The pressure cooker they call a mixed-class marriage

From royalty to country squires and nouveau riche, there's no escaping the consequences. Rowan Pelling looks at what really happens when there is a class divide in a relationship

- Rowan Pelling

Only a foolhardy woman would organise a hen night that sweeps in her mum, sisters, and her mum’s best friend and assistant, but glaringly omit to ask her future mother-in-law.

So, why did Holly Ramsay (daughter of chef Gordon) apparently open the door to a lifetime of conflict and pain by not asking her fiance Adam Peaty's mum Caroline, who helped steer her son to Olympic gold? The answer, as so often in the UK, could well be class.

The Ramsays have shot up in the world and now belong to that weird upper echelon of society comprised of famous people, the seriously wealthy and the posh. Needless to say, Holly was privately educated from the word go, attending Montessori nursery school and hanging out with the Beckham kids.

Adam, by contrast, comes from a very modest background. Raised in Wattisham, Suffolk, his mother Caroline was a nursery manager, while his dad Mark worked as a bricklayer and then a supermarket caretaker. This meant they had to make sacrifices to fund their son's sporting talent, including Caroline rising at 4am to take him to swimming practice.

Adam has often been photographed with his mum beaming and wearing his medals around her own neck, looking like the textbook example of a close-knit, proud, down-to-earth family. Reports suggest that some of Peaty's working-class relatives feel alienated by the celebrity lifestyle he now leads and perceive that he has “forgotten where he came from”.

Never underestimate the emotional havoc that can be wreaked within families when someone “marries up” or “down”. Especially if one side proves snooty, another is chippy and other relatives start pitching into the dispute. Class warfare is Britain's favourite leisure activity, with no sin greater than the family member who's “changed”.