Posh boys...and girls

I started this off by writing about the posh boys and girls. The ones with famous mummies and daddies and the ones born into loadsa money who seem to have taken over the world of theatre, TV and movies in the UK in recent years.

Step forward the likes of Victoria and Giles Coren, children of the (rightly) famous Alan.

Or Samuel West, son of Prunella Scales and Timothy West.

I'm not suggesting these people have used their family to get on but it can't hurt to be known for having famous and successful parents - and they have made it known who their parents are. If they didn't want the connection known, they could have changed their names. That's not exactly unheard of in show business, is it?

Keira Knightley is an extreme case. How do I know her mother is Sharman MacDonald who is a playwright? Because every sodding interview with Keira reminds me of her antecedents. No, I don't know who Sharman MacDonald is either but the London-based media people obviously do and think it matters.

Now I've had to get used to a whole new set of posh boys and girls. Current hot tips for Oscars, Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne start their biogs on IMDb by letting the reader know they went to Eton. 

Rosamund Pike (no, I'd never heard of her either till this week) went to Oxford and in their student days she was a bosom buddy of Chelsea Clinton. Her biog also tells us she got a 2:1 at Oxford - IMDb says this is summa cum laude in US terms and is suitably awed by this. (I also read yesterday that 70% of yooni graduates in the UK get a 2:1 these days. I wonder if IMDb know that.)

I don't in fact care how these people get on in life, although I think it's hard enough for folk trying to make it in show biz without this kind of unfair competition. I also think, sadly, the adulation afforded to these people is just another indication of how class-ridden and snobbish the UK media - and possibly UK society - are.

But I'm distracted by the accents these people have. They all sound the same. I seem to note a definite rise in the number of rp ('received pronunciation') - posh - voices I hear on radio and TV. I listen to Victoria Coren on Only Connect and think: Are you really as pompous and arrogant as that? Last week she was so rude to one of the teams, if she'd been sitting next to me on the settee I'd have punched her in the face. Then there's Kirstie Allsopp, posh and a proud Tory. I've given up watching anything with Kirstie in it. Her upper-class drawl and her self-satisfaction really rattle my cage. 

As for the actors like Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne, I suspect there's a tendency to over-estimate how good these people really are because of their background and that accent. Benedict is good as Sherlock Holmes - but what else does he do? He was in the last Star Trek. Same accent. I couldn't tell you what Eddie Redmayne has been in except The Theory of Everything. Can he act? Same goes for Rosamund Pike, mainly famous for her role in Gone Girl, who always seems to me to be playing a version of Rosamund Pike. 

On the other hand, I have the utmost respect for Michelle Dockery who plays Lady Mary, the arrogant bitch daughter in Downton Abbey. Michelle is an Essex girl who says her Essex accent held her back at auditions for years. She has overcome this disability and has got the upper-class drawl off to a T. That, folks, is called acting. And also maybe taking the piss a wee bit. 

Same goes for Joanne Froggatt who uses a version of her native accent - she's from Yorkshire - in her role as the maid Anna in Downton Abbey.

I'll finish with a wee story about one of my heroes. Star of stage and screen, Albert Finney.

When Albert Finney went to London from Salford for his audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the 1950s, his mum went with him on the train and took sandwiches for them.

Yes, you do so know who Albert Finney is: he's been in the movie of Tom Jones and in Erin Brokovich and Miller's Crossing and in many TV dramas and stage shows.

Albert wasn't poor as a boy - his dad was a bookie - but he has no pretensions to being posh. He had and still has a Salford accent. Onstage he produces any accent the director wants. 

Rumour has it he turned down two awards from HM the queen because he dislikes snobbery and believes we should all just be 'mister'. 

I wish there were more like him in the UK.