LETTERS The great debate
Sir: I don't know why anybody should think it an achievement to `invent' or 'discover' Essex Man (Letters, 16& 23 July). I lived in Essex Man parts of Essex from 1929 to 1982 and by the time I was 20 I knew he was there, and so did most other people. When we had Norton 350 motorbikes, Essex Men burned up the Southend Road on Triumph 650 Thunderbirds. When we had MGs, they had Jaguars. When some of us got Jaguars, they had American gas-guz- zlers. In 1957 an Essex driver hit my old MG hard in the back, going too fast on the Southend Road in one of the new Austin Healeys. He looked carefully at the damage to his own car before turning round to see if he'd killed me and my passenger, dazed and stuck in our car. Surely archetypal behaviour.
Essex Man originated in the East End with people who had made enough money by whatever means to move to nicer coun- try. He concentrated on country he knew from days out, such as the routes to Southend, and Epping Forest towns like Loughton, Chigwell and Theydon Bois. The same thing happened south of the Thames, concentrated on the roads to Maidstone rather than the coast. A regular drinker in the large pub in the village of West Kings- down on the A20 once told me there were more reformed south London crooks per acre in the village than anywhere else south of London. I find it interesting that the retiring Governor of the Bank of England took the title Lord Kingsdown.
Journalists often don't notice social change until the people involved have long since taken it for granted. The discovery can go to their heads and they start shout- ing like people who discover sex or drink at 35. What is interesting now is the spread of Essex Man through the south (e.g. Brighton) and towards the rest of the country. How far has it got? Where will it end?
Michael Payne
2 Elm Grove, Epsom, Surrey
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