According to this online quiz, I have chav tendencies, having answered 'no' to questions A and D, but 'yes' to B and C.

Apparently my chaviness is more related to being hard-up than anything else. But there's more to being a chav than shortness of cash.

Regular readers of this column will know I have a problem with the word 'chav'. But I'm not sure that we should take the advice of the Fabian Society and ban it.

Ban a word and you give it a subversive power.

The society's Tom Hampson and Jemima Olchawski have urged the BBC to stop using the word 'chav', and the rest of us to 'audibly tut-tut and wince' when we hear it.

They write: "It is worse than other forms of snobbery because it so clearly links poverty and being working class to criminality and fecklessness."

Does it though? According to my younger brother, Max, this just shows how out of touch the Fabian Society is.

He says: "The chav look brings with it connotations of anti-social behaviour, bad attitude, unemployment, etc, but those are stereotype assumptions which some people attach to the 'chav' look.

"The word is about a look, not necessarily a lifestyle, so people are not being politically incorrect by using the word."

The trouble is, many people use it to evoke those negative connotations.
Some of my best friends, think nothing of saying, "Don't go to that shopping centre/nightclub/holiday camp – it's full of chavs."

The word is used to denote behaviour – immoral, violent, ignorant, tacky, vulgar – associated with the working class.

As such, it's striking how often you hear 'chav' trip off the tongues of people who would consider themselves broadminded – even at the very moment when making a plea for broadmindedness.

Remember that Goth couple who were kicked off a bus in Dewsbury a while back?

They were interviewed by Jeremy Vine on Radio 2, both making a plea for tolerance of their eccentric style of dress.

The girl, who dressed like a bride of Dracula and went around fastened to her boyfriend with a dog leash, complained about the people who insulted her in the street. These people were, of course 'chavs'.

And during the Big Brother racism row I interviewed Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, whose complaints about what had happened on the TV show carried less authority, I thought, when she added that those insulting Shilpa Shetty were 'chavs'.

It's not okay to insult Goths in the street, or to make racist comments. But we should think twice before we associate, through our use of words, such behaviour with the white working class in general.
But what do I know? I have a pay-as-you-go phone.

awolstenholme
@ywng.co.uk