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I had the misfortune of doing the Bar Course back in the mid-1990s shortly after the legal fiasco resulting in the ISCL having to find extra places for the course, many places actually involving people who did not appear to have good academic credentials but who had already secured pupillage possibly due to their previous careers.

Doing the Bar Course itself was a miserable affair. Ironically, the students were split between those 'in the know' and those who weren't. People going onto pupillage afterwards were usually either 'Oxbridge and/or BCL' or those with first-class degrees from other universities. The few others who got pupillages never said how they got them and most people in the know weren't particularly friendly either unsurprisingly. Sadly, most of the nice people I got to know on the Bar Course never ever got pupillage despite several years of trying.

Further, apart from the amusing story of how one disgruntled Bar Student had apparently squared up to a Barrister from a Chambers that had rejected him for pupillage during an Inns of Court dinner, any hostility from people not in the know stayed silent i.e. nothing like the housemates confronting Nasty Nick Bateman on Big Brother back in 2000!

In relation to the Inns of Court dinners, they were an inconvenience but I did go back for a couple of Christmas dinners years later. I took some guests who enjoyed the occasion although they did notice some stares from some the senior members of the Inn as well as their spouses – some things never change!

As for the some of the comments here about working-class backgrounds, where else other than the Bar would you find people today under 40 who talk like Jacob Rees-Mogg?