Christina Patterson: We are in a class of our own for snobbery

Gosh, it's good to know that class isn't dead. There we were, beginning to believe that we were in danger of turning into a nation united in our love of celebrity-bashing, Harry Potter and this year's Mulberry handbag, when some toff with a name straight out of Brideshead starts slagging off the riff-raff. Yes, this week the Earl of March, the Goodwood heir who has turned his family estate into a multi-million-pound enterprise, expressed his displeasure at the contamination of the brand. "I would like to see the ladies in nice traditional English summer frocks," he said. "We have far too many chavs."

A spokesman for Lord March said that he "couldn't imagine" him using the word "chav" - or even knowing what it meant. Since the aristocrat-turned-businessman hasn't spent the past three years in Guantanamo, it would be hard to see why not. Ever since it first popped up three years ago, to describe a working-class subculture which favoured sportswear, Burberry and heavy gold chains, the word "chav" swiftly became a staple of newspaper headlines and was soon in the dictionary, next to "chauvinism". And now it's one of the nation's favourite terms of abuse, used with equal enthusiasm by aristocrats and by newspaper sub-editors who appear to believe that it's a synonym for "working-class".

Just to assure us that pithy labels can be applied democratically across the classes, this week the publisher Toby Mundy announced the return of the Sloane Ranger Handbook, updated, of course, to accommodate such vital new categories of posh people as "Eco Sloanes","Euro Sloanes","Party Sloanes" and, perhaps predictably, "Chav Sloanes". This, apparently, is a term applied not to those members of the upper classes who sport baggy trackies and Burberry baseball caps, but who court publicity and like a freebie. Which sounds like all of them, in fact, but let's let that one pass.

"It's OK again," says Mundy "to be proud and posh. For too long the term Sloane Ranger became a term of abuse. Not any more." What he's really saying is that, in the absence of the discovery of that surefire bestseller, Hitler's Kitchen Diaries, there's nothing more likely to set the tills trilling than another rehash of that hardy perennial, the English class system, spiced up for the age of Big Brother and Heat.

Mundy is certainly right that the Sloane has evolved and - like, say, the Venus flytrap - found new ways to survive. The new Sloanes, in fact, appear to have adopted a dress code, and lifestyle, which bears more than a slight resemblance to that of England's new pariahs. Both like clothes in the broadest sense of the word - clothes, that is, designed not to cover, but to reveal. Both like a drink or 10. Both like flashy jewellery (think Kate Middleton in sequins and chunky bling). And both appear to be in thrall to the designer label.

One group, however, is despised, while the other is exalted. Why? Because we can. If the rules for the classification of species and sub-species in this country change every few years, they never disappear. We may no longer use "serviettes" and "toilets" to weed out the social wheat from the chaff (to borrow two examples from Nancy Mitford), but we still have our methods. Mottled blue thighs, instead of thin, brown ones. A true Essex twang as opposed to mockney glottal-stops. Money. Yes, money, but let's not talk about that.

More than any other country in Europe, and perhaps on a par with India, whose class system is only a caste system by another name, we cling to those markers of social superiority. Why? Because we have a monarchy? So do Sweden and Spain. Because we have an innate love of sneering? Well, perhaps. But perhaps it's also because we continue to cling to an institution designed with the express purpose of perpetuating privilege. It's called private education. Posh peers, cut-glass vowels and life-long tickets to the Centre Court, or its metaphorical equivalents. And not a "chav" in sight.

Britannia rules the tavernas

If we ever get our British Day, we should certainly raise a glass to our biggest national knack. Yes, since before the banquets of Beowulf, we have fostered, and fine-tuned, the art of quaffing. You name it - mead, claret, Babycham, alcopops - we have learnt to knock it back. It's not a skill you can, er, bottle, but you can certainly export it.

If the Greeks and Spanish and Cypriots and Czechs think they know how to have a good time, we can show them what they're missing. You haven't really had a holiday - or a party - unless you end up in a police cell or a hospital. Which, according to new Foreign Office figures, we do. In our thousands.

In the old days, we fought to turn the world pink. Now, we turn it yellow. With our vomit.

* As one of those rare individuals who still savours some precious minutes of separation from the computer screen, I have not yet been led into the cyber-temptation of Second Life. At a wedding the other day, I endured a lengthy monologue from someone who had - a hitherto sane art critic who spoke with weird passion about her various boyfriends and the evenings she spent clubbing and learning Italian - but I'm afraid I was not persuaded.

I knew I was behind the times, but now it's official. Even the Pope has joined the party, or at least, one of his representatives on earth. In a Jesuit journal approved by the Vatican, Father Antonio Spadaro urges Catholics to go forth into cyberspace and multiply. "The digital world can be considered... mission territory," he says. "Any opportunity that can inspire the residents in a positive way should be considered opportune." Where Viagra leads (in our ubiquitous spam), it seems that God follows.

c.patterson@independent.co.uk