The Chattering Classes is often used as a derogatory term to describe people who

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"The Chattering Classes is often used as a derogatory term to describe people who live in London, work in the media and have two or three brain cells to rub together," he said. In terms of setting an agenda for the arts, the people who influence the arts are traditionally people who are interested in the arts and they are by definition a minority."But the broadcaster and critic Tony Parsons is less troubled by the term. "The term is one of those catch-all phrases that can mean any one of a dozen things," said Mr Dimbleby."To assume that all the people covered by the term share a unity of view on any one subject seems to be a nonsense. "Of course I do know a number of people who fall into that stereotype but I cannot include myself as I do not live in London.

But to talk of this group as a new establishment is misleading because there are simply too many them."Disclaiming membership of the group seems to be a common trait - indeed, perhaps a key characteristic - of its members.It is to be found with the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby and his wife, the writer Bel Mooney, who some might see as archetypal chatterers. As individuals they tend to be highly articulate but sceptical; they display a positive response to other cultures, multi-cultural environments, ethnic restaurants and foreign travel; they are trend-spotters and avid readers of newspapers and magazines; most of all, they are opinion formers who direct the nation's cultural and political agendas.According to advertisers, Jeremy Paxman, combative Newsnight presenter, is an archetypal Chattering Class member."Do they think that? How depressing," he said. "Most couples who are members of the Chattering Class will have a degree," said Clare de Burca of the advertising agency BMP Optimum. But it's more precise than that.The majority live in London in the high-density inner suburbs, in a band that extends clockwise from Clapham in the south, through Richmond, Chiswick, Notting Hill in the west, up to Hampstead, Highgate, Islington and finally Muswell Hill and Crouch End in the north.Their houses are always period, usually Victorian or Edwardian. (When they grow old most Chatterers enter another sub-group known to advertisers as "ageing professionals".)They are first and foremostwell-educated. There are marketeers even now counting the CCs, noting down their measurements and fitting them up for ads.So who are they? And might you be one of them? And if not, how do you become one?The Chattering Classes are now an officially recognised sub-group of the much larger AB1 professional and management class, but set apart by their lifestyle, attitudes and values.According to the advertising industry's research, they form a micro-market representing 1.9 per cent of the population.

They tend to be in highly paid service jobs associated with the media, arts, politics or education.The core group is aged 25 to 44, although there are some in their fifties. Merely a cute sociological coinage, you think, like Sierra Man, or Worcester Woman, unfounded in reality? Don't you believe it. "It was easy enough for a Jewish nancy boy like me to draw solace from Wilde the outcast," he writes.. They are mentioned nearly always in a light, ironical tone, almost as a group to be looked down on: but not quite. For these days, to be a member of the Chattering Classes implies power and influence as well as the ability to discourse over dinner.