travel & outdoors: Nobbling the nobs

Now's the season to be silly - as long as you are seriously rich enough to afford the prohibitive cost of hatting, hampering and hotelling required for The Season, that extraordinary social phenomenon that sees the rich and braying cavort their expensive way from Henley to Glyndebourne to Chelsea by way of Ascot.

The time it takes automatically excludes seriously working people and the poor. Only nobs (who inherit top hats) and snobs, their satellite hangers-on tolerated for their money, and corporate cashers-in need apply.

But if you want to hang out with them, where should you be, and what to do? "You go to the Chelsea Flower Show to be seen at the opening gala - that's about pounds 200 a ticket," explained one Season ticket-holder. "You go to Ascot to show off your clothes, or possibly polo, to see Claudia Schiffer land in a helicopter. It's Glyndebourne to see the politicians (if you want to). You might do Wimbledon for the tennis. And you do Henley to get drunk."

But it's no good thinking that attending the same event sipping champagne in a corporate hospitality tent is your passport to poshness. The slobs and yobs in the marquee dedicated to the promotion of Barbie doll (the Heineken hospitality tent) don't realise that this marks them as rank outsiders in the social stakes. Royal Ascot Village is a few hundred yards from the Royal Enclosure, but it might as well be in Siberia.

To be middle class at a Season event is as pointless as gatecrashing a party where you don't know a single guest. The Season can't be shammed. It's a class thing, limited and watch-dogged by pointless people like Peter Townend, who makes it his business to phone up debutantes' mothers and persuade them to Come Out.

If you're not born to a world of wealth and privilege, can you squeeze in? Author Charles Jennings, who calls himself "middle-class suburban man," tried just that last Season and describes his experiences in his new book, People Like Us (Little Brown, pounds 16.99).

His first hint for high classiness is to throw worry to the winds. "Middle- class people worry, and think about things like work, tidiness, stopping things falling apart," he expounds. "But posh people just devote their life to having fun."

That is the meaning of the Season. Fun in the sun. "You have fun but cloak it in a guise of charity. They keep having these events for charity," observes Charles. Too right. I've even heard posh people describe polo as charity.

Beneath the low-cut ball-gowns and gossip-column frivolity lurks an ugly side to the Season, which exposes the rotten roots, the snobbery and self- affirming self-indulgence of our class system. Take charity balls. Why don't the organisers and ticket-buyers just quietly give their time and money to the good causes they claim to fund-raise for?

Queen Charlotte's Ball is a classic case. This charity cash bash is the social launch-pad for wealthy debutantes. Sent to report there one year, I saw with horror how these girls were showered with freebies from dresses to hairdos. Meanwhile, uniformed nurses from Queen Charlotte's Hospital, arriving to help after a day's work, weren't even offered a glass of champagne or a word from the Duchess in patronage. While the nobs chomped smoked salmon, they were furious to be asked to go to the Grosvenor House staff canteen. Some had paid for "reduced" tickets costing nearly a week's pay.

If, after this, you are still determined, can you become Seasonably posh material? Not without having enough money and the right accent, concluded Charles Jennings. Money is vital for fun, though Sloane snobbery still rules, okay, yah? "Your grandfather made your family fortune last century in packing, but my family made its money in the 14th century," one girl was overheard teasing a friend.

"The voice, the drawl that sounds as if you don't give a sod, is your passport," he assesses. It can't be faked. Your children can learn it the hard way by going to boarding school at an inhumanly young age. "Your hard-core toffs go to Eton, or maybe Marlborough, Rugby, Winchester. Harrow's a bit `flash git'." For girls, try Cheltenham Ladies' College, Roedean or St Mary's, Ascot.

But if you want to leapfrog socially in a single Season, there are some practical steps you can take to becoming posh and securing a ticket to the members' bars and enclosures.

n Get a funny surname. Posh people have no sense of their ridiculousness.

n Learn tiny talk. Politics or the state of society is bad manners. Posh people are happy with who they are. If you deviate from this, they'll spit you out. Charles quotes one lady saying: "I'm just looking over your shoulder to see if there's somebody more interesting here." Another titled lady explained it to me more simply. "I wish you'd stop asking me things and saying things," she said.

n If anyone mentions class, take the opportunity to reinforce your upperness. "They perform a verbal dance," says Charles. "They say: `I know posh people like that but it's not me.' Then they go into an anecdote which reveals their ancestry."

n Know lots of words meaning 'drunk'. Eskimos have many words describing different kinds of snow, because it's the ruling factor in their lives. The Welsh have many words for rain. Posh people have degrees of drunkenness. DD means dead drunk.

n Make a mess. The filthiest kitchen I ever saw belongs to posh people who use it to feed five hundred on `corporate' days in the ancestral castle. The dog slept on the microwave.

n Talking of dogs, get one that can do no wrong. Even New Labour now pins its hopes on an advert showing a bulldog's ugly bottom. Wear expensive suits covered in dog hair. As Camilla Parker-Bowles was praised for doing in last week's Daily Mail.

n Take up smoking. Worrying about health or taking care in any way is middle class. Centuries of in-breeding has given you the constitution of an ox. Marlboro Lights is the preferred posh puff. Cigs are their great social ice-breaker. "Can I bum one of yours?"

n Go horsey. Horses epitomise poshness. They're expensive, smelly, good sorts but not too brainy.

n Go skiing after the Season ends. Not Verbier, despite (or because of ) Fergie. "Ghastly - full of Germans."

n Be a bigot. If you're brainy, keep it under wraps, especially if female. Make your wit as unpolitically correct as possible. "Go on Johnny, do your Desmond Tutu impersonation. It's frightfully funny."

n Wear signet rings with a crest and family motto. "Our family has been associated with leaping stags for centuries." Men never wear wedding rings. If you want to cheat, it's too obvious that you're married.

n Be insensitive to sex, with a roistering, eighteenth-century approach. One People Like Us anecdote concerns girls sniffing cocaine from men's private parts in a socialite club.

n Upon marrying, move to Wiltshire. Posh women must give up their catering or interior design jobs. Buy a place in the country. She'll bring the kids up until about eight, then off they go to boarding school. Says Charles: "Left alone with her husband away all day and the kids off her hands, she'll go quietly mad. Eventually, husband runs off with his Sloaney secretary and she'll think of ways of restoring her career." Like organising corporate coachloads of yobs and slobs to Henley next Season.

Ascot assets

Royal Enclosure: pounds 50 each. Car park pounds 9

Hamper: pounds 80 for two from Admirable Crichton.

Hire of Daimler (with chauffeur): pounds 545.43 from Helo Cars.

Linen tablecloth, candelabras, two table settings: pounds 4,0000 from Thomas Goode.

Her: Hat: pounds 500 from Philip Treacy. Chanel suit: pounds 1,8000. Plus shoes (pounds 290) and handbag (pounds 800)

Hair: pounds 40 from Hugh and Steven of Ebury St, London. Make-up: pounds 290

Him: Suit: pounds 450. Top hat: pounds 179. Waistcoat: pounds 450 and tie (pounds 50) from Tom Gilbey.

Two bottles of Dom Perignon: pounds 120