Prunella Scales

Why can we not simply accept that 'the past is another country, they do things differently there.'

Probably not, as the DM article is over a year old, and Timothy Weston only spoke out about his wife's Alzheimers diagnosis earlier this year.

I've enjoyed the programmes. I thought Prunella was just remembering her Mother, imitating her Mother's voice and her Mother's thoughts and nothing more.
The Daily Mail, I think, captured her confusion when they carried out this interview with Prunella and Richard Briers. I think it was unkind and I even wondered if the article had lead to Timothy West now feeling he has to share, explain so much of his wife's illness.

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2271496/Richard-Briers-battling-chronic-lung-disease--lifelong-friend-Prunella-Scales-shocking-confession-own.html

Perhaps one day we will meet absent and I should be interested to hear what you think of my 'accent'.

She had a wonderfully 'pseud' accent as Sybil Fawlty!

Quite funny to be accused of 'inverted snobbery' as I am more 'Prunella' than Eastenders. And I do have a Prunella tendency to talk in other accents. She was taking off the teacher's accent rather than saying the children were undesirable, in a somewhat mocking way I thought.
Now I am wondering if I do the same!
Not really worth bothering about, I was just agreeing that the original OP may have had a point and was trying to support them when everyone pitched in against him/her.

Is it not possible the London children swore etc? And I don't think we are any different now, we still have class and race divide .

I would rather listen to 'posh' (detestable word!) than Estuary, any day...

Every English speaker has an accent, even those who use what used to be called received pronunciation.

I agree with Pentsemmon talking 'posh' is difficult to live with. I would love to have a Devonshire/Somerset accent, but my father continually hounded me with 'sound your 'T's' 'H's' 'There is a 'G' at the end of the word, until I decided it was the easier option to do what I was told.

Now I find I am accepted for who I am but throughout my young life it was awful. People would laugh at my 'posh voice' and even worse copy it; sneer at it. I have a sympathy with Prunella Scales. My husband says 'I have the voice for radio' (sadly and the face...) but really I just don't have an accent

Good post POGS. it's not her fault she is 'posh'!

I think it's called 'life' isn't it?

There will always be this sort of thing happen, it might have sounded snobbish and it probably was but it doesn't make it wrong of her parents to do what they did for their family, they were just lucky enough financially to do it.

My Nan and Gramph had 13 children, my mum being the oldest girl. They lived in Somerset and took on 3 extra kids from London during the war. They were all different in their ways and one of them did come complete with 'nits' and he was apparently a little bugger all the time he was with them, he turned out to be the one who never forgot them!

So Prunella never got to know what it was like to 'top to toe' in a bed or mix with much with other kids of another 'class' but I think to those who have posted on the T.V Forum about the series all have felt she is warm, friendly person and yes a bit posh but what does it matter?

And others' comments, I must make clear.

I was referring to your post of 21.52 rosequartz.

Umm, don't think it was Tab12 making the class divide point, I thought it was Prunella?

Or is it me

I agree - why try to make some sort of class divide issue out of this? Inverted snobbery springs to mind...

Oh dear - this seems very flimsy grounds for criticising an otherwise interesting programme and indeed for criticising Prunella Scales. I'm with merlot when she says - imitating accents (or voices) that's what actors do. Can't share your sense of moral outrage I fear, TAB12 - next time just sit back and enjoy the programme.

Prunella Scales does have a very 'Received English' accent and sometimes people interpret that as snobby. I had a colleague who sounded incredibly 'posh'. She said it was a huge burden!

She's an actress. Imitating accents is what they do.

She was reciting the times tables (or whatever) in the manner of the teacher from London who had come with the evacuee children and was imitating the teacher's very strong London accent. I thought it was quite surprisingly snobby and quite unpleasant. However, I will take your word for it that she and her husband support various social causes, Penstemmon.

Perhaps it is that experience as a child that made her be more left of centre politically..a rejection of her mother's rather conservative (little 'c' ) attitudes. She also supports and is /was patron of a children's charity for orphans (not sure if it is UK based or overseas). She and Timothy West often support various social causes.

I don't think it would have been a decision based solely on class differences, although, no doubt, that played a part. Conditions in the East End at that time were appalling and brutal – come on, lots of you watched Call the Midwife. Unemployment, criminality and drunkeness were rife and children from such a background would have seemed like a different species. They often had fleas and lice, probably internal parasites too. On top of that, they were inexplicably torn away from their families and everything familiar to live in a rural place that must have seemed completely alien to them, often with hosts who were far less than hospitable, and many developed severe behavioural problems, from bedwetting to aggression, that in those days went pretty much unrecognised and unhelped. Prunella Scales' mother just wanted to care for her own children in the best way that she could under the circumstances.

We should not judge the past by current standards. Class divisions were strong then and these things happened.

My mother was Irish and when she was a child she remembered seeing signs on boarding houses saying 'No children, no Irish, no dogs'. That's how it was then.

I wonder what we do now that will be considered equally unacceptable in 2080?

Yes. Perhaps my words were wrong, there. Maybe, on looking back, when I think of the expression on her face it may have been that she questioned her mother's decision.

I agree, absent