According to the London correspondent of the New York Times, Kate Middleton’s mum upset the Queen – I don’t believe this, actually – by asking for “the toilet”... instead of “the bathroom”. That just shows you, by the way, how hard it is for a foreigner to get a grip on British English. If that correspondent asks for “the bathroom” she could be in for some frustration. But, as I say, I think this whole class language thing was blown out of all proportion as a key to the Kate and William split. Of course, there are some dreary old buffers who’d like to keep on fussing away. The Earl of Onslow spluttered to a journalist that for him “it was impossible to force the word ‘toilet’ between my lips”.

Yes, and there are still a few people who worry about how someone holds his fork or eats bread at dinner. Sad, really. But – a Frenchman asked me recently – how important is “class” in the British community here? I’ve been an observer now for something over thirty years and certainly there’s been a change. Above all, that community is now bigger and more varied. Early on in my time here I was told that one (to me) unappealing chap was a “very good sort ... was Head of School at Wellington”. You don’t hear that kind of nonsense now. What is true, though, along the Coast and above all in Monaco, is that the British cash-based system of social ranking has clearly taken root. Money talks and any slob who’s really loaded can ask for “the bog” and nobody turns a hair. Bernard Shaw’s view that “when an Englishman opens his mouth he gives another Englishman cause to despise him” is now very old hat.

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