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By Chris Moncrieff - 5th February 2010
Harriet Harman, leader of the Commons, may well despise the middle-classes. That could be because she is herself upper-class. Few people throughout the Palace of Westminster have a social pedigree as glittering as hers.
She is the niece of Lord Longford, a hereditary peer, and closely related to the ‘political aristocracy’ of the Jay family. It is also said that, through marriage, she is even vaguely intertwined in David Cameron’s family. I would assume that is not something she would wish to noise abroad. No wonder, therefore, that she used to speak with “a cut-glass accent” and sounded by her own admission like Lady Diana.
So, in a political atmosphere where to be ‘posh’ is verging on the sinful, and to have had a difficult upbringing, especially in a single-parent family, is positively a virtue, Miss Harman, also known as Mrs Jack Dromey, faced the problem of having to descend not one level, but two levels (leapfrogging over the middle-classes) to attain acceptable working-class status.
To do this, of course, she had to drop her accent, which she said she achieved without really trying or even noticing it. But I have to say that it has not been entirely successful. There are still traces of good and fine breeding in her voice which need to be worked on.
So while she was slithering down the ladder, as a social plunger rather than a social climber, John Prescott was going the other way. They may have met halfway. He boasted once that he had elevated himself from the working-class to the middle-class.
Alas for him, well-cut suits, neatly combed hair and a penchant for croquet do not necessarily do the trick. He totally forgot about his voice. It still remains robustly working-class. Playing snakes and ladders with the class system is not for the faint-hearted.
He should have taken some advice from Tony Blair, who appeared to have more voices than Rory Bremner. For instance, if Mr Blair appeared on a television chat show, he easily lapsed into estuary English, with a mouthful of glottal stops.
Incidentally, the worst mimic I have come across at Westminster is Lord Kinnock. His attempts at an English accent were more ludicrous even than those of Hollywood actors trying to play Jeeves or Wooster characters.
Elocution lessons seem to be de rigueur at Westminster. Margaret Thatcher reportedly had them to lower the timbre of her voice, while George Osborne, or so we are told, is also having tuition to get rid of some of the piping – it sounds as though a plumber would be more use. It is also said that John Major took elocution lessons. But I simply do not believe that.
Meanwhile, that old warhorse Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman, whose ear-splitting tones would send a pack of wolves howling into the night, had no time for such refinements.
I am sad, though, that Miss Harman’s cut-glass accent has all but disappeared, and with a little more effort will probably vanish altogether. Such accents, like the Cornish language, have become an endangered species. We would all be better off if Miss Harman would go into reverse and gentrify herself a little, restoring the former glory of her voice, and thus saving it for the nation.
But voice production is not something, we are now informed, that male candidates for Westminster should worry about. It’s their waistlines. And the more rotund the embonpoint, the better, apparently. Researchers at the University of Missouri have discovered that overweight male candidates are perceived as being more reliable, honest and inspiring than their more scrawny counterparts. It is also said that they are better able to cope with the stresses and strains of office.
There is only one answer to that: Down to the pie shop lads…
Jolly good eggs
I imagine that doctors and surgeons specialising in cardiac treatment would be clutching their furrowed brows in horror at the news that Margaret Thatcher’s diet, before she became prime minister, involved among other things scoffing no fewer than 28 eggs a week.
Because, in recent times, eggs have virtually been demonised by medics treating patients with heart problems. They are routinely told: absolutely no more than four eggs a week – and certainly none of them fried. When patients are given this dolorous news, their hearts sink. It means the end of one of the greatest pleasures known to mankind: the traditional English breakfast.
Whether this diet (if it can be so described) had the required effect of trimming the Thatcher waistline – which apparently was the purpose of this eggy marathon – I know not. But it certainly seemed to do nothing to reduce the energy of the woman who has been described as “a whirlwind in skirts”.
I see that that voluptuous cooking person Clarissa Dickson Wright, a self-styled Fat Lady, has lashed out at those who are giving eggs a bad name, adding that despite all this, she had not stopped eating them. I am not sure that Clarissa Dickson Wright, and her eating habits, would be the obvious role model (roly-poly model, perhaps) for those seeking to shed a few pounds.
But at least she has gone some way to restoring the good name of the egg. And the disclosures in Margaret Thatcher’s archives may have done a little more to support the “go to work on an egg” brigade.
Brothel bother
I see in the Spectator magazine that a learned French book has been translated into English by one Christopher Moncrieff.
I wonder whether this is the same chap – not me, I hasten to add – of the same name who wrote a letter to the Times on the subject of what are now called sex-workers.
The day after this letter appeared, Sir Edward Heath approached me in the Members’ Lobby, and said: “I agree with every word you said about brothels.”
Never has a disclaimer or those memorable words, “Not me, guv” been delivered with such expedition.
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