A couple of nights ago we did a big bash for a global banking corporation. The guests we were entertaining were high net worth individuals and, we were assured by the Marketing Manager, "very sophisticated" with "lots of class." This was said in order to make us feel at home with programming pieces which were not necessarily mainstream.

When we sat down with her to discuss what we might do, however, it became very clear that all they really wanted was mainstream stuff, and nothing even approaching classical or highbrow (i.e. in no way sophisticated). Which got me to thinking: how can judge someone as sophisticated? What does "having class" actually mean?

Getting the semantics out of the way first, sophisticated doesn't at all mean what it originally did - wily and deceitful (from "sophistry") - except, at a stretch, when you are using it to describe the force of someone's argument, but even then it's hardly deceitful in the malicious way in which we read that word today.

Now here's the disclaimer: the following thoughts come from my personal experience. I'm generalising based on that experience, which is relatively extensive but by no means all-encompassing. I'm not that omnipotent.

Oh, and second disclaimer: I've just phoned Steph and she's terribly busy at work so I'm allowed to blog for a while rather than bug her. She's having a good day, if you're interested.

I think the main problem is that people assume that wealth goes hand in hand with class and sophistication. In my experience this could not be further from the truth, although it varies with the professions. There are of course exceptions, but generally (I use the word advisedly) people who are from creative professions such as law, architecture and medecine, along with the scientific professions to an extent, have far more sense of culture and creativity for its own sake (rather than using knowledge of it merely to impress). As such, they are more able to enter into conversations with people from vastly diverse backgrounds because their minds work in that sort of way.

People who are from banking, accountancy and trading professions (where black is black and white is white, and the quick buck is the order of the day) have very little creativity left in their souls. Everything has to be seen as part of an ongoing transaction, where mistakes are deadly and artful expression has no place.

The latter see the creative arts merely as a channel through which some of their (sometimes vast) wealth can be pumped - but why? Not for the enjoyment of the art form itself, but instead as another form of transaction: the money is donated, philanthropic recognition ensues, and through this PR more business can be gained. The people who employed us were far happier about the fact that it was the only private entertainment we were doing this year (i.e. what a coup it was that they'd "got us") than about our actual performance. We even had to agree to mention their institution at least 3 times during a tv conference. Hmmmm.

Corporate entertainment is something I dislike as a rule, the only benefit being that we can rub our hands with glee at the end of the evening knowing that one short engagement can go a long way towards funding an entire trip. There really is very little discernment with bankers, you see. They think that the more they pay, the better the entertainment must be - it's that simple. You'd never get that with doctors or lawyers. They want an indication of the value of something in real terms, before they fork out the dough. It's interesting.

So were they sophisticated? Did they have class? Of course they didn't, or at least not the majority (we did meet one or two lovely people, out of about 250) - they were just rich. Oh sure, they probably went to all the right art exhibitions, attended all the right concerts, and wore all the right clothes. But isn't sophistication (as we term it today) more about being able to identify with and (more importantly) being able to discuss intelligently all forms of culture, whether this be musical (classical, pop, rock, opera etc etc), theatrical, culinary, sporting, social, linguistic or any other.... and to be able to do so with any person who happens to be present?

Personally, I don't need to be all that rich. As long as I have everything I need and my wonderful wife loves me, I'll be happy. I don't think I'm particularly sophisticated myself, and I'm not sure I have class. I don't know nearly enough, yet. But I hope that in later life I can walk into any room full of people, in any nation, from any walk of life and have things to talk about (barring a language barrier - you should have heard my Cantonese last night, it was terrible).

That, in my mind, is real class.