The price of being posh

This week I read that the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch had apparently been complaining that he was only ever offered 'posh' roles on account of his background and private education. The origin of the word posh is unknown. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the attractive folk etymology that it is an acronym of 'port out, starboard home' – supposedly indicating the more expensive, preferred cabins on a ship travelling east – popularised for people of mine and Cumberbatch's generation in the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Several dictionary definitions do, however, record the word as pertaining to the upper class.

And there it is, the dirtiest word in the English language: class. So the journalists were queuing up to analyse whether or not we have a problem with 'posh-bashing' and inverted snobbery. Cumberbatch got to Harrow on a scholarship after attending a fee-paying preparatory school. I mean, he's one of us, isn't he? He's just like all the other Benedicts we know. If it really is all so unfair on the poor chap, Hannah Betts of The Guardian thinks that maybe he should move to America because it's 'classless'. So classless, in fact, that US audiences can't get enough of class-conscious English dramas like Downton Abbey (described by Cumberbatch himself as "atrocious"), Gosford Park, as well as anything with even the faintest whiff of the House of Windsor.

But while exploiting and bemoaning Britain's class divisions is something of a national sport, I'd say that we're all missing the point focussing on upper class pretensions when the real issue is one's accent and what an albatross it can be. Let's face it, if Hugh Grant didn't play up his accent in every role, we'd finally recognise just what a fantastic actor he is, wouldn't we? But we should also take note from Stephen Fry, a man who seems to be universally liked but who clearly recognises the advantages of his own accent:

"My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses."

In my first term at university in 1994, in one memorable seminar we were required to take part in a demonstration of a classic sociolinguistic experiment. We listened to a variety of UK accents and were asked to make judgements about the ages, statuses and backgrounds of the speakers of each accent. Having completed this exercise (called the matched-guise test), we were forced to confront our own prejudices when it was revealed that all the accents had in fact been recorded by the same actor.

So I can't help thinking that maybe if Benedict Cumberbatch were similarly able to demonstrate his versatility as an actor, and take on a role that was out of character and required a different accent (i.e. not his own); perhaps he could eventually avoid the kind of typecasting he currently finds so unfair. Numerous surveys of the most prestigious, preferred and pilloried UK accents have been conducted over the years. So if RP's days really are numbered, then surely actors from all backgrounds should be getting their tongues round an array of regional varieties as a means of guaranteeing a range of different roles in the future.