Ordinary?

From the story Tim links to below:

To those who see him as out of touch, he stressed his “ordinary” upbringing, knowing hardship, and the friends he still keeps from Kirkcaldy schooldays represent today’s Britain.

Ordinary upbringing?

From wikipedia:

Brown was educated first at Kirkcaldy West Primary School[13] where he was selected for an experimental fast stream education programme, which took him two years early to Kirkcaldy High School for an academic hothouse education taught in separate classes. At age 16 he wrote that he loathed and resented this “ludicrous” experiment on young lives.

That sounds very ordinary. I don’t know whether being a son of the manse was a good or bad thing, certainly we seem to have ended up with an awful lot of scottish personalities who can claim it in the background, but again, not enough to call it ordinary.

Do you think we need to send him a definition of the word? I’m also wondering how many friends he’ll have retained from Kirkcaldy who weren’t in that academic hothouse – in other words, not that many ordinary friends.