Watching the English

CULINARY CLASS CODES

Along with the lists of ingredients and calorie-counts, almost every item of English food comes with an invisible class label. (Warning: this product may contain traces of lower-middle-class substances. Warning: this product has petit-bourgeois associations and may not be suitable for upper-middle-class dinner parties.) Socially, you are what you eat - and when, where and in what manner you eat it, and what you call it, and how you talk about it.

The popular novelist Jilly Cooper, who has a much better understanding of the English class system than any sociologist, quotes a shopkeeper who told her, 'When a woman asks for back I call her "madam"; when she asks for streaky I call her "dear".' Nowadays, in addition to these two different cuts of bacon, one would have to take into account the class semiotics of extra-lean and organic bacon, lardons, prosciutto, speck and Serrano ham (all favoured by the 'madam' class rather than the 'dear', but more specifically by the educated-upper-middle branch of the 'madam' class), as well as 'bacon bits', pork scratchings, and bacon-flavoured crisps (all decidedly 'dear'-class foods, rarely eaten by 'madams').

English people of all classes love bacon sandwiches (the northern working classes call them 'bacon butties'), although some more pretentious members of the lower- and middle-middle classes pretend to have daintier, more refined tastes, and some affectedly health-conscious upper-middles make disapproving noises about fat, salt, cholesterol and heart disease.

Other foods that come with invisible labels warning of lower-class associations include:

* prawn cocktail (the prawns are fine, but the pink 'cocktail' sauce is lower-middle class - and, incidentally, it does not suddenly become any 'posher' if you call it 'Marie-Rose' sauce)

* egg and chips (both ingredients are relatively classless on their own, but working class if eaten together)

* pasta salad (nothing wrong with pasta per se, but it's 'common' if you serve it cold and mixed with mayonnaise)

* rice salad (lower class in any shape or form, but particularly with sweetcorn in it)

* tinned fruit (in syrup it's working class, in fruit juice it's still only about lower-middle)

* sliced hard-boiled eggs and/or sliced tomato in a green salad (whole cherry tomatoes are just about OK, but the class-anxious would be advised generally to keep tomatoes, eggs and lettuce away from each other)

* tinned fish (all right as an ingredient in something else, such as fishcakes, but very working class if served on its own)

* chip butties (a mainly northern tradition; even if you call it a chip sandwich rather than a butty, it is about as working-class as food can get).

Very secure uppers and upper-middles, with the right accents and other accoutrements, can admit to loving any or all of these foods with impunity - they will merely be regarded as charmingly eccentric. The more class-anxious should take care to pick their charming eccentricity from the very bottom of the scale (chip butties) rather than the class nearest to them (tinned fruit in juice), to avoid any possibility of a misunderstanding.

The Health-correctness Indicator

Since about the mid-1980s, health-correctness has become the main gastronomic class-divider. As a general rule, the middle social ranks are highly susceptible to the latest healthy-eating fads and fashions, while the highest and lowest classes are more robust in their views and secure in their food preferences, and apparently largely immune to the blandishments and exhortations of the middle-class health police.

Food, we are told, is the new sex. It is certainly true that food has taken over from sex as the principal concern of what I call the 'interfering classes' - the nannyish, middle-class busybodies who have appointed themselves guardians of the nation's culinary morals, and who are currently obsessed with making the working class eat up its vegetables. We no longer have the prudish Mary Whitehouse complaining about sex and 'bad language' on television; instead, we have armies of middle-class amateur nutritionists and dieticians complaining about all the seductive advertisements for junk food, which are supposedly corrupting the nation's youth. By which they mean working-class youth: everyone knows that it's the Kevins and Traceys who are stuffing their faces with fatty and sugary snack foods, not the Jamies and Saskias.

Particularly not the upper-middle Saskias, many of whom are anaemic born-again vegetarians, or borderline anorexic or bulimic, or suffer from imaginary gluten and lactose 'intolerances'. None of this seems to worry the health-correctness evangelists, who are only interested in force-feeding Kevin and Tracey their five daily portions of fruit and vegetables, and confiscating their crisps.

The upper-middle chattering classes are the most receptive and suggestible adherents of the health-correctness cults. Among the females of this class in particular, food taboos have become the primary means of defining one's social identity. You are what you do not eat. No chattering-class dinner party can take place without a careful advance survey of all the guests' fashionable food allergies, intolerances and ideological positions. 'I've stopped giving dinner parties,' one upper-middle-class journalist told me. 'It's become simply impossible. Catering for the odd vegetarian was OK, but now everyone's got a wheat allergy or a dairy intolerance or they're vegan or macrobiotic or Atkins or they can't eat eggs or they've got 'issues' about salt or they're paranoid about e-numbers or they'll only eat organic or they're de-toxing...'

While I have every sympathy for anyone with a genuine food allergy, the fact is that only a very small percentage of the population actually have such identifiable medical conditions - far fewer than the number who believe they are afflicted. These English chattering-class females seem to hope that, like the Princess and the Pea, their extreme sensitivities about food will somehow demonstrate that they are exquisitely sensitive, highly tuned, finely bred people, not like the vulgar hoi-polloi who can eat anything. In these rarefied circles, you are looked down upon if you have no difficulty digesting proletarian substances such as bread and milk.

If you really cannot manage to have any modish food problems yourself, then make sure that your children have some, or at least fret noisily about the possibility that they might be allergic to something: 'Ooh, no! Don't give Tamara an apricot! She hasn't been tested for apricots yet. She had a bit of a reaction to strawberries, so we can't be too careful.' 'Katie can't have bottled baby food - too much sodium, so I buy organic vegetables and puree them myself...' Even if your children are unfashionably robust, you must take the trouble to keep up with the latest food-fear trends: you should know that carbohydrates are the new fat (like brown is the new black) and homocysteine is the new cholesterol; the F-Plan diet is out, Atkins is in; and on the genetic-modification debate, the official chattering-class party line is 'two genes good, four genes bad'. As a rule of thumb, assume that there is no such thing as a 'safe' food, except possibly an organic carrot personally hand-reared by Prince Charles.

The lower- and middle-middles, taking their cue from the upper-middles (and from the Daily Mail, with its regulation five health-scares per day), are rapidly succumbing to the full range of 'posh' food-fears. There tends to be a bit of a satellite-delay effect, a pause in transmission of a beat or two, before the latest upper-middle food fads and taboos are taken up by the inhabitants of mock-Tudor and neo-Georgian estates, and then another delay before they reach the 1930s semidetacheds. Some semi-detached suburbanites have only just realised that fat-phobia and fibre-worship are passe, long since superseded by carbo-phobia and protein-mania. Once all the current carcinogens-du-jour and other food-fear fashions have been adopted by the lower-middles, the upper-middles will of course have to think of some new ones. There is no point in having a wheat intolerance if all those common people who say 'pardon' and 'serviette' have one too.

The working classes generally have no truck with this sort of nonsense. They have real problems, and do not need to invent fancy food allergies to make their lives more interesting. At the opposite end of the social scale, the upper classes are equally down-to-earth and sceptical about such matters. Although they may have the time and money to devote to whimsical food taboos, they do not suffer from the same insecurities about their identity as the fretful middle classes, and so do not need to define themselves through conspicuous non-consumption of bread and butter. There are a few exceptions, such as the late Princess of Wales, but they tend to prove the rule by being noticeably more insecure and self-conscious than the average aristocrat.

Timing and Linguistic Indicators

Dinner/Tea/Supper Rules

What do you call your evening meal? And at what time do you eat it?

* If you call it 'tea', and eat it at around half past six, you are almost certainly working class or of working-class origin. (If you have a tendency to personalize the meal, calling it 'my tea', 'our/us tea' and 'your tea' - as in 'I must be going home for my tea', 'What's for us tea, love?' or 'Come back to mine for your tea' - you are probably northern working class.)

* If you call the evening meal 'dinner', and eat it at around seven o'clock, you are probably lower-middle or middle-middle.

* If you normally only use the term 'dinner' for rather more formal evening meals, and call your informal, family evening meal 'supper' (pronounced 'suppah'), you are probably upper-middle or upper class. The timing of these meals tends to be more flexible, but a family 'supper' is generally eaten at around half-past seven, while a 'dinner' would usually be later, from half past eight onwards.

To everyone but the working classes, 'tea' is a light meal taken at around four o'clock in the afternoon, and consists of tea (the drink) with cakes, scones, jam, biscuits and perhaps little sandwiches - traditionally including cucumber sandwiches - with the crusts cut off. The working classes call this 'afternoon tea', to distinguish it from the evening 'tea' that the rest call supper or dinner.

Lunch/Dinner Rules

The timing of lunch is not a class indicator, as almost everyone has lunch at around one o'clock. The only class indicator is what you call this meal: if you call it 'dinner', you are working class; everyone else, from the lower-middles upwards, calls it 'lunch'. People who say 'd'lunch' - which Jilly Cooper notes has a slightly West Indian sound to it - are trying to conceal their working-class origins, remembering at the last second not to call it 'dinner'. (They may also say 't'dinner' - which confusingly sounds a bit Yorkshire - for the evening meal, just stopping themselves from calling it 'tea'.) Whatever their class, and whatever they may call it, the English do not take the middle-of-the-day meal at all seriously: most make do with a sandwich or some other quick, easy, single-dish meal.

The long, lavish, boozy 'business lunch' is nowadays somewhat frowned upon (more of that American-inspired puritanical health-correctness), which is a great shame, as it was based on very sound anthropological and psychological principles. The giving and sharing of food is universally known to be one of the most effective forms of human social bonding. Anthropologists even have a special jargon-word for it: 'commensality'. In all cultures, the offering and acceptance of such hospitality constitutes at the very least a non-aggression pact between the parties - you do not 'break bread' with your enemies - and at best a significant move towards cementing friendships and alliances. And it is even more effective if the social lubricant of alcohol is involved.

You would think that the English, with our desperate need for social 'props and facilitators', not to mention ways of detracting from the inevitable awkwardness of money-talk, would seize upon and embrace this tried-and-tested tradition. And indeed, I am convinced that the current misguided disdain for the business lunch is, to borrow a term from the environmentalists, 'unsustainable', and will prove to be a temporary aberration. It does, however, provide further evidence to support my argument that the English generally do not take food seriously, and in particular that we grossly underestimate the social importance of sharing food, of eating together - something most other cultures seem to grasp instinctively.

In this respect, the middle-class 'foodies' are often no more enlightened than the rest of us. Their obsessive focus on the food itself - the fruity virginity of the cold-pressed olive oil, the gooey ripeness of the unpasteurized Brie de Meaux - is often curiously devoid of the human warmth and intimacy that should be associated with its consumption. They claim to understand this social dimension, waxing lyrical and misty-eyed about the conviviality of mealtimes in Provence and Tuscany, but they have an unfortunate tendency to judge their English friends' dinner parties, and restaurant lunches with business contacts, on the quality of the cooking rather than the friendliness of the atmosphere. 'Well, the Joneses are very nice people and all that but really, they have no idea - overcooked pasta, boiled-to-death vegetables, and God knows what that chicken thing was supposed to be...' Their patronizing and sneering sometimes makes one long for the old, pre-foodie-revolution days, when the upper classes considered it vulgar to make any comment at all on the food they were served, and the lower classes defined a good meal as a filling one.

Breakfast Rules - and Tea Beliefs

The traditional English breakfast - tea, toast, marmalade, eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc. - is both good and filling, and breakfast is the only aspect of English cooking that is frequently and enthusiastically praised by foreigners. Few of us eat this 'full English breakfast' regularly, however: foreign tourists staying in hotels get far more traditional breakfasts than we natives ever enjoy at home.

The tradition is maintained more at the top and bottom of the social scale than among the middle ranks. Some members of the upper class and aristocracy still have proper English breakfasts in their country houses, and some working-class people (mostly males) still believe in starting the day with a 'cooked breakfast' of bacon, eggs, sausages, baked beans, fried bread, toast and so on.

This feast may often be eaten in a 'caff' rather than at home, and is washed down with industrial quantities of strong, brick-coloured, sweet, milky tea. Lower-middles and middle-middles drink a paler, 'posher' version, Twining's English Breakfast, say, rather than PG Tips. The upper-middle and upper classes drink weak, dishwater-coloured, unsweetened Earl Grey. Taking sugar in your tea is regarded by many as an infallible lower-class indicator: even one spoonful is a bit suspect (unless you were born before about 1955); more than one and you are lower-middle at best; more than two and you are definitely working class. Putting the milk into the cup first is also a lower-class habit, as is over-vigorous, noisy stirring. Some pretentious middles and upper-middles make an ostentatious point of drinking Lapsang Souchong, without milk or sugar, as this is about as far removed from working-class tea as they can get. More honest (or less class-anxious) upper-middles and uppers often admit to a secret liking for the strong, rust-coloured 'builders' tea'. How snooty you are about 'builders' tea', and how careful you are to avoid it, is quite a good class-anxiety test.

Tea is still believed, by English people of all classes, to have miraculous properties. A cup of tea can cure, or at least significantly alleviate, almost all minor physical ailments and indispositions, from a headache to a scraped knee. Tea is also an essential remedy for all social and psychological ills, from a bruised ego to the trauma of a divorce or bereavement. This magical drink can be used equally effectively as a sedative or stimulant, to calm and soothe or to revive and invigorate. Whatever your mental or physical state, what you need is 'a nice cup of tea'.

Perhaps most importantly, tea-making is the perfect displacement activity: whenever the English feel awkward or uncomfortable in a social situation (that is, almost all of the time), they make tea. It's a universal rule: when in doubt, put the kettle on. Visitors arrive; we have our usual difficulties over greeting protocol. We say, 'I'll just put the kettle on'. There is one of those uneasy lulls in the conversation, and we've run out of weather-speak. We say, 'Now, who'd like more tea? I'll just go and put the kettle on'. A business meeting might involve having to talk about money. We postpone the uncomfortable bit by making sure everyone has tea. A bad accident - people are injured and in shock: tea is needed. 'I'll put the kettle on.' World War Three breaks out - a nuclear attack is imminent. 'I'll put the kettle on.'

You get the idea. We are rather fond of tea.

We are also very partial to toast. Toast is a breakfast staple, and an all-purpose, anytime comfort food. What tea alone does not cure, tea and toast surely will. The 'toast rack' is a peculiarly English object. My father, who lives in America and has become somewhat American in his tastes and habits, calls it a 'toast cooler' and claims that its sole function is to ensure that one's toast gets stone cold as quickly as possible. English supporters of the toast rack would argue that it keeps toast dry and crisp, that separating the slices of toast and standing them upright stops them becoming soggy, which is what happens to American toast, served piled up hugger-mugger in a humid, perspiring stack on the plate, sometimes even wrapped in a napkin to retain yet more moisture. The English would rather have their toast cool and dry than warm and damp. American toast lacks reserve and dignity: it is too sweaty and indiscreet and emotional.

But toast is not much use as a class indicator: everybody likes toast. The higher social ranks do have a bit of a prejudice against packaged sliced bread, but only the very class-anxious will go to great lengths to avoid it. What you choose to spread on your toast, however, can provide clues to your social position. Margarine is regarded as decidedly 'common' by the middle and upper classes, who use butter (unless they are on a diet or have a dairy intolerance, that is). Marmalade is universally popular, but the dark, thick-cut Oxford or Dundee marmalade is favoured by the higher echelons, while the lower ranks generally prefer the lighter-coloured, thin-cut Golden Shred.

The unwritten class rules about jam are much the same: the darker the colour and the bigger the lumps of fruit, the more socially elevated the jam. Some class-anxious middles and upper-middles secretly prefer the paler, smoother, low-class marmalades and jams (possibly because they come from lower-class backgrounds, and were fed Golden Shred and the like as children), but feel obliged to buy the socially superior chunky ones. Only the lower classes - the lower-middles in particular - try to sound posh by calling jam 'preserves'.

Table Manners and 'Material Culture' Indicators

Table Manners

English table manners, across all classes, have deteriorated somewhat but are still, as Mikes acknowledges, fairly decent. The genuinely important aspects of eating etiquette - showing consideration for others; not being selfish or greedy; general fairness, politeness and sociability - are known to, if not always strictly observed by, most English people of all social classes. No class has a monopoly on either good or bad eating behaviour.

Although proper 'family meals' may nowadays occur on average only once a week, rather than every day, most English children of all classes are still brought up to say please and thank you when asking for food and being given food, and most adults are also reasonably polite. We all know that we should ask for things rather than just grabbing them; not serve ourselves huge helpings leaving insufficient food for the others; wait until everyone has been served before starting to eat, unless urged to 'please start, or it will go cold'; not take the last piece of anything without asking if anyone else wants it; not talk with our mouths full; not cram vast, unsightly amounts of food into our mouths or masticate noisily; take part in the conversation without monopolizing or dominating it; and so on.

When eating at a restaurant, we know that in addition to the above we should be polite to the waiters and, in particular, never, ever try to summon a waiter by snapping our fingers or bellowing across the room. The correct procedure is to lean back in your chair with an expectant look, endeavour to make eye contact, then perform a quick eyebrow-lift/chin-lift. Raising a hand is permissible, as is a quiet 'Excuse me?' if the waiter is nearby and has not noticed you, but this should not be done in an imperious manner. We know that orders should be phrased as requests, with the usual full complement of pleases and thank-yous. We know that it is unseemly to make a fuss or a scene or in any way draw attention to oneself when eating in public. Making any sort of fuss about money is especially distasteful, and ostentatious displays of wealth are as bad as conspicuous meanness. People who insist on calculating in detail exactly who had what when it comes to dividing up the bill are despised, not just because they are miserly, but because such discussions involve a prolonged breach of the money-talk taboo.

We may not always abide by all of these codes, but we know the rules. If you ask English people about 'table manners', they may assume that you mean prissy, pointless etiquette about which fork to use, but if you start a conversation about what is and isn't acceptable when eating with other people, what they were taught and what they teach their children, these rather more basic, universal, classless courtesies will emerge. Many of them, if you look closely, are essentially about that perennial English preoccupation: fairness.

Lower-class mothers - particularly 'respectable upper-working' and lower-middle mothers - tend to be, if anything, more strict on these basic points than some middle-middle and upper-middle parents, who are still unduly influenced by the supposedly 'progressive' child-rearing methods of the 1970s, which frowned upon rules and regulations, and encouraged unfettered self-expression. I say 'parents' rather than just 'mothers' in this case, as the middles and upper-middles tend to be more role-reversed than the other classes, with fathers more involved in the social education of their children.

Those at the top of the social scale, as so often seems to be the case, have more in common with the working classes than with the middle ranks: upper-class mothers tend to be quite strict on basic good eating manners, although upper-class men do not necessarily practise what their wives and nannies preach to their children. Some aristocratic males are notorious for their appalling table manners, in this trait resembling some lower-working/underclass males, who also do not care about other people's opinion of them.

But these are just minor and patchy variations: on the whole, the basic-courtesy rules are fairly classless. It is only when you look beyond these essential courtesies that the significant class divisions start to appear. The more arcane, esoteric rules of table etiquette - the peas-on-the-back-of-the-fork minutiae for which the English are famous and widely ridiculed - tend to be the preserve of the higher social classes. Indeed, one could be forgiven for suspecting that the only function of such rules is to distinguish these classes from the lower ones, as in most cases it is hard to see what other purpose they might serve.

'Material Culture' Indicators

Many of these class-indicator rules concern the use of objects and implements - knives, forks, spoons, glasses, bowls, plates and so on. Which is where 'material culture' comes in. I remember a conversation I had during my first week at Cambridge with a rather earnest and self-important graduate student in the coffee room of the archaeology and anthropology library. He told me he was writing his thesis on 'material culture' in something or other. 'What do you mean by "material culture"?' I asked. 'Well now, let me explain.' He took a deep breath, and launched into a long, involved, jargon-ridden disquisition. I listened attentively, for about twenty minutes. When he finished his lecture, I said: 'Oh, I see. You mean "things". Pots and knives and clothes and so on. Things'. He was most put out, although he agreed huffily that, yes, I could put it that way if I wanted to be simplistic. I've been longing for an excuse to use the gloriously pompous term 'material culture' ever since, but actually what I mean is just 'things'.

The Knife-holding Rule

The bossy Debrett's etiquette guide tries hard to pretend that there is some rational point to all the minutiae of English material-culture table etiquette, that it is all about consideration for others, but I find it difficult to see how the precise positioning of your fingers on your knife - whether the handle goes under your palm (correct) or, like a pencil, rests between the base of your thumb and your index finger (incorrect) - could in any way affect your dinner companions' enjoyment of their meal. And yet Debrett's insists that 'on no account' should you ever hold your knife like a pencil. The only possible effect your pencil-method could have on your fellow diners would be to activate their class-radar bleepers and alert them to your inferior social status. So one must assume that, for the class-conscious English, this is in itself a good enough reason not to do it.

Forks and the Pea-eating Rules

The same goes for the prongs of your fork. When the fork is being held in your left hand and used in conjunction with a knife or spoon, the prongs of the fork should always point downwards, not upwards. 'Well-brought-up' English people must therefore eat peas by spearing two or three peas with the downturned prongs of their fork, using their knife to hold the peas still while spearing, then pushing a few more peas on to the convex back of the fork with their knife, using the speared peas on the prongs as a sort of little ledge to help stop the slightly squashed, pushed peas on the back of the fork from sliding straight off. It is actually much easier than it sounds, and, when one describes the procedure in proper detail, marginally less idiotic than all the jokes about English pea-eating would suggest. Although it must be said that the lower-class pea-eating methods - turning the fork over and using the knife to push a larger quantity of peas onto the concave side of the fork, or even abandoning the knife, transferring the fork to your right hand, and shovelling up peas with it as though it were a spoon - are clearly rather more sensible, or at least more ergonomic, in that more peas per forkful are transported from plate to mouth. The socially superior spear-and-squash system carries no more than about eight peas at a time, at best, while the prongs-up, scoop-and-shovel technique can hold up to about thirteen, by my calculations - depending on the size of the fork, and the size of the peas, of course. (I really should get a life.)

There is obviously, then, no practical reason for Debrett's and other etiquette guides to insist on the prongs-down method of pea eating. And again, it is hard to see how adopting the lower-class prongs-up practice could possibly have any adverse effects on one's eating companions, so the consideration-for-others argument doesn't wash either. We are forced to conclude that, like the knife-holding rule, the pea-eating rule is a class indicator and nothing more.

In recent years, the 'uncouth', prongs-up style of pea eating seems to have spread somewhat further up the social scale, particularly among younger people, perhaps because of increasing American influences, so one does now see more lower-middle and middle-middle English people eating peas in this fashion (it used to be just those of working-class origin, inadvertently revealing their roots). Most upper-middles and uppers, however, resolutely continue to spear and squash.

The 'Small/Slow Is Beautiful' Principle

And it's not just peas. I chose peas as an example because people poke fun at English pea eating - and because peas are somehow intrinsically more amusing than other foods - but our codes of class-indicator table etiquette prescribe the prongs-down, spear-and-squash method for all eating that is done with a knife and fork. And as almost all eating is supposed to be done with both implements, almost all foods must be speared and/or squashed onto the backs of forks. Only a limited number of specified foods - first courses and salads, for example, or spaghetti or shepherd's pie - may be eaten with the fork alone, in the right hand, with the prongs pointing upwards.

When using both knife and fork, only the lower classes adopt the American system of first cutting up all or most of the food, then putting down the knife and shovelling up the food with the fork alone. The 'correct' - or rather, socially superior - approach is to cut up and eat your meat and other foods one small piece at a time, each time spearing and squashing a little selection of food on to the prongs and the back of your fork.

The same 'small is beautiful' and 'slow is beautiful' principles seem to be at the root of many of the class-indicator rules, or at any rate a large proportion of these rules appear to be designed to ensure that only small amounts of food are transferred from plate to mouth at a time, with clear pauses between mouthfuls for cutting, spearing and so on. The cut-spear-squash system for peas, meat and pretty much everything else on your plate is the main example, but these principles extend to other foods as well.

Take bread, for example. The correct ('posh') way to eat anything involving bread - rolls and butter, pate and toast, breakfast toast and marmalade - is to break off (not cut off) a bite-sized piece of the bread or toast, spread butter/pate/marmalade onto just that small piece, eat it in one small bite, then repeat the procedure with another small piece. It is considered vulgar to spread butter or whatever across the whole slice of toast or half-roll, as though you were making a batch of sandwiches for a picnic, and then bite into it. Biscuits or crackers served with cheese must be eaten in the same way as bread or toast, breaking off and spreading one small, bite-sized piece at a time.

With fish on the bone, the 'small/slow is beautiful' principle requires that we fillet the fish one small bit at a time, lifting each mouthful away from the bone, eating it, then filleting off the next mouthful. Grapes must be broken off in a small bunch, and eaten one at a time, not in handfuls. At the table, apples and other fruit are peeled, quartered and eaten one segment at a time, not bitten into whole. Bananas must not be eaten 'monkey style' but should be peeled and cut into discs, which are then eaten one at a time. And so on.

Do you see the recurring small-and-slow pattern here? Class-indicator rules are not about eating with any degree of ease, speed, efficiency or practicality. Quite the opposite: they are designed to slow us down, to make things deliberately difficult, to ensure that we eat the smallest possible mouthfuls in the most time-consuming, laborious manner. Now that we've identified the pattern and the principle behind it, the purpose becomes clear. What it all boils down to is not appearing to be greedy, and, more specifically, not appearing to give food too high a priority. Greed of any sort is a breach of the all-important fair-play rule. Letting one's desire for food take priority over making conversation with one's companions involves giving physical pleasure or gratification a higher value than words. In polite society, this is frowned upon as un-English and highly embarrassing. Over-eagerness about anything is undignified; over-eagerness about food is disgusting and even somehow faintly obscene. Eating small mouthfuls, with plenty of pauses in between them, shows a more restrained, unemotional, English approach to food.

Napkin Rings and Other Horrors

Napkins are useful and versatile objects - as class indicators, that is. We have already seen that to call them 'serviettes' is a grave social solecism - one of the 'seven deadly sins' unmistakably signalling lower-class origins. But there are many other ways in which napkins can set off English class-radar bleepers, including, in chronological order from the beginning to the end of a meal:

* setting the table with napkins folded into over-elaborate, origami-like shapes ('smart' people just fold them simply);

* standing folded napkins upright in glasses (they should be placed either on or next to the plates);

* tucking one's napkin into waistband or collar (it should be left loose on the lap);

* using one's napkin to scrub or wipe vigorously at one's mouth (gentle dabbing is correct);

* folding one's napkin up carefully at the end of the meal (it should be left carelessly crumpled on the table);

* or, even worse, putting rolled-up napkins into napkin rings (only people who say 'serviette' use napkin rings).

The first two of these napkin-sins are based on the principle that over-fussy, 'genteel' daintiness is a lower-middle-class trait. Inelegant use of the napkin - tucking and scrubbing - is working class. The last two napkin-sins are abhorrent because they indicate that the napkins will be used again without being washed. Smart people would rather be given a paper napkin than a used cotton or linen one. The upper-middle classes joke about 'the sort of people who use napkin rings' - meaning lower/middle-middles who think they are being elegant and dainty, but are in fact being rather grubby.

While there is some point to these napkin rules (at least, the objection to re-using napkins strikes me as perfectly reasonable), the prejudice against fish knives is harder to justify. At one time, quite a number of middle-class and even upper-class English people used special knives (and forks) for eating fish. Some may have regarded this practice as a bit over-dainty and pretentious, but the outright taboo seems to date from the publication of John Betjeman's 'How to Get On in Society', in which he lampoons the affectations and pretensions of a lower-middle-class housewife preparing for a dinner party. The poem begins:

Phone for the fish knives, Norman

For cook is a little unnerved

You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes

And I must have things daintily served

Fish knives, possibly always a bit suspect, were from that moment irrevocably associated with people who say 'pardon' and 'serviette' and 'toilet' - and use napkin rings. Now, fish knives are also seen as hopelessly old-fashioned, and are probably only used by lower/middle-middle people of older generations. Steak knives are regarded as equally suburban, as are doilies, pastry-forks, anything gold, salt-and-pepper 'cruets', coasters and hostess trolleys (hotplates on a sort of wheeled table, used for keeping food warm in the dining room).

You would have thought that finger bowls - little bowls of tepid water for washing your fingers when eating food by hand - would come into the same category of precious, twee, affected, suburban daintiness, but for some reason they are acceptable, and are still seen at upper-middle and upper-class dinners. There is very little logic to any of this. Tales are often told of ignorant lower-class guests drinking from finger bowls - and of ultra-polite hosts then drinking from the bowls themselves, so as not to embarrass the guests by drawing attention to their error. You are supposed to dip your fingers briefly in the finger bowl, then pat them gently dry with your napkin - not wash and scrub and rub as though it were a bathroom sink, unless you want to activate your hosts' class-radar systems.

Port-passing Rules

Another way you can set off English class-radar bleepers is to pass the port the wrong way. Port is served at the end of a dinner - sometimes, among the upper classes, to men only, as the women follow the old-fashioned practice of 'withdrawing' to another room to drink coffee and talk girl-talk, leaving the men to their male bonding. Port must always travel round the table clockwise (if it were to go anti-clockwise, the world would end), so you must always pass the bottle or decanter to your left.

Even if you somehow miss your turn, you must never ask for the port to be passed back to you, as this would mean port travelling in the wrong direction, which would be a disaster. Either wait for it come all the way round again, or pass your glass along to the left to catch up with the port and be filled for you. Your glass can then be passed back to you without danger, as port can travel anti-clockwise if it is in a glass: the taboo on passing to the right only applies to port in bottles and decanters.

No-one has the slightest idea why clockwise port-passing is so important. The rule serves no discernible purpose, other than to cause embarrassment to those who are not aware of it, and, presumably, a peculiarly English sense of smug self-satisfaction among those who are.