Last Updated on June 28, 2025 by Karl Thompson
🎬 Celebs Like Us? Lockdown, Class, and Media Representation
How does the media portray class during times of national crisis? This post explores how celebrities presented themselves during the 2020 lockdown — and what these curated glimpses into their lives reveal about privilege and inequality.
👉 For more on this theme, check out:
• Media representations of social class
• A-level Media Studies resources
📺 Lockdown as a “Great Equaliser”?
In 2020, mainstream media and social feeds were full of celebrities speaking to us from their homes. The message was subtle but persistent: we’re all in this together. The implication? Celebrities — like us — were adjusting to isolation, home-schooling, and banana bread experiments.
A clear example was Steph’s Packed Lunch, which launched as The Steph Show during lockdown. Broadcast from presenter Steph McGovern’s home, it blended light entertainment with interviews featuring both celebrities and “ordinary” families. Steph herself, one of the few working-class women in British broadcasting, added a sense of relatability that felt genuinely refreshing.
But despite these efforts, many celebrity appearances did the opposite: they reinforced class divides.
💰 Class Signals in Celebrity Homes
Far from bringing us closer, lockdown gave viewers front-row seats to class privilege on display. Open-plan kitchens, countryside estates, and carefully curated bookshelves revealed just how different celebrity lifestyles are.
Take Gloria Hunniford, for example. Media appearances from her immaculate, ornament-filled home quietly communicated wealth and taste rooted in an upper-middle-class identity.
Then there was Griff Rhys Jones, interviewed under a portrait of a former mayor (a distant relative) after gathering eggs from his large garden in the countryside. It made me wonder: what percentage of celebrities own chickens? Probably at least three times the national average!
🙌 A More Grounded Voice: Jack Monroe
One of the few authentic counter-examples was Jack Monroe, the food writer and anti-poverty campaigner. Appearing on the BBC’s Daily Kitchen Live, Monroe provided real, practical advice for viewers cooking on tight budgets.
In one memorable episode, Jack corrected the host for casually using arborio rice in a lockdown recipe — noting that most people don’t just have such ingredients “lying around.” The moment felt honest, grounded, and in touch with the realities of working-class households.
It was a powerful contrast to the curated celebrity lockdown aesthetic. Jack Monroe’s presence reminded us that not everyone was coping in a country kitchen with a sourdough starter — and that representation matters.
🧠 Sociological Takeaway
This period of media coverage provided a fascinating case study in how media representations often maintain — rather than challenge — class boundaries. The illusion of solidarity can dissolve the moment we see behind the curtain (or, more accurately, the designer kitchen island).
So while some lockdown media tried to say “we’re all in this together,” the visual subtext often said something else: we’re still not the same.
For more sociological analysis of the media and class, see:
👉 Media representations of social class
👉 A-level Media Studies topic page
I’m inclined to agree!
It’s insidious because it is seen as normal. It illustrates how bias works in the media on an unconconscious level. Aka James Fox on Question Time. It’s never seen as propaganda because those lives and assumptions are for them mainstream. It’s known as ‘unconscious bias’ and is a recognised thing