If you don’t like people ranting about private schools, then you’d better look away now as this review of Too Poor for Posh School (Channel 4, Thursday, 11 March, 9pm) will invariably contain wild, off-the-mark judgements about those who paid fees to get an education. Unless, of course, you’re like me and just loved to get riled up by complete strangers… which is what this TV show was a lesson in.

Alan Bennett, said some years ago, that private schools to be banned. He said: “Buying advantages for your children over and above their abilities is wrong. If there wasn’t this option to go private with education, then the whole atmosphere of the whole country would be better.”

Will Hutton, another hopeless right-on leftie like me, once wrote: “Any civilisation worth its name must be founded on equality of opportunity or else it undermines the fundamental principle of fairness. Private education in Britain allows the well-off systematically to buy such differentially better education, thereby securing so many economic and social advantages. It offends that basic principle. Ergo, it should be banned.”

I’m inclined to agree. What we saw last night was the scraps of the privileged few thrown out to working class kids like some horrific lottery. It was like being transported back to Edwardian England, and along came the arrogant, irascible professor to boast to his old army chums that he can teach a prole how to act properly…

“Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language, I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba!”

This yearning for betterment basically transmogrified into children nodding in agreement that they wanted what their parents wanted. They wanted to get their spawn into Harrow. Of course, it’s understandable that any parent would want What’s Best for their kids, but at the heart of this lies a horrible, troubling seam.

To get into Harrow you need to cough up annual fees of nearly £30,000. This ensures that the wealthy few… or at least, those with just enough savings to scrimp their child through a private school. The majority of Britain, who has no savings at all, can go whistle or scrabble over each other in the name of getting a place in a school that will invariably look upon you as a charity case.

It’s a system that breeds contempt from both sides. The wealthy are devoid of the reality of state education and those that walk through it and people who went to normal secondary school look peevishly toward the fee-payers, assuming that they couldn’t have a single problem in the world.

Peter Beckwith, the man who funds a scheme for boys to attend Harrow School, is the man aiming to turn squashed cabbage leaves into royalty, and at least has the foresight to acknowledge that it could be seen that he’s “playing God”. The sycophantic praise heaped on Beckwith at the close of the show featuring an endless parade of grateful grovellers was enough to make me rupture a vein or two in my neck with undiluted fury.

The eleven shortlisted boys visited the school for a day of tests and interviews and, in the shadows, could be found parents with cattle-prods (metaphorical ones, obviously) gazing lovingly at the oak panelling and thinking ‘I could get used to this!’

The whole thing turned me into the most boring, self-righteous class warrior you can imagine. It felt like this was cheating. It looked like a betrayal. I know, I know… I’m an idiot.

However, for those who aren’t granted a wish from the fairy godmother, the show looked like someone slowly crying at a red-rope, denied the chance to hang with the VIPs. Naturally, there are those that see this as tough luck. Life occasionally hands out a shit deal.

That said, whilst this show was pleasurable enough in the way it was constructed, the underlying debate raged. This wasn’t so much a quirky look at an old institution leaving the door ajar, but rather, the hideous system of the walled garden that is fee-paying schools. The message was clear: Failure to get into Harrow means failure in everything.

“The dice are loaded against the child born into a disadvantaged family. It is the language used in the home, diet, the capacity to borrow, clothes, housing, quality of schools and the availability of work, especially outside Britain’s gilded regions. You can work like a Trojan to get out of these traps, but still be stuck.”

Everything about the show underlined an inherent unfairness in a section of British thinking. British people thrive on an assumed level-playing field, all the while, shrugging apathetically at this ridiculous education system that gives children a head start if their parents can either afford it, or indeed, find themselves lucky enough to have a child chosen for a scholarship.

I myself was chosen for a private school and had to turn it down when the hidden costs of going through the system revealed themselves. Vital trips abroad to help further the understanding of subjects and the ability to bond with peers would be off limits with my parents and their paltry wages. While a scholarship can pay for the teaching, it can’t pay for everything else that comes with it.

And so, to the children accepted into Harrow. Whilst I would never deny them their right to go to which ever school they wanted to attend, I felt a dreadful pity (which, granted, was never asked for) for the successful applicants who would no doubt be faced with a thousand awkward conversations about what daddy does. You can only hope it galvanises them as opposed to breaks them.

And while each child gave a good account of themselves in the alien situation of the equivalent of a job-interview for a ten year old boy, I would have been equally interested to see how the typical Harrow pupil fared in the interviews, compared to those on a lottery ticket.

Naturally, this will anger some readers… and it should go without saying that I don’t think the private education system isn’t merely factory for churning out braying Hooray Henry and Henrietta types. Some of my best friends went to public school yadda yadda yadda…

What sticks in the craw is that it’s appalling that, even this far into our evolution as humans, we still have an exclusive club in the middle of our children’s futures. Like the masons, it feels remote and out of reach with some granted a Golden Ticket like Charlie Bucket.

I’ve clearly got a chip on my shoulder. Feel free to call me a moron in the comments.