One of my greatest horrors in life, aside from my loathing of electric gates, is to be tarred with the middle class brush.

I come from a long line of bus drivers, shop workers, plumbers, window cleaners and more recently, in an astounding shove up the class ladder, teachers.

My parents were beneficiaries of Thatcher’s generation and decided that the family genealogy needed a leg up.

Aspirational Mother, went back to university when I was a teenager and we spent many fraught hours working at opposite ends of the kitchen table discussing Rousseau and the life cycle of frogs.

Little did I realise, naively, when setting out at Birmingham University, that to be a dentist would also mean a shift up the social ladder, whether I wanted it or not.

I was a beer-swilling, pseudo- socialist. In a dalliance with the other half, I had won a scholarship to a posh boarding school which drafted girls in for the sixth form purely to round off the boys’ education.

For two years I skirted around the periphery of the pony club and ski holiday brigade, and actually had a very nice time. In a somewhat predictable twist of fate, I married a fellow dentist and began an Essex-Scouse union which has led on to three small Essex-Scouse hybrids.

Quite randomly, we have settled in Henley, probably one of the most stereotypically English middle class towns in the northern hemisphere.

In the first few months of this most unlikely of abodes, we were thrown headfirst into what seemed like an endless round of dinner parties.

My bluntness meant we were quickly struck off the lists of many of the more aspiring social climbers.

Being a dentist, gets you in but hinting to hosts they are over-privileged sends you packing. In one of my more embarrassing moments, I managed to create a alcohol- fuelled scene at the gates of Henley regatta when arriving in a dress which sat on the knee and not below it, so breaking the dress code.

The gallon of Diamond White probably broadened my Essex accent when I announced to anyone who would listen where they could shove their ridiculous regatta.

There have been many times when both of us have been quizzed on our choice of profession and been expected to fix a raft of dental problems across a dining table.

“I’d imagine you hate being asked this, but could you just have a quick look at my tooth?" is a question that no dentist wants to hear outside the surgery and least of all over the third glass of wine on a Saturday night.

“OMG, don’t understand what on earth made you want to be a dentist” is another corker. In my more ferocious moments, the answer of fast cars, exotic holidays and the power to inflict pain has sprung to mind.

In reality, I love my job. I do it three days a week and I feel like I make a difference. Maybe my background has given me an advantage in the ability to relate to all sorts of people. I can smile sweetly at the pushy mums when they trot in with Jemima and Rufus and have a laugh with the more down-to-earth patients.

Standing in the free school meals queue for years taught me the reality of life that is hard to learn. Who knows, one day, I may well think about installing my very own set of electric gates. Or not.