Opinion: Lagos to London: Britain’s New Super-Rich

And so

I really had no intention of writing anything about the mockumentary that was shown on Channel 4 last night titled, Lagos to London: Britain’s New Super-Rich, but I was asked about it at work this morning.

There are a lot of Nigerians in the UK, my association with the UK was borne of the fact that my parents were here as students in the 1960s and I came along, born in the UK, but of Nigerian heritage and I am proud of that mix and makeup of my life.

Now, the Nigerians that appeared on that programme are rich, wealthy, educated in some of the best English schools, but somehow seemed to have missed a quality of educational finesse that combines the understated with sophistication.

They had cash, they were brash, they had lots to flash and very little class. It goes without saying that that essential component of comportment seems to have evaded their sensibilities by a country mile.

Of sensible Nigerians

There are Nigerians who graft it here daily to make ends meet, there are other Nigerians who are professionals of high repute with exemplary accolades and dare I say, probably the majority of the unseen Nigerians have more sense than money and I think that is a good thing.

The best education I got from my parents is one of contentment, this gives me the perspective and grounding to live my life successfully and happily without the encumbrance of trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Looking at some of the commentary on Twitter last night, some people were carried away with the acquisitive hedonism, the ostentatious show of wealth that has people groomed for appearance with little or no substance. Life has a lot more to it than that.

Indeed, we would all love to have the means to do anything we liked, yet we have a self-awareness, a sense of responsibility, considerable consideration, discipline and perspective to what we do that is a function of our stability and salvation from depression borne of envy, jealousy or covetousness.

The butler comes

Now, of the people who were showcased on this meat rack of vulgarity, one can commend Alexander Amosu for rising from a council estate to hobnob with the outrageously rich and he has apparently cornered a market to feed the constant one-upmanship that consumes people of that ilk.

Yet, with all that association, the minutiae of essence that comes with knowing was evident, limousine, chauffeur, sharp suits, gleaming cuff links and the ultimate faux pas; a matching tie and pocket square. Class is probably passed down and there is only so much finishing school can do.

Kids on the skids

On the matter of the daughters of the billionaire oil tycoon and the twins with a law degree from some midrange university, whoever sent them to public school should be asking for a refund with interest, none of the English norms seemed to have rubbed off on them, they spoke like silver spoon braggarts.

Many of us would rather keep our inflective Nigerian-English accents than to decline to a South or East London accent, especially after that kind of education. Come think of it, I seem to have gotten more out of my Nigerian-based multi-cultural education than they did from public schools in England. Their spoken English was quite below par as to be somewhat appalling.

The Daily Mail had a spread on the girls and one look at the comments shows they would always be celebutantes of the Kardashian or The Only Way Is Essex genre of trashy reality television until they find a vocation that is of service rather than self-serving.

The twins who spewed philosophy like it was going out of fashion, were planning on making their mark as lawyers, I won’t scoff, but whilst they looked good for a posse, looks do not a respected advocate make. Much privilege and given to spoilage, one might aver.

Beyond the zoo

Like I said before, there are a lot of people of Nigerian heritage in the UK, very few of us would like to be paraded as vacuous showpieces of opulence bringing on disgust. It was a mockery of the uncultured without a filter for self-restraint.

They do not represent the, as it were, sensible Nigerian, not in any way. That show was a zoo and one visit to see the animals was enough.

Prince said it about style, there was much on show and nothing that resembled style.

Style is not something that comes in a bottle
Style is more like Jackie O. when she was doin' Aristotle
Style is not a logo that sticks 2 the roof of one's ass
Style is like a second cousin 2 class.

Style – Emancipation (1996) – Lyrics

Editorial: Fourteenth of May 2011

Class remains a celling of glass

It can so easy to draw parallels between two seemingly disparate stories that pertain to the social elements of contemporary life and contemporaneous life of a bygone era.

The quest for an egalitarian society continues apace but it is nowhere within grasp, rather opportunity by merit or graft grants access to certain circles for a season without conferring a belonging until the next generation comes of age.

Life becomes a flux between class and vulgarity with many being unable to distinguish between either and those who do risking the epithet of snobbery.

The playboy and the player

The difference between a playboy and a player is all too evident; by player, I mean a football player who in certain leagues is highly paid in weekly wages and the dexterity of legs and foot might also belie the context of being lowly taught.

The death of a playboy who by unusual circumstance lived into his late 70s only to end his life with a gunshot to the head as the dread of Alzheimer’s disease loomed is quite different from a host of other playboys who ended their lives in their prime as their fast cars rammed into the gates of the great beyond.

Professional footballers do not necessarily come to such conclusions but have their reputations built and shattered by a lack of essential breeding that espouses the understated, a modicum of privacy, the presence of discretion, the circle of the trusted whilst being able to maintain sophistication and dare one say class.

Privilege and impecuniousness

So, in the review of five possibly ghost-written autobiographies of some famous footballers, the reviewer conjures amazing interest by narrating the five ages of a professional footballer and one cannot fail to notice how far the progeny of a player is from that of playboy.

A boyhood driven by ambition to succeed from a working-class background to the public school boy who has continental Europe as his playground, never bereft of the means to do anything he wishes.

The young professional with allegiances forged from childhood to coming of age of literally having nothing to do for work but at the same time socially busy and occupied.

The dramatic changes of allegiance for one might well be the advent into the adulthood of difficulty and clashes with ones forebears and as the former gains stardom on the field on the back pages of newspapers and the front-pages of tabloids, the latter will only find column inches at birth, marriage and death.

Representing ones country becomes the epitome of a footballing career as a player whilst the playboy literally has no nationality with the will and the means to be at any exclusive place as time and desire demands.

Class and crass

The other subtlety that divides the player and the playboy is chivalry, gentlemanliness, airs, graces and escorts that will never become courtesans but the distinctions then become snooty beyond compare.

Whilst each might well access the others circle, the ready put-down though unspoken is glaringly that “showing off was left to a few arrivistes who possessed neither class nor pedigree.”

That haunts many beyond players to include those lumped into the cachet of arriviste but the biggest slight of all is reserved for “little English lower-middle-class girlies like Anna Wintour and Tina Brown, had they been around, would never have come close to meeting them or even seeing them.”

Worst still is to come as he concludes that line of thinking with “Now both ladies are considered arbiters of taste and society, in America, at least.” It goes without saying that America still aspires to the sense of class that Europeans exude, but that is to kick up unnecessary fuss.

In the age of the player it appears the playboy mourns the passing of something that was once called high-society.

Acknowledgements

The Financial Times reviews five ghost-written football player autobiographies and manages to make a good reading of what would conveniently pass for drivel in that the lettered might not necessarily find literary or sociological value in those stories.

Taki Theodoracopulos who was once a playboy writes the obituary of Gunther Sachs for the Daily Telegraph lamenting the passage of high-society for the advent of the vulgar vicissitudes of albeit low society.