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I SAY, you oiks. It is okay to admit to being posh again, don't you know?

And why not? The question is, what does posh mean? Take me, for example. I filled in a questionnaire today that asked whether I'd watched polo, have friends called Hugo and Philippa, been on a bus and similar nonsense and came out with a lowly score. So I'm not posh.

I went, however, to the same school as the art critic Brian Sewell, who, by the sound of his cut-glass accent, is. And David Baddiel, Matt Lucas and Sacha Baron Cohen went there too. Are they posh?

There is nothing wrong with being posh if it just means that when you open your mouth you sound like a silver spoon has penetrated your posterior, find opera utterly agreeable and go by the name of Rupert.

Posh folk I know are charming and affable.

What is wrong, however, is when people exploit privileged positions or treat others as anything but equals.

There is something unsavoury in the way snobs refer to "Posh" Spice with ironic disdain. Or the treatment dished out to Kate Middleton's mum by Prince William's young aristochums for such alleged social crimes as chewing gum and saying "toilet".

Margaret Thatcher made much of making Britain a meritocracy based on talent and ability. But you have to wonder how much has been achieved in modern Britain when the likes of Boris Johnson, David Cam- eron, Oliver Letwin and other high-ranking Tories all went to one "posh" school, Eton. And Labour's Tony Blair went to Fettes, called the "Eton of the North".

If it is down to ability, good luck to them.

But you do worry that the dream of a meritocracy may still be tangled up by old school tie-type networks.

Cripes is that the time? Must dash.

Think I'll pop round to see old Sewell. Wonder if Jeeves has his number?

7:00pm Sunday 18th May 2008

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