Toffs are different

When I was up at Oxford, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my deepest wish was to find a letter one day in my pigeonhole informing me that a distant relative had died and that henceforward I was entitled to style myself the Marquess of Wessex (or wherever), until eventually I inherited my dukedom.

That ambition has gone now. As you get older, you grow more accepting of your lot, don’t you? Also, what I’ve noticed is that almost all the people I know who are seriously upper-class are also very seriously f***ed-up. Even more so than I am, which is saying quite a lot.

Partly, I suppose, it’s all the inbreeding that has gone on over the centuries. And, partly, I’m sure it’s to do with the rapaciousness, ruthlessness and undying emnity that are all inevitably fomented when there’s so much money and land at stake. You do certainly get to realise, once you’ve got to know toffs a bit, that the middle classes are on the whole much nicer people.