Americans ask me a lot about the class system.  ‘You guys know your place, yes?’.  For some reason this gets me defensive - surely we’re not so rigid anymore?  Getting back on the tube last night, I picked up the Evening Standard - a free paper given out to mass transit commuters.  Two comment pieces caught my eye, confirming our obsession with the social elite.  First up, Nick Foulkes arguing that luxury goods can save the world: “I can’t help but think that if more people had the means and opportunity to tell the time on a Cartier watch or sign their name using a Montegrappa pen, then the world would be just that little bit less unstable”.  Flicking over, Richard Dennen reflecting on a recent ‘posh English country wedding’ he’d attended: “Everyone needs something to discuss at lunch the next day, don’t they?  And what could be better than lots of toffs discussing gay sex in between shovelling in mouthfuls of suckling pig?”   At what point does this speak to anyone but the tiniest of minorities?  And, given tube travellers probably don’t fall into that demographic, why has so much space been devoted to this sort of commentary?  Aspirational?  Pandering to our snobbery?  Or to remind us of what we’re not?