ein Trottel der höheren Gesellschaftsschicht,
ein Oberschichttrottel

Das sind Leute, die, trotz bester Schulausbildung und Kenntnisse der Gesellschaftsetiquette, IQ-mäßgig nicht höher abschneiden als Forrest Gump.

(Nebenbei frage ich mich, ob John Cleese nun auch des "gefährlichen Schubladendenkens" bezichtigt wird.)

"Upper-class Genäsel"

Ich glaube, in diesem Zusammenhang is mit twit nicht unbedingt eine PErson gemeint, sondern die Art, wie diese Leute reden....

Ich finde auch (wie nic), dass hier evtl. keine typische Person, sondern ein Verhalten gemeint sein könnte (wie dein "Gebrabbel"), aber was ist Mancunian?

Mancunian is from Manchester, I believe. Like Liverpudlian is from Liverpool, Glaswegian from Glasgow, Oxonian from Oxford -- I think there are some even less obvious ones, very medieval Latin.

Surely 'twit' does indeed mean a silly, superficial person. But of course the whole sentence means in the style of that kind of person, so if it reads better in German to use a word describing the language, that's probably also okay.

The grammatical construction simply uses a noun as an adjective; cf.

It's so New York.
Her dress was very valley girl.
The lyrics are rather in-your-face protest-song, but the tune is a nice mix of folk and rock.
Some English accents are cockney. Others are upper-class twit. Others are Mancunian.

Another way to think of it might be to mentally add something like -speak, or -esque or -ish:

upper-class-twit-speak
thin-as-a-pole-model-esque
take-your-time-slow-food-ish

@hm: Of course it means the people themselves - but when certain people think that they know everything better, or see a "deeper meaning" in things, who are we to tell them they are wrong?

Hi, Mary. Actually, I don't think I would put it quite like that. I don't enjoy it when forum discussions develop an us-against-them tone. No one is always right, and no one wants the reputation of considering him- or herself a know-it-all, so sooner or later one tends to get the short end of that stick oneself.

I don't know nic, but WernR does a good deal of literary translation, IIRC, and generally has a very good command of English idiom, so I figured if he wasn't sure about it, it would probably be something others reading along might also find helpful. And to be fair, they did both phrase their suggestions fairly tentatively, and perfectly politely. So I trust neither they nor you will be too miffed if I say, sorry, but not really. (-:

Erstmal vielen Dank für die vielen Antworten.
Ich hab' mich dazu entschlossen, es vorläufig mit Oberklassengesülze zu übersetzen. Das trifft es glaub' ich in diesem (doch sehr) speziellen Kontext noch am ehesten... :)
Sollte noch jemandem was besseres für die "schnippische Redensweise der Oberschicht" einfallen, würde ich mich über einen kurzen Hinweis freuen. :)
Nochmals danke!