Jesse Armstrong is a class act on page and screen

Jesse Armstrong’s observations on posh people have borne fruit in his debut novel and his writing for sitcoms such as Peep Show, says Richard Fitzpatrick

ANDY is the central character in Jesse Armstrong’s novel, Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals. In the opening scene he finds himself in a posh house. Posh people, he discovers, never use the word “posh”. It’s too common.

Instead they refer to people, places or parties that are very posh as “grand” or “smart”, and if someone complains about the distribution of wealth and privilege as being unfair, that person is dismissed as being “chippy”.