I don't know if this has ever been true for you but in many social situations I have encountered people whose raison d'etre seems to be to score points and win one over on others. Like this:-
Where did you go on holiday this year?
Oh, We drove down to Cornwall and stayed in a cottage just outside St Austell. It was lovely.
Well we went to California. We picked up a hire car in LA. and drove up to San Francisco via Big Sur and Salinas. It was stunning. You wouldn't believe it! By the way, how's your son getting on?
He's fine thank you. He completed his degree and he's thinking of doing a masters at Sheffield.
Oh my son has already got his masters and he's applied for a PhD at Oxford. He should get a full scholarship. And he's met a gorgeous Italian girl related to Silvio Berlusconi. Her family has an amazing villa in Tuscany and we have been invited over for the summer. Has your son got a girlfriend?
Err no. He's gay.
Well I'm sorry to hear that. My son is like a stallion by all accounts. A real chip off the old block if you know what I mean! Ha-ha-ha!
This famous British comedy sketch was first performed in 1966:-
I had not seen that sketch before. Amusing and dare I say it speaks some truth, hopefully less so now than in 1966.
ReplyDeleteNot as blatant today but still there.
DeleteThere are lots of braggers here to and I don't like them.
ReplyDeleteSome guys brag about how much snow they have shovelled.
DeleteOne upmanship ought to be illegal, but I see the problems with trying to police it. So all we can do is try to not do it.
ReplyDeleteWe should look for the good in others - not how we can outdo them.
DeleteThose one-uppers always annoy me. I sometimes wish they'd go first in the conversation and then rather than one-upping, I'd tell a terrible horrible story and see how they react.
ReplyDeleteDo you think there is a possibility that "Thing 45" could legitimately be accused of one-upmanship?
DeleteA friend of mine announced her first pregnancy to a group of us who didn't see each other too often. As it happened I had a twin pregnancy to announce. I probably should have held off for another time but I didn't manage to change direction as quickly as I might have. I don't think she has ever quite forgiven me for what she saw as my one up-manship that day.
ReplyDeleteI'm more careful now
Wouldn't it have been something if another woman had announced, "Well that's nothing Kylie! I'm having triplets!"
DeleteThe kind of people you describe are everywhere, I guess, and the sketch sums it up really well.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be a very common human trait to look for something in others that makes us feel "better" than they are, consciously or not.
Here in my area of Germany, where there are people of so many different nations and cultures living more or less peacefully together, I often observe how some of them see themselves as the "better" foreigners - mainly, in my own house the German-Italian couple downstairs believe themselves to be "better" than the Turkish family upstairs, and even better than the single young man from Syria who rents the basement flat. Knowing the couple downstairs and the family upstairs quite well, I can testify that, if anything, the family upstairs are "better" than the couple downstairs - not because of their nationality, but because they are decent, hardworking people, kind and polite, while the couple do not work at all, and the few times I've been inside their flat I was nearly choking on the smell of stale cigarettes and couldn't help but notice how untidy and dusty it was. Plus, they have lied to their landlord - and bragged about it to me.
That is a real multi-cultural house! I detest the stench of cigarettes. It gets into everything - curtains, upholstery etc. Horrible!
DeleteWhen Steve was still alive, we had one more nationality in the house.
DeleteRosi and I are the only Germans, everyone else in both semis is not originally from here. But my favourite neighbour in the two houses is Fatma, the Turkish woman in the attic flat above mine. Can you not like someone who brings you freshly home-made hummus, and trusts you not only with their keys while they are on holiday but even asks you to open their mail in their absence so that anything "official" coming in can be sortet instantly?
Snobs=Tories.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to argue.
DeleteYep. All too familiar with that scenario when I was still working full time. Thankfully we no longer move in those circles.
ReplyDeleteLife is too short for such point scoring.
DeleteThis reminded me of the Christmas letters we occasionally get from certain friends. ( mainly people we never see!). One family that comes to mind always used to have lots of holidays in foreign places and their kids were both doing amazing things. Ba humbug!
ReplyDeleteOn yes! I have read quite a few of them Frances. Awful things.
DeleteBrilliant as ever. It is slowly changing, even though Rees-Mogg still hangs on in there. 'Round Robin' letters give joyous amusement at Xmas.
ReplyDelete"This year, I moved to my daughter's luxury mansion in Todmorden where I am waited on hand and foot by the staff. I spend a lot of time researching my next book - 'Ancient England and What Remains' which is due out next summer, sponsored to the tune of £280,000 by Heinemann. Have A Happy Christmas!"
DeleteYes, there are a lot of one-uppers around here and they really get my goat. I may have said something completely absurd a time or two just to see how they top it or if they are really listening.
ReplyDeleteHumility, compassion and the ability to listen properly to others are much better traits than one-upmanship.
DeleteBefore I got to the end of your post I was thinking of the Two Ronnies with John Cleese . Lo and behold you included it!
ReplyDeleteGreat minds think alike!
DeleteThere were two separate sets of parents at school who constantly went on about their children's achievements: Head Boy, interview at Oxford (he got in) and so on. It was to annoy other parents like mine a had nothing compare.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that after all these years the mention of "one-upmanship" rang that bell for you Tasker.
DeleteMaybe so. But my parents (and others) wouldn't have mentioned anything they might have had to go on about,
DeleteA response to the last exchange, well to hear it from my son's boyfriend - I have no idea where he gets it from.
ReplyDeletePerhaps from you Errol.
DeleteThat sums up quite a few people .....very similar to the awful round robin letters people send at Christmas !!! XXXX
ReplyDeleteSee my next post!
DeleteClass. Monty Python sketch said it all.
ReplyDelete*Author - Len Deighton - Interview - Thames TV 1983.* YouTube.
As Deighton said, people like our horrid class system otherwise they would not put up with it.
Working-class children in Glasgow are ghetto-ised because they only speak in one register.
When I raise this with middle class people they show no concern whatsoever.
Jim Kelman calls it a genuine and acceptable mode of speech.
He has turned a chip on his shoulder into a bogus linguistic theory.
I want every working-class child to be as confident in their speech as children at posh schools.
Not a single writer or educationalist dares to raise the subject. Cowardice.
Len Deighton wrote it? Wow, that's amazing.
DeleteWell, you know that these braggarts (because that is what they are) are deeply insecure. Or so they say.
ReplyDeleteSurely that famous American disc jockey is not insecure! You know that one I mean - D.J,Trump.
DeleteI've never had anything to be one up about:) Sometimes it's fun to just mess with people though and tell them about my children.
ReplyDeleteThis sketch seems to be spot on, especially about why people like to have different classes, mainly to feel better about themselves. I thought I recognized Ronnie Corbett. I didn't realize how short he was though.
Only the tall one - John Cleese - is still alive. I guess the upper class live longer.
DeleteThere's a comedian named Mike Albo who wrote a book years ago called "The Underminer," about just this type of friend -- everything they say winds up making others feel worse, not just by boasting of their own accomplishments but slyly putting down others'.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sad trait to possess. Nice to instinctively give genuine praise and credit where they are due.
DeleteI remember that sketch well, so true. Is it still like that in the UK?
ReplyDeleteMaybe not as blatant but still there.
DeleteAs we say in the People's Republic of Glasgovia :
ReplyDeleteCum oan you. Git aff the bus !*
As we say in The People's Republic of South Yorkshire
Delete" **** *** ye ******* ***** boy!"
Talking of Yorkshire Pudding South of the River Tees who doesn’t yearn to browse around a good old fashioned antiquarian or second hand bookshop? Mind you, one doesn’t have to work for MI6 to realise that bookstores can be pretty daunting, intriguing if not dangerous and spooky places.
ReplyDeleteThere are several bookstores in the USA that are supposed to be spooky, haunted that is, but few if any are renowned for clandestine gatherings of real spooks. In England, arguably the most famous spooky bookshop is at Sarah Key Books or The Haunted Bookshop situated at 9 St Edward’s Passage Cambridge since 1993. Prior to that and from 1896 a Mr G David ran the bookshop in St Edward’s Passage. This quaint shop is less than a third of a mile distant from Trinity College down a tiny alley in the historic heartland of Cambridge. Rumour has it that a genuine ghost resides there.
Apart from being a first class bookshop it was the ghost that made the shop famous but its infamy in espionage history has until today never before been acknowledged. We can confirm that there can be little doubt that members of the Cambridge Five probably bought books at or at the very least visited Mr David’s bookshop in St Edward’s Passage in the 1930s and sauntered past it on frequent occasions on the way to and from the pubs in Bene’t Street and their rooms in Trinity College Cambridge.
Search as you might though, despite being tailor made for espionage, few bookshops have become infamous safe houses, dead drop sites or even spy stations. Maybe that anonymity arises because the bookshop owners were such sophisticated and successful spies. Put another way, would you have heard anything extraordinarily interesting about Kim Philby or Aldrich Ames had they not been exposed?
The most successful antiquarian bookshop we know of that was up to its shelves in espionage was the Yarm Bookshop. For more about this please read the news article dated November 16, 2022 in The Burlington Files website.