so at some point British Actor/Comedian/Quiz Show Guests seem to have become our primary fandom.

[kivrin]

ME: Everyone always rags on David Mitchell for being ridiculously posh but he just doesn't seem that posh to me. Maybe it's another You Have To Be British thing.
B&R: Well, they probably just pick something. And he is pretty posh, he went to Cambridge and all.
ME: Does that make him that unusual on the British comedy scene? Stephen Fry went to Cambridge.
B&R: Stephen Fry is in a class by himself. A class made entirely of tweed.
ME: Right, fair point. But other people went to Cambridge! Not Lee Mack and Alan Davies but other people. I mean, nobody rags on HUGH LAURIE for being posh!
B&R: That's not about him being posh, that's about him being HUGH LAURIE. You don't rag on him AT ALL. Or his revenge will be swift and terrible.
ME: Right. Or long delayed and even MORE terrible.
B&R: Right.
ME: And involve the playing of blues harmonica at you.
B&R: Probably.
ME: And sometime, much later, when you're hanging around before a filming you might mention that you've taken up a new hobby of, like, macrame, and Hugh would say "oh, that's quite interesting, have you any macrame string here?" and you'd pass so over and he'd whip up a large Hadron collider out of it and say "oh yes, I see how that could be very relaxing."
B&R: I think you need to tell the internet about that.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

Going to Cambridge doesn't make you posh (I should know), and half the prominent British comedians came out of Cambridge Footlights.

Though I wouldn't say Mitchell was posh, exactly, just achingly upper-middle.

[breadandroses]

Ignorant American here doesn't know the difference between 'posh' and 'achingly upper-middle' in the UK - is this explainable? (Here no one, even at Romney-esque levels of wealth, will admit to being more than upper-middle.)

[tree_and_leaf]

Class has all kinds of rules which are hard to explain, but a title for a start, or being in Debrett's (not the same thing). Old money with land. Public school education helps (at a 'real' public school, not just a private one).

[kivrin]

In the moment I couldn't think of any later generations of Footlights than Fry-Laurie-Thompson but I had the feeling there were lots - glad to know I wasn't making it up.