At an uncongenial hour, I find myself on Radio 4’s excellent Sunday programme, telling Ed Stourton that I can’t imagine that Justin Welby has ever thrown a bread roll in a restaurant in his life. Others were discussing the new Archbishop of Canterbury’s churchmanship, but there isn’t a serious issue that I’m not prepared to overlook when I’m at the BBC ”“ just call me George “Entwistle” Pitcher.
What I was really trying to say is that Archbishop-elect Welby isn’t an Old Etonian in the Boris Johnson and David Cameron tradition. He’s about as far from the Bullingdon Club of Boorish Hoorays as it’s possible to be. Well, as far as Cambridge is from Oxford, anyway.
But it made me wonder, in the early hours of Sunday on national radio, if I was indulging in a gratuitous and offensive stereotype of Etonians.
One of the comments was amusing, that Holy Trinity Brompton is “often referred to as a ‘cult’ because of telling its younger members that they should not have sex before marriage, and other solid Christian teachings”.