Brit Dopers, US television has been broadcasting Ladette to Lady, the show in which drunken, burping, farting, rough 'n ready female louts are sent to a finishing school to learn deportment. Are the girls for real? Their crudeness and rowdiness beggar belief. I’ve spent a lot of time in Britain and I’ve never encountered anyone remotely like these girls. How widespread is the kind of extreme ladette behavior that’s depicted in the show? Does it really exist or are the girls hamming it up in front of the cameras?
I live in a country town, so don’t see that sort of behaviour.
However there have been several TV programs showing closed circuit TV in cities of young people drinking heavily, then staggering onto the street to argue, snog, fight, vomit etc.
Also bear in mind that TV companies advertise for precise categories of people, so these ladettes could come from all over the place.
It’s a real phenomenon, although what you describe sounds more like chavs than lads/ladettes. “Chav” is a snobbish term for the British equivalent of trailer trash. “Lad” and by extension “ladette” is a broader term originating in the 90’s, encompassing a wide swathe of young, classless, uninhibited British people who constituted the mainstream of youth culture at that time. Lads and ladettes often have good jobs and qualifications, unlike chavs.
There’s this annual TV show over here, Celebrity Big Brother, and usually they throw a couple of token American celebrities into the house. This time round it was Dirk Benedict of the A-Team, and Jermaine Jackson. Anyway, the British celebrities always include a few who definitely fall into the chav category. Every time, the American celebs are appalled at the crudeness and vulgarity of the chavs/chavettes, like they had no idea British people could behave like that 
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I saw that show, and I personally have never known anyone that badly behaved!
Ok then, but where does that leave Spides & Neds? Are they Chavs also…?
I don’t believe you at all. I live in a country town, too. I see it all the time.
There’s a more general and less dramatic cultural ethos along the same lines (maybe it’s post-post-feminism or something), the principle being ‘anything blokes can get away with, we can, too’.
Neds have always been Scottish, to my ears. Never heard of Spides. When I was in Manchester, they were scallies, but that was before ‘chav’ had become common currency.
Maybe instead of Spides, he means Spivs?
I doubt it. “Spivs” were the dodgy entrepeneurs who somehow managed to source desirable goods such as nylon stockings during the war and the years of rationing that followed it. The term is rarely used now. Not because we don’t have people trying to sell us illicit crap these days, we just have different rude names for them now.
Scousers?
I imagine more of the illicit crap comes through Felixstowe than Liverpool these days.
Follow the trail…A14…M6…
US Dopers, if you’re interested in seeing these outrageous females in action, Ladette to Lady is on the Sundance Channel tonight (Friday) at 8:00 EST. It’s followed by another episode at 9:00 p.m.
Needless complication. All people need to know is that nothing good comes from the Ipswich area.
What, like Alf Ramsey’s tactics, you mean? 
Your wily Suffolk ways have defeated me on this occasion. But I shall return.
No, really. :eek:
My town only has a population of 12,000. It has no night clubs, and the pubs all shut by midnight.
Ditto. Except the 2001 census says 11,000.
We have had a spate of house building in the last few years.
Also a bypass over the railway line.
I tell you, we’re on the leading edge here! (apart from the nightlife :o )