High brow or low brow?

My dad made us all listen to the Palm Court Ochestra every Sunday night! He sat on my very first record - Blue Moon by Elvis Presley - and swore it was an accident.

When I was growing up I felt my parents were always watching or listening to heavy serious programmes like The Brains Trust or Jacob Bronowski, and I was never allowed to watch anything populist like Emergency Ward 10 or Crossroads. They did lighten up a bit with the arrival of the Beatles when they both got into the music of the day, because before that it was wall to wall classical and opera which I didn't like then but do now. I also remember as I got older I was allowed to watch the Frost Report and Monty Python with them but not situation comedy because they seemed to regard it as trite. Paradoxically they probably taught me to try to be discerning whilst simultaneously being attracted on occasions to trash. Love going to the hairdresser and getting a pile of OK, Hello and Heat magazines, bliss!

I enjoy any old rubbish some days and on others I want a bit more brain food! I enjoyed the docu-play on T last night about the olympic rowers.. was that high or low???

I do not enjoy whole opera very much but I enjoy pieces from opera.. but I love to watch ballet but also stuff like Stomp! I don't watch any soaps now but I used to. I think I must be a sea level brow!

I love Corrie but even lower brow than that is - dare I admit it? - that I used to love doing The Birdie Song and Superman, especially the latter.

I would like to do line dancing as well.

Wrinkled brow, or should that be 'wrinkly brow'.

I'll settle for that (actually, I don't really mind either way!)

No, it just makes you not low-brow!

We were not allowed to watch ITV as children and Mum always said that 'Daz' was common!The daft thing was that Dad worked for British Leyland and many the times I can remember when if it had not been for Wednesday's family allowance we would have gone hungry!

That being said I loathe Eastenders et al and all so called 'reality tv' and have now become quite a know it all about Shakespeare and some aspects of Art. That being said any episode of 'The Big Bang theory' has be in stitches and 'Sex in the City' is still my guilty pleasure.

I love Come Dine with Me - the voice-over is hilarious. I like Four in a Bed too, even though I know the producers egg them on to be nasty about each other. I have never watched TOWIE or anything about Katie Price or Peter Andre - does that make me high brow?

I like what I like! Though, thinking about it, we did not allow our children to watch ITV when they were young and they still tease us about it.

Highish brow when it comes to visual art but not to music. I would not describe myself as posh that's for sure. But not a fan of "popular culture" either. I would describe myself as having broadly intellectual interests I suppose.

I wouldn't want to be either high or low brow. I like what I like, some of it is high and some low.
Surely you are narrow minded if you can't appreciate both.

Thanks , ps I also like CDWM , reminds me of something , Forgot to mention I was only a babe in arms at funeral , humour ! LOL

Mustn't forget the repeat of Ab Fab tonight either! Don't know what category that would fall under

Nonu think the Starkey programme kicks off with the first Churchill's who lived around the time of Queen Ann, circa 1720s but it's in three parts and will presumably cover the life of Sir Winston, but probably not tonight. Sorry to say didn't take much notice of his funeral as was too young and stupid at the time to appreciate what he was all about.

Laurence Olivier considered Coronation Street to be a wonderful piece of theatre and never missed it. It has nurtured some great actors, especially child actors. It has tackled very difficult subjects with sensitivity. I love it.

I have very broad tastes in music, anything from 1950's Rock and Roll, through Brass Bands, Welsh Male Voice Choirs, Gregorian Plain Song, African folk music, sentimental love songs, jazz, blues, and classical. I find most opera boring, as there is so much run-of-the-mill stuff between the great arias, so I buy compilations. I enjoy ballet music.

I like Shakespeare and modern dramatists like Miller and Pinter but still enjoy Rattigan and Priestley. I had a very boring night and a numb backside by watching a Greek tragedy at The Barbican. I can't stand plays or films where anything supernatural can intervene in the action.

I love courtroom dramas, like Kavanagh Q.C. (I miss John That, in that and Morse).
I am pretty high brow with literature, which I studied for my degree, and I really love Austen, Elliot, Trollope, Waugh, Golding, and Lessing. I don't like Dickens or the Brontes -I find them too overblown. I don't read 'chick-lit'.
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I don't watch films with violence in them, and some war films upset me because I know they are close to the truth. I like some musicals and romantic comedies. Very low brow.

In art, I think there is a touch of the Emperor's New Clothes about much art appreciation. I love the impressionists - Musee Quai D'Orsay has a wonderful collection, and it is cheaper than the Louvre , with less waiting time. Most modern art is a con - especially Damien Hurst and Tracy Emin.

I am too old to pretend to like anything because it is fashionable or deemed to be high brow.

Thanks for the reminder about Churchill , I will be watching . I liked him , did you watch his funeral all those years ago ?

Today for example my guilty pleasure will be "Come Dine With Me" fairly trashy, but will watch David Starkey's programme later tonight about John Churchill Duke of Marlborough. Hope the two will balance each other out! Similarly, some days I just want to listen to Puccini and other days anything from Jimi Hendrix right through to Barry White. One of the great things about getting older is I don't feel I have to justify what I like.

Definitely a bit of both, what ever one's mood dictates and I think the Gransnet site illustrates this thread perfectly,I have recently added comments on forums regarding matters as trivial as Victoria Beckham's skirt to as serious as FGM. I don't think it has to be an either/or, although if you only ever read Heat magazine and watch Big Brother you may be living in a cultural vacuum!

Soop I'm following you and like the finer things in life just can't seem to afford them !!

Some years ago when the first Austin Powers film came out, Charlotte Raven wrote a piece in the Guardian saying she had been to see it with her philospher friend. He had hated the film and was extremely irritated when they later got in a taxi and the driver kept on saying 'Oh BEhave'.

I wrote to say the previous week I had been to see both the film and also Ovid at some theatre or other (can't remember which) and I'd found both highly enjoyable. I recommended that the next time Charlotte went to the cinema she took the taxi driver. Letter got published and the following week there was a huffy reply from the friend saying Charlotte wouldn't find the taxi driver such interesting company when she wanted an intelligent conversation.

So, some people can be sniffy about 'low culture'.

And taxi drivers!

Ana Well said!

Of course you're not, soop!

I'm a pedigree-mongrel. A conundrum. Appreciative of the finer things of life but hopefully, not a snob.

I agree with Bags. Depends on the level of the particular 'brow'. Don't usually go too low (think kids getting their birthday cake in their faces) but don't often go very high either (think the proms) (except for the last night of same).