My hopes to become a high-status cultural Omnivore melt with ‘The Snowman’

More bad news for the ‘Hons’. According to a sociological survey funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, class doesn’t necessarily guarantee status. On the contrary, the two are barely even connected in today’s Britain. So the fact that my father was ennobled for, among other things, founding the Economic and Social Research Council has no bearing on my status. An unemployed ‘Hon’, such as myself, may possess class, but when it comes to my ranking in society I score lower than a ‘works manager’ (whatever that is).

Much though I’d like to dismiss this, I suspect it is true. I have long wondered why my tweed jacket and green cords have failed to secure an upgrade at the Virgin Atlantic check-in desk, while shiny-suited salesmen are fast-tracked into ‘Upper Class’, and now I know. All the years I’ve spent campaigning to get into the Garrick have been in vain. My time would have been better spent trying to secure membership of the Guild of Builders and Contractors.

In the place of the old class-based taxon-omy, the sociologists behind the new survey have suggested we classify ourselves according to ‘cultural consumption’. Thus, at the bottom of the ladder are the Inactives — people who would never go into an art gallery or stop to look at a sculpture. One rung above them are the Paucivores -— those who enjoy a limited range of cultural pursuits, and above them are the Univores — avid consumers of popular culture.

You would think that at the very top of the ladder would be those who limit themselves to high culture, but that isn’t the case. ‘The elite consumer does, we would suppose, exist but is so minoritarian as not to show up in any national survey of normal size,’ claim the authors of the report.