Susan Robinson finds 'Prescott: The Class System and Me' douses vinegar on the chips on Prezza's shoulders.

However once I’ve confirmed that I am over sixteen, the show may begin. The camera pans over ‘Prescott Castle’ accompanied by jovial, you might say mocking, music. Inside, Pauline Prescott, Hull’s answer to Jackie-O, is only too happy to exhibit her home, despite it being the main symbol of Prescott’s inconsistent lifestyle as a working class champion living in decidedly opulent surroundings. I’m distinctly reminded of my grandmother showing off the latest appliance she’s had installed in her poky council flat.

Pauline relishes in constantly undermining John’s down to earth stance. She solidly feeds him smoked salmon sandwiches (minus crusts) and asks him to get the Royal Albert teapot for her whilst she mimes winding him up like a clockwork toy when his back is turned.

After we’ve watched them relax with tea out of an elegant cup, as opposed to the ‘usual mug’, seen ‘the help’ vacuum Pauline’s ‘regency pelmets’, she comments, ‘God I hope we don’t come across as the Hamiltons, I’d die!’ And no, they do not come across as the Siegfried and Roy of light entertainment. However as the Prescotts are put into increasingly difficult situations on their journey through class I can’t help but note that they seem less canny in their self-exploitation than the ‘I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!’ graduates.

First stop is luncheon with the seventh Earl of Onslow, on meeting the two men get down to class politics and comparing house size whilst Royalist Pauline wrings her hands and wonders if it is good etiquette to curtsey when telling an Earl his flies are undone.

Table talk revolves around counselling Prescott: ‘Sometimes I think you’ve got the whole fah-king Alps on your shoulders dear boy.’ To which John viciously counters, ‘Which school did you go to? The world was there for you. ’ Next, he is taken to the Hay on Wye Book Festival. Hardly comfortable territory for a man who proudly claims he has never read a book in his life. (Which would include his ghost written biography, Prezza?) Especially when another festival goer is asked: ‘Have you seen any working class people here?’ The reply is a whimsical, ‘do they wear badges?’ On defending his somewhat inarticulate speech to hated ‘syntax snob’ Simon Hoggett, Prescott receives another lecture on how he should be ‘proud of himself’ yet the word ‘patronising’ never passes his lips.

To discern whether Prescott ‘recognises the working classes of today’ he is taken to Lewisham to meet three unemployed teenagers. Producers may not have felt unease at filming the girls straightening each other’s hair, wondering about the definition of ‘chav’ and asking ‘Who is Gordon Brown?’ Hopefully viewers did. When ‘connecting with the electorate’ Prescott decides it is best just to call them ‘love’, buy Kentucky Fried Chicken and ask them if they feel they have been let down by the government. The voice-over expresses surprise that they connect so well, snidely pointing out: ‘even if the common ground had a little to do with the scrapper in each of them.’

The final douse of vinegar for the chips on Prescott’s shoulders is a visit to the Henley Royal Regatta. Here he makes fast friends by telling private school boys that they have bought their way into the world, only to get egg on his face when the jibe is returned with a loaded question on the quality of state schools.

Prescott’s motivation for ‘The Class System and Me’ is to prove himself to his detractors and negate his own self doubt. However if his producers had the same agenda they would have called it ‘The Class System and I’, agreed that croquet really was just the same as crazy golf and the idea would never have reached our screens.

Who knows, next week they might get him to punch someone...