Just as an alcoholic is defined as anyone who drinks more than one’s self, similarly, condemning someone for his “vulgar display of wealth” usually simply means you’re pissed off because he’s got more of it than you (and/or it’s painted pink). So when, as, with near bran-induced regularity, people slag off Essex, such conspicuous consumption is often the first thing they bring up. But it isn’t a modern phenomenon – either the consumption or the bringing up afterwards.

 

Years before people started having to think twice before accepting an invitation to a Michael Barrymore pool party and queues to get into Epping at weekends became longer than queues to get out, in 1604, topographer, John Norden, topographed Essex as “moste fatt, frutefull, and full of all profitable things.”

 

So profitable that, then, as now, wealthy Essex men liked to “give it large.” But, rather than pay to have their front hedge trimmed to look like a giant duck or buy a pair of king-size pig bladders to stick down their wife’s bodice, many of the Jacobean big-spenders opted to finance unauthorized structural alterations to Parliament, instead. Indeed, it was this fact that the majority of Gunpowder Plot conspirators were rich Essex residents that really irked King James about the county. It might even explain why London animosity against Essex persists to this day.

 

So if, this day, I really want to get with tradition and irritate Londoners with my amassed millions, are there any less explosive methods?

 

Your home is an obvious one. The more obvious, the better. Nothing says, “Suck on this, you Metropolitan wanker” more efficiently than a massive property set in extensive grounds with a drive so long and winding that the milkman has to equip his float with a SatNav system to locate your front door. Chigwell millionaires have got this down to a fine art. (Rather cleverly, too, many now tack on gothic towers, giant duck topiary, and other architectural excrescences to the side of an otherwise blameless house to guarantee that, in the event of personal bankruptcy, no bailiff in his right mind would ever want to repossess the place.)

 

Some means of causing gridlock in Buckhurst Hill is another important “look at me” accessory. It used to be thought that a large, carbon-inimical SUV, double parked outside Queen’s Road Waitrose, was the only vehicle really up to the job. However, rich Essex residents have since found that any high-performance gas-guzzler will do, so long as you remember to stop suddenly, lower its window, and have a spontaneous conversation with someone – anyone - sitting outside Simply The Café. This has the added advantage of allowing people as far away as Brentwood to appreciate your in-car stereo system.

 

But it’s not only material possessions that count. Bankrolling your teenage daughter’s dream of becoming a pop star is fast becoming de rigeur. Obviously, the less discernible talent she has, the better. You wouldn’t want her to succeed off her own bat as she’d no longer be “daddy’s little girl”, and it wouldn’t annoy the London-based media crowd nearly as much.

 

Meantime, while she’s in that limbo between obscurity and oblivion, you’ll want to pay for her to get a St Tropez tan (I wonder what sort of tan women in St Tropez get?) and, like other showbiz wannabes, hang around Rocky’s and sleep with a professional footballer. She then has the option of either telling all to The News of the World or marrying him. If she accepts Thirty Pieces, the money will help subsidise her daily visits to Crème, which you’d otherwise be financing. If she marries him, inevitably, the daughter of one of your other friends will, in due course, sleep with him, too, whereupon she can divorce him and take him for half, further subsidising Crème. Either way it’s a Win, Win Situation, as they say at Harvard Business School.

 

But what about your son? Easy. Hire an expensive coach to help turn him into a professional footballer. If nothing else, it will allow you to live your own sporting life vicariously through him as, dressed in full strip, you offer loud, constructive criticism from the touchline every Sunday morning with the hundreds of other soccer dads. No matter if his sole concept of ball-control is a jock strap and dribbling is something he can only do over Nuts – Tottenham Hotspur will always sign him. Then he can hang around Rocky’s and pick up your friend’s perma-tanned showbiz wannabe daughters.

 

Naturally, having a son play for Tottenham Hotspur, or worse, having your daughter marry someone who does, is likely to impose severe strain on your own marriage. But when you reach about 50, as a rich Essex man, you’re probably going to want to trade up, anyway, and get one of those unfeasibly large-breasted 20something blondes that I believe now come free with every fourth rum and Coke purchased at Minx. This is going to cost you in alimony, but at least your home is safe. No way will your future ex want it; not now you’ve stuck that Renaissance-style campanile on the side. The only drawback is that as you are in your 50s, you may have to cease regarding those “Cheap Viagra!!!” and “Give yourself an extra three inches!!!” e-mails simply as deletable Spam. Because if you can’t satisfy the trophy wife, she’s only going to start hanging around Rocky’s with a St Tropez tan, and you know what those professional footballers are like.

 

The ultimate option, then, is to buy Rocky’s. Every other week the local papers carry stories about someone who has or intends to (Jade Goody was last in the frame) so, if you’re in the money, it’s something of an Essex ritual. Besides, all your family are now spending their (or rather your) money there, so better you get at least some of it back.

 

Thereafter you can paint the interior pink and spend your twilight years complaining about all the other regulars who drink more than you.

 

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