A withering email to a "bad mannered" bride-to-be from her future mother-in-law has gone viral, prompting comparison between its author and the sitcom snob Hyacinth Bucket.
In the email sent to Heidi Withers, a PA from West London, last month, Carolyn Bourne describes her stepson Freddie's fiancee as "an ideal candidate for the Ladette to Lady television series", a reality TV show where drunken, foul-mouthed young women are taught the points of etiquette.
But Bourne has found herself compared to the show's comically sour-faced disciplinarians Mrs Harbord and Mrs Shrager – and the social climbing Bucket – after Withers forwarded the disparaging remarks to a few friends, which led to the email being sent on to thousands of people.
In the email, Bourne, 60, from Dawlish, Devon, apparently rebukes Withers, 29, for her behaviour during a visit to the family in April, which she describes as "staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace".
Bourne, whose company website describes her as a breeder of "award winning perfumed Pinks and Dianthus", seemingly exemplifies the worst stereotypes of mothers-in-law and stepmothers by berating Withers for staying in bed too late, drawing attention to herself and wanting to get married in a castle. She also implies that the PA is marrying above her station and is a potential gold digger.
She writes: "If you want to be accepted by the wider Bourne family, I suggest you take some guidance from experts with utmost haste.
"Here are a few examples of your lack of manners: When you are a guest in another's house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat – unless you are positively allergic to something.
"You do not remark that you do not have enough food. You do not start before everyone else.
"You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.
"When a guest in another's house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early. You fall in line with house norms.
"You should never ever insult the family you are about to join at any time and most definitely not in public.
"You regularly draw attention to yourself. Perhaps you should ask yourself why. No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour.
"If your parents are unable to contribute very much towards the cost of your wedding, it would be most ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding as befits both your incomes.
"One could be accused of thinking that Heidi Withers must be patting herself on the back for having caught a most eligible young man. I pity Freddie."
Bourne and her husband, Edward, 63, have declined to comment on the email. "We have nothing to say," they told the Evening Standard.
The prospective bridegroom Freddie Bourne, 29, from Putney, London, would also not be drawn on the apparent spat.
