Posh Bird answers your dilemmas

I've had some posh queries recently (see below). What fun. Please feel free to post any of your posh agonies here and I'll ease your worries in the manner of Nanny - with a hot flannel and caution to buck up soon.

Dear Jessica, please can you solve a problem for me. I think I am posh, take yesterday, for example, I cycled from Lina's Italian Deli in Soho to Harrods in pursuit of a white truffle for a 'food happening' (dinner parties, I feel are declasse) I'm holding on Monday. I was delighted to be one of the eight lucky Londoners who got hold of one, despite it being £81 and basically a mushroom. However, my boyfriend says no matter what ridiculous things I do I cannot ever be posh because I went to a comprehensive (although this was many years ago). I would be grateful if you could solve this matter once and for all. Am I posh? Yours, hb xx.

Dear Am I Posh, now that many posh families have lost their fortunes to older sons who snorted it up their nose/crashed it into a tree/married a whore, several posh people go to comprehensives. So this may not hold you back. However, I fear that use of the word 'declasse', spending more than £80 on a mushroom (do you KNOW how much horse feed you can get for that?) and, worst of all, engaging in a 'food happening' may render you Upper Middle at best. Aspirational at worst. I suggest you cook shepherd's pie for a 'kitchen supper with friends' forthwith and you may regain some poshness. Yours, PB xx

dear posh bird. could you please clarify the status of brown sauce in bacon sandwiches and also whether marmite should be kept in the fridge or not. also could you please confirm exactly how many vegetables should be served with roasted meats, or is that just a roast? or roast lunch? who knows? i feel one of those christmas stocking books in the offing miss fellowes....

Dear Wants A Christmas Stocking Book - brown sauce is not posh although one feels it should be. It's one of those things that, like racing on the telly, white bread and gin, is a taste shared by both the working and upper classes. Marmite is kept in the cupboard. Roast lunch (never dinner) traditionally was served with a few overly crunchy potatoes and overly boiled carrots. But now posh food is all about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and serving organic produce straight from the garden (or Waitrose). Butternut squash, parsnips, cabbage fried with bacon, roasted garlic and all other manner of exoticisms that my grandfather wouldn't have recognised are positively de rigeur. PB x