Cradled in the political arms of Boris and D-Cam, while we sleep under the Cumbersnatch and Hiddlestone stars, new film The Riot Club is yet another reminder to us all that posh prevails. But in the great metropolis, just as you are always six feet away from a rat, you’re only ever the same degree of separation from a pony club member.
As an upwardly mobile teenager growing up in the Home Counties, I spent a lot of my formative years saying, ‘Yah’ and lurking round the back of the cricket huts putting the ‘pash’ into pashmina. Don’t listen to what they tell you: you’re never going to make it on your own, your brain is far too small. What you really need to do is get your hands round some top-class pedigree bum. Here’s how to trap one in your cheapo love net.
LORD FUSTYBOLLOCKS
Where to find him
Everybody knows that really properly posh people don’t work, but if you want to get your chops round some top-quality sausage (and you have thick bottom skin), I can highly recommend a job as an office floozy in a bank. If you don’t fancy going to all that trouble, just knock around the City around 7pm in a silk scarf. They’ll be on their second bag of coke by then, so play your after-work drinks right and things will get pretty loose.
What’s he wearing?
He’s easy to spot because he’ll be wearing the closest thing to public school uniform. There’s a pretty good chance it will actually be his old school uniform complete with hand-embroidered name tags. He still has these in his underwear. For this sort of posh boy, middle age sets in by about 12 so by his early 20s, an untucked deterioration will be well underway. When you’ve got as much money as they do, you really can afford to let yourself go.
Every really posh family’s got a family nutjob careering across their private land with a rifle, an elderly piss-soaked Colonel building a bomb shelter out of old newspapers.
Meeting the family
Really posh people have a LOT of secrets. If you thought your burgeoning family resentments and your Daddy issues were exotic, think again. This lot have more skeletons in their solid oak closets than you’ve had Toby carveries. Every really posh family’s got a family nutjob careering across their private land with a rifle, an elderly piss-soaked Colonel building a bomb shelter out of old newspapers and at least a couple of suicides.
If you’ve got any chance of slipping under the radar, treat the deceased and demented with total nonchalance.
‘Where’s Uncle Willy?’ you enquire.
‘Oh the silly old bugger’s resting up in Scotland. Got a bit squiffy on the vintage. Shot his own foot off. Terrible shame.’
‘Oh Willy.’ you respond, rolling your eyes towards the balcony, ‘WHAT a silly sausage.’
Meeting his friends
All of his friends have paunches they would like to press against you, but none of them want to hear you speak, so don’t. Except perhaps girly giggles when they discuss your cleavage loudly in front of you. Your old school-er communicates almost exclusively with his friends through homoerotic sporting rituals and really aggressive back-slapping, which gets harder as he gets older. These guys are too fat to play sports, so they have dinners about them instead.
Occasionally you will be invited to a black-tie sups where everyone wears different coloured ties and plays a game you cannot ask the rules to. But don’t ask the rules, it’s not de riguer. If you suspect this game is racist and sexist you are probably right. Civil rights were better in the empire, anways. Cheers!
HENRY VON HATTYBOLLOCKS
**Where to snare him **
If the old schooler’s networks seem a little impenetrable to you and you do not have enough punctuation in your name, there’s another breed for you. The type with upwardly mobile parents who were irresponsible enough to piss their school fees down the drain, your lower IQ’d posho will have found their niche in the The Mets and Brookes of this world. These are, essentially, feeder universities for luxury yacht crews and the Chelsea branch of Foxtons, which is where you’ll find them.
What’s he wearing?
This gent’s fashions are probably the most eye-watering, a merciless combination of bad jeans, gap yah bracelets and light blue shirts. On the weekends, it’s black tie given a lacerated edge with a neon snapback: sartorial Armageddon.
You may find your top lad’s fawning relationship with Mother a little peculiar, but give him a break. She dumped him at school before he’d tasted solid food.
Meeting the family
This one’s family are brisker than you might expect. Mummy runs the whole show and lives to entertain. She can make 70 cucumber cups in a minute and would put you to work in her kitchen while judging your wife skills, so whisk like a fucking trooper. You may find your top lad’s fawning relationship with Mother a little peculiar, but give him a break. She dumped him at school before he’d tasted solid food.
**Meeting his mates **
When loose in the wild, this kind of posho is more obnoxious than you ever imagined a human being could be. These guys are all about the lash, the gash and the bants. A more preening, chanting, anally-fixated type who would do a poo in a club and then try and patronise the bouncer.
Unlike the old schooler this guy was at least physically capable of playing sports at the sorts of schools were you don’t need to do A-levels if you can play cricket. He has tins full of soggy biscuits ,so ready yourself for fake laughter about that time Timmy wanked off Jimmy to prove he wasn’t gay.
EDMUND SICK MATE-FAUNTLEROY-SAFEBLUD
Where to snare him
Travel to the East of London and you will discover an altogether more pernicious posh boy. These infiltrators rent out their bolthole in Sloane Square to pay for their guardian warehouse in Hackney and their ketamine habit. These ‘super safe’ types love to spend their entire summer posing on hay bales at festivals ‘promoting’ (read: wearing) their ‘designs.’ He’ll have you believe he’s been living off the proceeds of his tie-dye bandana startup for the past five years, but we all know this isn’t true.
He’s blown virtually his entire trust fund on vintage streetwear and, if he’s the worst kind of all, he’ll have dreadlocks.
In a bid to erase his true identity, he’s thrown together his look by meticulous appropriation of subcultures. He’s blown virtually his entire trust fund on vintage streetwear and, if he’s the worst kind of all, he’ll have dreadlocks. He will almost certs have christened himself with a self-consciously casual nickname like H-bomb when his real name is Hugo Bonaparte-Pedley.
Meeting the family
This well-bred little monkey is all about rejecting his roots. Less because his rents are terrible people, more because his chubby jolly hockey sticks sister really gives the game away. Get a few bombs of MDMA inside him and he’ll tell you a heartbreaking story on a Glasto hillside about the time he played Wonderwall on the ukelele for his dad and his dad just didn’t get it.
Or how much it ‘fucked him up’ when he was a toddler and his parents moved house. The chaos – he had to get out of there, man. No two people are more confused by this tortured narrative than his parents themselves who continue to invite him round for Sunday lunch and pay his phone bill.
His mates
This guy has carefully amassed a crew of fellow poshos as well as a bunch of what his parents would call ‘undesirables.’ He thinks he is friends with his drug dealer who he calls ‘blud’. His drug dealer stoically tolerates this because he is a very loyal customer.
** Follow Lucy on Twitter @lucyannhancock**
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.