Amol Rajan

speaker

3,997 appearances 23 recordings 6 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 16 Jul

Amol Rajan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 23 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 12.

Appearances

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Radical · Why Do People Pretend to Be Working Class? (Your Radical Questions with Sophie Pender) · 13 Jul 2026 podcast

At the point of Born to Rule, which I really recommend Sam's book, is that, you know, it used to be that you kind of talk up your kind of credentials, you talk up your kind of class appurtenances, whereas now quite a lot of posh people talk them down and say, oh, I'm into football too. voice-verified

Fluid. voice-verified

But why would it, is it almost a sign of progress in your view that if, to take Sam's extraordinary statistic, in our reason book, he says, which is Born to Rule, we found that over 40% of people who told us they're from working class backgrounds actually come from solidly middle class backgrounds. voice-verified

In other words, middle class people pretend that they're working class. voice-verified

Now that could be done for naive reasons. voice-verified

They might think they're hard up and actually it's like, well, no, you're not. voice-verified

But it could also be that it's somehow cool. voice-verified

There's a kind of cultural prestige or power to sort of cast yourself as being more working class than you actually are. voice-verified

Is there something almost admirable about that? voice-verified

That for years in Britain, Hyacinth Bouquet of Keeping Up Appearance's fame wanted to be slightly richer and sound posher than she was. voice-verified

It was famously, she would say, the bouquet residence, the lady of the house speaking. voice-verified

And it's like, your surname is actually Bucket. voice-verified

But actually now from Sam's work, people want to say, actually, I'm a little bit more rough around the edges. voice-verified

There's four million kids in poverty and there's millions of children that are hungry in this country that have mulled voice-verified

bubbling away on their walls it's it's amazing that we don't talk about them more often are there any advantages to being working class better sense of humor maybe is it is it also that i don't know if you ascend if you ascend the class ladder if you end up earning a six-figure salary in your 20s you've got a better story to tell you don't need to feel guilty about it voice-verified

And also it costs a lot of money being poor, right? voice-verified

Yeah, the way those disadvantages compound is huge. voice-verified

Sam, thank you so much. voice-verified

Wonderful to hear from you, mate. voice-verified

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