"By Paul Majendie
LONDON (Reuters) - At what is being billed as the world's first finishing school for gentlemen, learning how to set the cutlery can be just as tricky as the fly fishing.
But after three days in a Scottish castle, the students emerge from a minefield of etiquette knowing everything from how much to tip the gamekeeper to how to walk with a book balanced on their heads.
'We have opened the floodgates of politeness around the world,' said Diana Mather whose Finishing Academy has now attracted would-be candidates from as far afield as Canada, Pakistan and Japan.
'We are teaching British manners, which are the gold standard and the benchmark for the world,' said Mather, a former actress and BBC presenter who truly believes the old adage 'Manners Makyth Man.'
'Good manners are ageless, priceless and classless,' said Mather who charges 650 pounds for a three-day course.
'We think it is the world's first finishing school for men,' she said of the academy whose first candidates ranged from a former Zimbabwean farmer out to hone his business manner to a ski instructor determined to polish his social skills.
The would-be gentlemen -- eager to boost their job prospects or just sent along by despairing mothers and girlfriends -- are given a crash course on how to cut the mustard in High Society.
Table manners and cutlery terrified the nine pathfinders on the first course. 'What glasses for which wine, which knife and fork -- that was what frightened them the most,' Mather said.
In deportment, they learned with the help of a book balanced on their heads 'how to stand, sit and walk with stylishness and poise.'
-- continued on the site. Hrm, what's 650 pounds sterling in USD?