On a recent edition of reality show ‘Dinner Date’, a female contestant, following her evening with a young man from Chelmsford said, “The date went alright…and he was a lot less Essex-y than I thought he’d be!”
How we laughed as the same old jokes about fake tan, and the men grooming more than the women, came forth from a woman who - aside from her self-cultivated sounds-like-I-can’t-be-bothered-to-finish-the-sentence, ‘hooray Chelsea’ drawl - could have been a cartoonish impression of an Essex girl. All dyed blonde, drenched in tan and jewellery and constantly touching her hair.
Essex remains the one place in the UK that it’s still ok to be a snob about. There used to be a choice of the sheep-shagging Welsh, the bitter and feckless Scots, the happy, drunk and idiotic Irish, miserable Northerners, slow-talking bumpkins from Norfolk, in-bred West Country types and chirpy criminal Scousers.
But through a mixture of rebranding and romanticising, society deemed that they were actually cool.
But Essex, since the 80s, has bore the brunt of a particular type of snobbery. They’re all money and no class, how dare these dirty cockneys move out of their rat-infested London streets to the greener pastures of Billericay, Harlow, Colchester, and Harold Wood.
For Essex boy read (fairly) harmless, laughing geezer, a wallet full of reddies and condoms, shiny shirt and shiny shoes, gelled hair, a nice city job, chunky gold bracelets and plenty of lager at the weekend. Maybe you’d hear a cackling laugh as a Ford Escort, resplendent with outrageous spoilers, whizzed through a set of lights on amber.
Much harsher, damaging and openly misogynist is the term Essex girl, which is effectively an ‘acceptable’ term for “stupid slag”. The jokes bled into the 90s (“What’s an Essex girl’s favourite wine? Ohhhhh, I wana go Lakeside!”), which seemed to replace the mother-in-law as the target.
Yet while mockney accents became the thing, leading to toffs like David ‘Dave’ Cameron and Edward ‘Ed’ Milliband dropping t’s or g’s at the end of words, the elite started to cherry pick aspects of us Essexonians.
We watched media and music’s cutting edge adopt the accoutrements of Essex man all through the 90s. Chris Evans, Danny Baker, Blur, and others were new lads, full of lager and bogusly ironic sexism, a copy of Loaded in their back pocket, and a girl in a bikini in the background. It’s alright though, cos we have a knowing look!
Essex also became a catchall term, accompanied very often by chav, to demonstrate a hatred of the largely white working class.
When self-serving snob and vile egomaniac Bob Geldof let what guard he has down and berated a crowd at a festival in Brentwood for wearing Primark, he was roundly booed. Strange that this well schooled, formerly Eurosceptic Knight of the Realm should attack the very people who contributed so much to his previous causes.
He’s not alone of course, an unchallenged prejudice continued, heightened like everything else during the EU referendum aftermath.
And why is this bigotry ‘ok’? Perhaps in part for the same reason that it happened in the first place. True or not, one aspect of the Essex stereotype is a working class attitude of laughter, nice ‘fings and pleasure seeking. Because they never complained, and because they’d made good, they were fair game. And remain so.
There was also the view from ‘the left’ that these working class families had betrayed the Labour Party in the 80s. Essex voted for Thatcher because it seemed, having lived through poverty and escaped to be upwardly mobile and ambitious, they felt she spoke their language and encouraged them. They liked that she had faith in them, because they had faith in themselves. And nothing upsets a cardy-wearing, privately schooled, leftist beardy more than a working class person saying, “Nah nah, it’s alright, I’ve got this fanks”.
All of a sudden, the people of Essex weren’t the left’s noble savage that happily wallowed in poverty while town planners moved them from postcode to postcode destroying their communities. Now they were ugly white racists who had supped at Maggie’s teat and needed to be treated as the soulless scum they were.
The elephant in the room is jealousy. As the Essex inhabitants evolved from cab drivers and costermongers to bankers and traders on the stock market, their cars got bigger, their slums became semis and they got swimming pools and hot tubs. Then their kids dared to be ambitious and crucially, not be ashamed of their success or the trappings of wealth.
When looking at how Essex is viewed, the cognitive dissonance is startling and barefaced snobbery at its most blatant. Somehow, Chiswick-dwelling middle classes with their multiple houses, farmhouse kitchens and wicker owls hanging from the fireplace are right, whereas the carpets, white Christmas trees, 64” 3D TVs and BMWs are wrong.
To many, these people were money-crazed, materialistic and criminally gaudy with their Roman pillars and bars inside the lounge, why weren’t they using this money to educate themselves or shop organic?
Of course, the worst nightmare for those judging and sneering isn’t just the success, it’s that these people combine their own particular joie de vivre with the knowledge of how they’re perceived and what the motives are behind it.
As a young man in Essex, I grew up on The Jam and raves, football and ecstasy, and an ambition to make some mark. I spent a lot of time journeying into London, mixing with students, people from up north, the posher Home Counties, and doing jobs in media and sometimes ribbed for my class and background.
But the thing I found most odd was the volume of grief from people who came from towns and cities in the north. The places I had visited resemble many Essex towns with the only difference being the accent. They had the same nightlife, the same accessories and similar attitudes.
Before he revealed himself to be as much part of the establishment as a Royal baby, Owen Jones wrote the book Chavs, an energetic piece of writing that discussed how the working class were freely attacked and ‘demonised’. But Essex doesn’t quite fall into that subject. At least not that neatly.
When The Only Way Is Essex (aka TOWIE) hit the TV screens of the UK it did nothing to dispel myths or puncture prejudice, instead, millions of ‘professional people’ watched it like kids with their faces pressed up against the glass of a menagerie, open mouthed or laughing at the wildlife. Perhaps like so much reality television there’s some kind of vicarious life experience being sought, as they slump on their sofa from Made.com while ‘hubby’ tweets about how much he loves the new Doctor Who to an 18-year-old girl with pronouns, blue hair, ‘opinions’, a sex positive outlook, and a prominent cleavage.
And while I can’t say I am proud of Joey Essex, TOWIE does have its good points. You can’t tell me that Bobby Norris isn’t hilariously aware of his role in the panto. He’s no Dame Maggie Smith (also from Essex), but he’s undeniably entertaining and fun.
Essex isn’t perfect by any means, but where is? And a reckoning is long overdue. As well as Maggie Smith, there are plenty of famous daughters and sons from Essex; Depeche Mode, Alison Moyet, Dermot O’Leary, Jamie Oliver, Damon Albarn, Russell Brand, Jamie Cullum, Simon Amstell, Nick Frost, Dudley Moore, and Victoria Beckham.
But TOWIE is Essex declawed. The discussions are deliberately banal, the situations constructed by a production team one suspects would soil themselves if they had to have a pint with a builder or talk about pre-1996 football. It largely avoids what Essex represents; ambition, enjoying life, being proud of your surroundings, family, friends and not taking life too seriously. Oh, and being a victim is somewhat frowned upon, so the infamous GC (Gemma Collins) sticks out like a sore thumb.
The other key thing of course, in these times of policy and opinion driven by imaginary and insincere guilt, Essex has none. We did it all ourselves, from humble beginnings, so fuck you.
When you’re contemplating whether your husband has been eyeing up your au pair’s behind, or how to craft a tweet that demonstrates how much you hate transphobia, those things will mess with your mind.
Tom James
