Manners make the world a better place

Sep 23 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Diana Mather is doing a roaring trade exporting good manners and decency. Laura Davis reports

IT’S every bit the picture of the 19th-century finishing school – a row of women walking slowly across the room, their eyes staring straight ahead as they concentrate on the books on top of their heads.

These days, of course, we know there can be more to this image, now that TV has shown us girls scooped out of nightclubs and dispatched to deportment lessons before they can say “where’s my alcopop?”

But these particular women, learning to be perfect young ladies under the tutelage of Cheshire’s Diana Mather, are neither the daughters of the British gentry nor contestants on a reality TV show.

They are members of the emerging Kenyan middle classes.

Diana, whose Tarporley-based company, Public Image, runs five-day etiquette courses during the summer holidays, has set up her first international finishing school.

Located in a complex in Nairobi, it will take in its first students in December, teaching them a range of skills based on traditional “finishing” classes.

“The courses are actually very similar to the ones we do in Cheshire,” reveals Diana, who is descended from Edward Weissmuller von Wimmis, an envoy to the Court of St James early last century.

“We cover elocution, public speaking, interview skills, flower arranging, how to walk – most people never see themselves walking and it’s amazing how badly most people walk today. It doesn’t matter how expensive your clothes are, if you don’t stand or walk well in them then they might as well be rags.

“We teach how to stand, sit, enter a room and leave a room properly, keeping your eye on your audience without showing your bum as the last thing they see – and of course I make them all walk with a book on their head.”

Diana, who has been running such courses in Cheshire since March, 2005, was asked by a contact in Kenya to provide etiquette training in schools and, after a number of successful pilot schemes earlier this year, she decided to expand the business.

“There’s an emerging middle class in Africa generally, and a lot of them have very big houses, but they don’t entertain at home because it’s not their tradition. So it’s not just the young ladies,” she says. “We’ve also got older ladies coming along to learn how to give dinner parties and how to dress, how to set the table, seating plans . . .

“We’re also the only company at the moment combining management training with traditional etiquette.

“We’ve been surprised at how popular it is and by how much people want to know about the history and why we do things the way we do.”