Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

Years ago, back in the late eighties I was a guest at the wedding of the cousin of Zoe, my future wife. I had been unemployed for quite some time and was having trouble finding a job, and I was, if I'm honest, a teenage slacker with a working class chip on his shoulder the size of a closed down Cornish tin mine. The wedding was very posh and afterwards at the reception we were herded down the line of family members to say hello. "This is Lord Such-and-Such", "Hello, I am Lady Was-Her-Name" and so on and so on.

So there's me a son of a factory worker meeting these people who I thought had no idea how the working class struggled to heat their homes and to feed their children in these times of corporate greed. To me they were scum of the highest order. So, Lord Such-and-Such speaks to me and says something along the lines of "... and what do you do?", to which I belligerently replied "Nothing, I'm unemployed!". What followed was a conversation in which he displayed some of the best manners I'd ever seen, he was truly interested in me, where I was from and what I'd like to do for a career. He was concerned about someone he had only known for a few minutes and I had treated him like a piece of shit. I felt like a dick.

That wedding changed my whole outlook on people and class. Yes it's true that he would never understand what it's like to work your whole life in a job that you hate for wages that don't cover the cost of living with the threat of redundancy looming over you like the Sword of Damocles. Was this his fault? No, of course not. People are people. Some are dicks, some are lovely, but the very best of them, rich or poor, have good manners. Manners are classless.

I still dislike the class system and the way that certain people, due to an accident of birth, have certain entitlements that the vast majority of others will never be able to claim. What I don't do though is hate a person based on a role that society, tradition and marriage has imposed on them.

Anyway, Kingsman, or a Comedy of Manners was really good.

The Frost Report - I Know My Place

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