The gym where they teach you how to beat up chavs

Brendan O’Neill is not impressed by a class of paranoid white-collar workers learning how to head-butt imaginary assailants and defend themselves with their laptops

Have you ever wanted to learn how to beat up a chav, those baseball-cap-wearing, bling-sporting youngsters who inhabit inner cities, drink copious amounts of cider, and say unintelligible things in ‘Blackney’ (a mixture of ‘blackspeak’ and Cockney)? Well, now’s your chance. Gymbox, a chain of in-your-face gyms in London, is offering lessons in ‘Chav Fighting’. ‘Don’t give moody, grunting chavs an ASBO, give them a kicking!’ invites the Gymbox website: ‘Welcome to Chav Fighting, a place where the punchbags gather dust and the world is put to rights.’

And lest there be any doubt about what Chav Fighting involves, the Gymbox site comes complete with a promo video showing a respectable young man and woman being set upon by trackie-wearing scum, only for the respectable man to fight back, kick said scum to the ground, and beat them to a pulp.