At Your Service, Sir : Good upper-crust help is hard to find. Just ask the founder of London’s famed butler school who is now drilling Americans in savoir-faire.

Here at junior butler boot camp, the new recruits are learning how to iron wrinkles out of the morning newspaper, combat boring hors d’oeuvres and otherwise make the world safe for aristocracy.

Their drill sergeants are a tea-swigging Englishman, Ivor Spencer, and a Bay Area interior designer, James Swan, who whip the troops into shape within the punishing environment of The Ritz-Carlton hotel here.

Spencer, famous for his international butler school in London, says it’s time to solve America’s domestic-help crisis. “If Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood had hired people like you,” he tells the recruits, “they’d have gotten the attorney general’s job.”

So Spencer has created the traveling International School for Housemen. A houseman or housewoman, he explains, is like a butler, but works harder and earns less money.

With that selling point, an overwhelming three people sign up for the 10-day course. They are met by four newspaper reporters.

The lesson begins in the hotel banquet room. Spencer arrives in a cobalt blue suit with hypnotic-swirl tie and introduces the vagaries of servanthood: answering the door, balancing a glass on your head and serving orange juice to the boss’s naked mistress.

“We want you to be able to run somebody’s home in great style,” he says.

It soon becomes apparent, however, that “great style” might not happen, absent a great miracle. During an exercise on greeting visitors at the door, for instance, the students are told to turn away anyone who is unknown, and are also warned about invited guests who try to sponge free booze: Don’t give it to them, Spencer advises. Only serve coffee or soda.

But when tested, the students welcome potential burglars or proselytizers--and offer them brandy.

Spencer, too, suffers miscues. By the middle of the second day, he has fumbled a knife, dropped a champagne bottle and broken two glasses.

But the students seem unruffled. After all, Spencer says his graduates work for the likes of Duchess Fergie, media baron Rupert Murdoch, Jordan’s King Hussein and pop star Linda Ronstadt. The man is practically a legend.

Plus he has aged remarkably well. When People magazine wrote about Spencer in 1983, he was 58. Three years later, in a different publication, he was 59. And today, seven years after that article, he is 60--but only for a few moments. When another reporter asks the dreaded question, he is again 59.

Spencer’s flair for the good yarn serves him well, though. He sprinkles his lectures with entertaining anecdotes and amusing drills, such as the unexpected-guest-in-the-bedroom exercise.

This is important, Spencer says, because rich people are more likely to have paramours. (Regular folk, he sniffs, “can’t afford them.”)

Therefore, the houseman must know proper adultery etiquette: When entering the boss’s bedroom with morning juice and newspaper (ironed, naturally, to eliminate creases and keep the ink from rubbing off), don’t get flustered if another, unknown human is under the sheets. Or perhaps hanging out of the sheets, as it were.

“You may get a lady or gent who sleeps in the nude,” Spencer warns. “Don’t stare. You may want to, but don’t.”

Simply fetch a second orange juice and serve the tray while looking toward the guest’s feet.

And if, heaven forbid, you should enter the room during a particularly amorous moment, make a hasty retreat and close the door “a little on the loud side.” Then re-enter after three or four minutes.

Once the guest departs, forget he or she was ever there. This is not a job for gossips, Spencer says: “It’s very important to be discreet.”

The same applies to discussing a boss’s finances, vacation plans or other information. “Employers trust you,” he explains. “You’re in their living room, you’re in their bedroom. You hear their conversations, you know their moods. . . . You’re like a member of the family.”

Sure. A member of the family who gargles 12 times daily, balances goblets on his head and constantly hides his thumbs.

The mouthwash, and twice-daily showers, are good houseman hygiene, Spencer says. The tumbler-on-the-skull exercise is for proper posture. And the disappearing thumbs are critical to serving food and champagne.

So critical that Spencer runs the students through a battery of thumb tests: He commands them to wave plates while using an invisible-thumb grip. He has them pour champagne with the thumb tucked inside the bottle’s base. And he insists they carry trays in a way that conceals the offending digit.

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Spencer also leads a round of houseman calisthenics, which consists of bows from the waist (to greet royalty and VIPs) alternated with 45-degree nods (for mere mortals). And bend and one, and bow and two.

Housemen otherwise need not worry about exercise. The typical employee walks 20 miles a day while cooking, cleaning and performing other duties, Spencer says. For his trouble, he should receive $19,500 a year, plus lodging and meals.

There are other rewards, of course, such as “flexible hours”--a polite term for no social life.

“The (employer) should be more important to you than your girlfriend or boyfriend or wife or mother,” Spencer insists. “Otherwise it doesn’t work.”

Say, for example, you’ve planned a romantic date and the boss suddenly decides to throw a party for 500. He asks, “Would you mind helping out?”

Your answer: “No problem at all, sir.”

So you cancel your plans and slave over arrangements for lavish meals, entertainment and decorations. And just when everything is ready, the boss says: “Never mind. I think I’m going to fire up the Learjet and fly everyone to dinner in New York.”

Control your homicidal urges, Spencer advises. Simply say: “I understand, sir. Have a good evening.”

The reward for all this flexibility is supposed to be extra vacation time or a fatter paycheck. Failing that, there are the matching psychological benefits: bruised egos and swallowed pride.

At the end of a successful dinner party, for example, when the guests comment on the fine food, smooth service and splendid decor, you don’t get to say: “Well, my employer has the money, but he doesn’t have the style. I did all this. And by the way, did you notice how I never showed my thumbs?”

The correct response is: “Actually, it’s Mr. and Mrs. (insert name here) who deserve the credit. I’m just part of a team.”

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Curiously, Spencer has never been a butler or houseman, nor has he employed one--his wife worries what the neighbors would think. He grew up in London’s poor East End, son of a fruit merchant with a penchant for gambling. As a youngster, Spencer sometimes walked to the city’s swanky west side, where he “stood for hours watching the women in tiaras and men in evening tails” as they strolled among fancy cars and luxury hotels.

“I just was fascinated with this life,” he recalls.

A school dropout at 14, he didn’t get a firsthand taste of high society until he took a job as a hotel chef and sneaked into a banquet for Winston Churchill. There he noticed a man in a scarlet jacket--the master of ceremonies--announcing dinner guests as they arrived. Spencer got an idea.

He traded his apron for a scarlet coat, shed his Cockney accent and became an emcee himself. Eventually, he was presiding over all sorts of snooty soirees, including a Beverly Hills function where the host asked Spencer if he could recommend a good butler.

He couldn’t. The supply of British butlers had shrunk from 30,000 before World War II to 70 by 1981. Spencer got another idea.

Today, about 125 people--from airline pilots to rugby players--have graduated from his international school for butlers, which runs several weeks and costs $6,000.

The course for housemen--a more common occupation than butler in the United States--is his latest spin-off.

The inaugural students are Mark O’Connell, 34, a San Rafael salesman; Antonio Cardoso, 27, a Brazilian engineer who came to the U. S. three years ago and worked his way up to houseman/Rottweiler walker after washing cars for a wealthy San Mateo family; and Leonard Larratta, 47, a former restaurant owner and caterer who fled the East Coast’s drooping economy several years ago for a houseman post in San Francisco.

O’Connell wants to make a career change; veterans Cardoso and Larratta are polishing their skills. Larratta, whose duties include spending $36,000 a year just on food, figures housemen lead a pretty cushy existence: “You’re living the kind of life that most people work (decades) to achieve--and you’re getting paid for it.”

Spencer says he’s pleased with the three students, but admits the turnout isn’t enough to make a profit. Nevertheless, he hopes publicity about the course will boost enrollment in time for the next sessions: April in San Francisco and June in Los Angeles, with interior designer Swan handling the instruction. Tuition runs $3,000.

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In all of the courses, the overriding theme is attention to detail--from the color of hors d’oeuvres (varied, to keep them from looking boring) to the uncorking of champagne (“It should hiss, not pop,” Spencer says, “like the sigh of a contented lady”).

There’s also the “pantry book,” a computerized record of guests’ likes and dislikes, gifts purchased by the boss and other handy tidbits that create the illusion of a perfect memory.

The goal, Spencer explains, is to seem indispensable: Anticipate the boss’s every need, “do everything you possibly can for him.”

Well, almost everything. Never procure drugs or prostitutes, he says.

But other dirty work is fair game, be it scrubbing toilets or disposing of drunks. For the latter, Spencer recommends the following: Inform Mr. Blotto that he has a phone call in the next room and once he’s there, block the door back to the party.

Tell him he’s embarrassing himself and the host and should leave. Offer to call a taxi or invite him to sleep in a guest room, but don’t let him return.

And if he’s bigger than you, asks O’Connell?

Spencer hesitates only a second: “Well, then, offer him more champagne.”