RE: A Little Cultural Comparison
If you move up in the world but remember where you came from, then nobody has much of a problem with it; but if you start peering down your nose at others ten minutes after you've had a sniff of a win, you're going to lose friends, fast.
When we first arrived in Australia our neighbour and landlady was welcoming and friendly. At the time she had a job as a kitchen hand and often talked about how people had looked down one her all her life, but she had found herself a hubby who had worked his way up to supervisor/manager in the building trade and they were on the first step to building their property portfolio.
About a year in she was working towards getting into the police force. She trained, lost lots of weight and eventually made it. The closer she got to her goal, the more distant and aloof she became with us. Towards the end of our tenancy we only really spoke to her husband as she wouldn't have anything to do with us.
I was amazed at the social divide between the haves and haves nots here in comparison to Britain. Now you've put it that way I can see why that divide appears. You rarely see the peering down the nose attitude where I come from and when you do it's laughed about, much in the way that Hyacinth Bucket is laughed about in "Keeping up Appearances". I guess it's rare enough to be humoured.
Good people make terrible cops. Maybe they were training that contempt into her.
There's a lot to unpack there. I have no direct experience of the UK, but perhaps it revolves around the concept of aristocracy.
Over there you can be incredibly wealthy but still a commoner, in many respects less important than a penniless Duke.
Hyacinth wasn't trying to appear wealthy, she was trying to appear well connected. That really makes no sense to us. Still very funny though :)
You could be onto something with the aristocracy. Hyacinth, like many middle class people, was trying to imitate aristocracy, which is wealth, but you're quite right, it's more than just wealth it's elitism. That's where the old money/new money clash comes in. New money doesn't have the family connections or the knowledge and traditions that come with the aristocracy.
The aristocracy don't attempt to separate themselves from the commoners. They will happily sit in the country pub chatting to the locals where the upper middle class think they're too good for that. New money often tries too hard and separates itself from the commoners while aristocracy is confident in their place. They keep the respect of the people because of that. You can imagine it going back to the time when they were the masters of the land and productive people on their land made them wealthy, so a good Lord was usually one that was good to his people too.
The actor, Robert Lyndsay, is from the town I was born and raised. He didn't leave when he gained fame and wealth. Ron Haslam lived around the corner from where Shaun lived. They were small town people and didn't get harassed for their fame by the locals and they didn't treat them any differently.