Edwards is the son of a miner. He won a scholarship to Millfield because he was outstandingly good, not because he was posh. He went to the Pontardawe Technical School first. Phil Bennett was a steelworker, and quite a lot of the forwards had mining backgrounds. Having said that, (maybe Jaded can confirm) I gained the impression when I was in Gloucestershire and chatting to some rugby types in a pub that their rugby-playing tradition seemed to have more in common with the working class Welsh clubs than the posh West London ones.
JPR also went to a local grammar school in Bridgend before Millfield. I haven't been able to find out when either transferred, but certainly Edwards' early influence was Bill Samuels, the PE teacher at Pontardawe. According to
this piece, JPR's parents were doctors, and he once turned up to training in his dad's Rolls Royce. In his recent life, there were two incidents which caused him to drop massively in my estimation. The first was his conviction for drink-driving in 2010, but far more serious was the fact that he stood as a Tory candidate in an election.