather shoes.
Notes from the Classroom 
Brilliant! We have all come across a Triffany v Darren in life!