FlAMBOYANT TV personality and interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his wife, Jacqueline, love being posh. And never more so than at Christmas.

When the relatives have left after the Llewelyn-Bowens have hosted a huge Christmas lunch, the happy couple will sit down quietly to indulge in a bit of posh of their own.

This may feature smoked rare meats, little oysters, delicate canapes and other things they are not supposed to eat, along with copious amounts of gin and tonic, which they consider the epitome of posh drinks.

Laurence and Jackie are hugely disillusioned by the emergence of the chav, so have now penned A Pinch Of Posh, a tongue-in-cheek guide to being civilised and well-versed in the art of etiquette.

Laurence, 41, wants people to sit up straight, smarten themselves up, find a saucer for the cup and prepare to be 'poshed'--and there's no better time to start than Christmas.

"We really are most concerned about the elevation of chav," Laurence says. "This book is about making posh the new chav. The pinkness of chav is about to be replaced by our lovely, exquisite duck egg blue."

While the book is full of humour, making fun of all manner of situations and people, there are serious undertones, he stresses.

"Doing things nicely shows self-respect and respect for others. Posh has nothing to do with class, money, breeding or education. Posh is made, not born. It's about an exterior expression of selfesteem. If you go into a room and you look great, you feel great too. When you like yourself, you will be liked."

Jackie adds: "It's about projecting as nice as you can be, as wholesome and as constant as you can be at every level."

Laurance continutes: "There's been a phenomenal social change in the last 100 years and the democratisation of design, style, holidays and cooking. All of those elements at the beginning of the 20th century were only available to a small amount of people who were posh by the standards of the day, because posh meant money.

"Now, we can all be posh. We can work hard, earn money and buy the nice things we want. We know about nutrition and we know about dress."

The couple's posh Christmas tips include:

Don't try and make Christmas contemporary. Make it as traditional as possible. Cut mistletoe at dawn with a golden sickle. Spend the day drinking gin out of cow's horns.

Trees decorated in red and green are not acceptable for a posh Christmas. They are opposing, fractious colours, says Laurence.

Regarding presents, Laurence says: "I completely and utterly refute the notion that it's the thought that counts. Presents should be of significant value."

Tell everyone your Christmas colour scheme so they can buy wrapping to match it, preferably purchasing it from the same shiny stationery shop that you have.

If you are going for an artificial tree, go for one that isn't attempting to look real. Laurence admits: "I have had a hankering for a silver tinsel tree for a long time. Let a bit of sparkle into your life at Christmas."

Don't have turkey for Christmas dinner. It's not posh enough. It's parvenu and dry. "Go for swan, which would be a hell of a lot posher because theoretically only the Queen is allowed to eat them," Laurence suggests. "But they are in a loophole, in that swans that die of natural causes are entirely up for eating."

If you are a guest at a Christmas party, send flowers during the morning, before the party. Don'tlet your host struggle with them when you arrive.

Look as close to perfection as possible.

Don't do your grooming in public. The procedures involved are of a very personal nature and are often best achieved without clothes.

If you've had rather too much to drink at a Christmas party but want to look sober, stand next to people drunker than you, don't smile inanely and, if all else fails, pretend to be foreign.

Good conversation starters at Christmas parties include: "Now, what would you like to know about me?"

At Christmas drinks parties featuring two-part canapes designed to be dipped in some attendant sauce, only dip the canape once. Going back for a second bite with some en-sticked canape running in garlands of saliva is very, very wrong.

At Christmas dinner, treat your cutlery with respect. Don't play with it, use it flippantly, beat out the rhythm of a drum or pick your nails with it. Don't point with it, gesture with it or scrape it clean.