“Scouse women are like swans beautiful, but you don’t fuck with them”

Two worlds collide as Scouser Jade Franks retells, with sharp wit and brutal honesty, her experience of navigating Cambridge University as a working class fresher.

As Franks unpacks with the cultural codes of an exclusive institution built to exclude people like her, the show candidly spotlights the absurdities of Britain’s class system. 

Franks walks us through a depressing picture of social exclusion and class prejudice – and yet, I feel like I’ve just been sat with a pint and a good friend. I wasn’t surprised about the elitist world that Jade was navigating, I felt it too going to a Red-brick university with my comprehensive school education but it felt liberating to laugh at it. 

What the story slightly lacks in original subject matter, Franks more than makes up for in her gregarious, authentic personality and quick wit. Quips like “What in the Hugh Grant was that?” had me laughing out loud. It’s the tone of Frank’s piece that makes it so enjoyable.  

The show’s most devastating moment comes when Jade, forced by economic necessity to secretly take a job cleaning, is caught scrubbing her boyfriend’s room only for her colleague to be referred to, without irony, as “the help”.

 

Another, when her sister comes to visit and Jade, now herself integrated into Cambridge society, with its theatrical and archaic rituals, is suddenly reminded of how this new world might threaten the relationships of her past. 

Structurally I felt we were slightly building towards a climax that didn’t necessarily come and perhaps Frank’s light-hearted nature ultimately caused a slight lack of depth. At points, the stakes didn’t necessarily feel high enough. Perhaps a deeper understanding of her motivations for going to Cambridge could’ve helped. 

Overall Eat The Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates x) is a lesson in how class isn’t just what’s in your bank account, it’s culturally woven into us through the environments of our upbringing: It’s the family dinner parties and, as Franks reminds us: the books in our family home. It’s our accent and even our name. 

Franks does a stellar job of reminding us that these barriers still exist and that some of us must work considerably harder than others to clear them.