M.I.F's

It's always fun to catch out the big wheels in Hollywood!  Recently we saw Saving Mr. Banks, which is an excellent film by the way.  In it Mrs. Travers, an extemely uptight upper class Englishwoman arrives in Hollywood.  Throughout the film she requests tea and always insists that the milk be put in first.  Now it happens that Mrs. Travers was neither English nor upperclass - she was raised in poverty in the outback of Australia.  She also was never married.

However, she moved to London and lived in the time of the late fifties and early sixties when the term "U" for upper class and "Non-U" - not upper class were very much in vogue.  Also part of that entire argument was the practice of putting milk in the tea first.  This was decidedly "Non-U!"  In fact such people were called MIF's.  This is something that Mrs.T would certainly have known, and surely would have corrected her behavior accordingly.
The source of U and Non U was Nancy Mitford, who became an authority on the entire class business.