Maybe. I wasn’t consciously equating with ethnicity as much with what I perceived as the “upper crust”. What I’d see, on television mostly, were royals and those who hang out in the same circles as the royals. They frequently make the news.
Then in movies, and on regular BBC tv programs I’d see everyone else. There seems to be some differences in the general physical appearance of these two groups.
Group One: The general public at football etc and characters as seen in movies such as The Full Monty, The Van, and The Limey etc. Also in sitcoms and mysteries etc on BCC.
Group Two: The royals, and those I assume to be upper crust who associate with the royals. Seen mostly in news coverage around scandals, royal happenings, conferring of knighthood and the like. Sarah Ferguson, I think, would be one of these people.
Physical traits are more likely to be inherited than ethnic, aren’t they?
You’re looking at a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny sample and trying to draw conclusions. (The Van, by the way, was set in Dublin.) You haven’t even seen the full range of what you’re calling “the Upper Crust.” As has been stated before, there’s been plenty of genetic mingling over the centuries between the nobility and the commoners.
The second faulty group you’re looking at is the kind of people you see in movies – actors are usually chosen for certain roles because their appearance fit our stereotypes about what people look like. Nobles are lean and handsome. Commoners are fat, bald, short, and stocky.
Get beyond what you think you’re seeing here. It’s hard enough trying to work through all the misinformation and misconception when speaking about “race.” It’s unbelievable that we’re trying to hone it down even further with more subcategories. I bet you if you were shown pictures of white people with no clues as to their origins other their natural physical appearance, you wouldn’t have a clue what their ethnic backgrounds were.
You’ll find the same range of physical types in England as you will in America. And you’re not going to find your “body type” categories maintainable beyond one or two generations.
OK, it now seems clear you are harmless (rather than making some unpleasant racial assumptions :eek: ).
The situation here is a little complicated because geographically we have England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, and there have been various governments in various permutations of the above over the centuries. And people have travelled around this small group of islands all that time (breeding as they go!).
England is a well-defined geographical area. But it seems hopelessly unscientific to try to define an ‘English’ person by appearance.
As usual, people from all the above areas, plus Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, the rest of Europe, the West indies, India, Pakistan, China etc come here looking for work and may well settle down. If they marry, their children may well qualify as English. How on earth do you expect to spot just two ‘types’ from this lot?!
We don’t (as GorillaMan stated) use the term ‘something ~ English’ to describe ourselves.
Personally I am ‘English’ most of the time, ‘25% Scottish’ if there might be a drink in it for me 
and British if watching the Olympics (because that’s the umbrella we enter under).
Prince Charles is the Heir to the throne (and to the Head of the Church of England). Many older British people think there is something wonderful about the tradition of the Monarchy, but would be surprised to hear of his non-English ancestry. (I think he’s an adulterous prat, but that’s a side issue. :rolleyes: )
When you see an English soap opera, the actors are chosen to fit the stereotype. I don’t buy your idea of appearance, but there is certainly a good chance of an regional or class accent.
‘East Enders’ is set in London and features the appropriate accent (Oi! You! Leave it!). Meanwhile ‘Coronation Street’ is set 'oop North - there is something of a North-South divide here. If you get the chance to see ‘Yes, Minister’ take it! Not only is it witty 
, but the characters demonstrate the educated English accent beautifully.
I thought it was pretty obvious in the OP that I realized that my samples were indeed tiny, and that I had no other specific info to draw from. That’s exactly why I asked. That’s what “are there” means. That’s what question marks are for. I made no statements in the OP.
I work in Camden where even the dealers are fashionable and the typical man-about-the-town is Tim-like, buff and trendy. However, I walked to Holloway today and as I got closer and closer to it the people stumbling about got uglier, considerably fatter and wore more football shirts and gold. The kids looked less like Avril and Justin and got surly, hooded and mean until you couldn’t even look at them without risking your wallet.
If Mangeorge’s image of the UK is anything like the impression of the US over here I can see why he could come to his conclusion - (ie: Cast of Friends or Fraiser vs the specimens on Springer)
No, of course not. My objection to your question, as I have said before, is that it is a stupid question, at least in the way you have framed it. And many other posters here have explained at considerable length why exactly the question doesn’t make a lot of sense.
From your responses (especially ones like the one above), it’s obvious that you are really not interested learning anything here, but rather are just continuing to argue for the sake of arguing. So I’m done here.
As I said in a previous post, go back to the 1930s before a lot of immigration occured from Asia, India and West Indies, and I think there were some regional variations that are based on very old ethnicities. Like I said, my mum’s SIL who was from the north of England, noted that the South had many more tall blondes than she was used to seeing and there must have been a reason for this. People were definitely less mobile, kept regional accents and married locals more often. There is a reason why my Dad is a tall blonde and my mum is short and dark and these differences must be based on the ethnic mixes that occured on both sides of my family. Could we not generally say that Normans, Celts and ancient Britons would have been shorter and darker, whereas Angles and Saxons would have been taller and blonder? Vikings, well, who could tell under their horned helmets??? (just kidding).
I didn’t misread the OP. I merely believe that asking whether there are two “physical types” of English people, apart from being a stupid question, veers dangerously close to racist theories like ubermensch-untermensch and Tutsi-Hutu. I do not believe mangeorge is a Nazi, but his ideas are redolent of common racist ideas. That’s why he should disavow them.
I’m not being oblique at all. I never said that you said shortness, bladness and huskiness are undesirable traits, but rather that they ARE generally undesirable traits.
Likewise, I do not insinuate that you have Nazi ideas. I say explicitly that your “two physical types” idea IS like the Nazi idea of ubermensch-untermensch. You do not intend this, I am sure (hence the footnote). This is why you should disavow your silly OP.
I think I’ve explained myself pretty damn well so far, but once more with feeling: I don’t believe you’re a racist. However, your “two physical types” concept is redolent of racist ideas. Therefore, you should disavow your OP.
I think we should separate physical “type” from any notion of race. There are clearly several physical types which are common among British people. But attacthing them to any particular ethnicity or national type within the British population is pure folly.
It was once common for Physical Anthropologists to classify people (especially Caucasians) into a myriad of sub-races. For instance, in Northern Europe you would have Falish, Tronder, Borreby, Halstatt, Upper Paleolithic, Atlanto-Mediterranean, East Baltic, Noric, and all sorts of other arcane categories to describe any possible physical type.
Some people would try to assign a particular type to a specific strain of people, such as the Battle Axe, or Cro Magnon. The most infamous example was the Nazis’ notion that the “Aryans” (Indo-European invaders of Europe and India) were mostly Halstatt Nordic types, which is probably utter bull.
Anyway, what do we make of a “Borreby” man with a “Tronder” brother? Phil Collins (sort of a Borreby) may easily have a tall lanky "Noric " brother with a full head of hair.
Anyway, we know know that facial morphology and hair coloring is based on very complex patterns of inheritance, not one magic gene.
Also we know understand a lot more about how cultures diffused in prehistoric and anicent times. A rather small group of people with stronger weapons (and horses), and more advanced farming techniques, or simply a warrior culture could have superimposed their language, religion, and elite culture over a much larger population of sedentary farmers without creating a great deal of genertic change. This happened in Hungary, and even in much of the Arab world in historical times.
An few examples of supposed European subraces
That page has photographs from the work of Carleton Coon, who was the most eminent “Race scientist” of his day. Much of this work is now discredited (we now know all humans are probably descended from recent African ancestors from c. 200,000 years ago, not from different ‘subspecies’ which formed some 800,000 to 1,000,000 years ago), ut its along the lines of your question.
I think the OP has a valid question, except for the supposition that a humman physical type can make up a “race”. We are not bred like Dobermans, every act of human mating is something of a DNA crapshoot. But I think most of us wonder why we end up looking the way we do.
Actually, I was going to stop right here, with “Thanks, Lobsang, I really didn’t think so”. and I guess I should have. But I feel it’s rude to open a thread, and then ignore further replies. So I let myself be led way off subject by some really loony replies. But those were actually very few next to the over 1600 views, so I should have ignored them. Better late than never, eh? 
Sorry about any mixup my language may have caused. Anyone who wants to know what I really meant, just read the OP and take it literally. No mysterious hidden meanings there, I promise.
With any luck I’ll actually get oner there some day.
Don’t know or care who is whoosing who or who is trollin’.
But re the OP a “a retired Gloucestershire podiatrist” postulated that there were two British feet types: Celtic and Saxon. Seriously. Got some play in Archeological journals even.
Do I understand that this is whacky? Yep. But it is apropos.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n6_v17/ai_18289437