SOME years ago, as I was strolling beside London Bridge with the late Jonathan Bowden (1962–2012), he suddenly turned to me and said “working class intellectuals like you are a rare and dangerous breed, but when it comes to your own class you can often be the harshest critics.”

Whilst I reject all notions of class, Jonathan’s observation is nonetheless correct. In my own case, however, this attitude has developed not because I enjoy looking down on my fellows like some kind of petit bourgeois snob – believe me, I can chat about football until the cows come home, and often do – but as a result of my eternal frustration that social oddities such as myself allow themselves to be pigeonholed by others. Furthermore, that those of us from comparatively poorer backgrounds rarely make any serious effort to transcend the circumstances into which we have been born.

Whilst one cannot deny the existence of a natural hierarchy, as far as intelligence itself is concerned there are many intelligent souls who end up using their gifts in a decidedly more materialistic fashion; perhaps by gambling, appearing on game shows or planning robberies. I am not suggesting that everyone has the potential to overcome these desires and live a wholly intellectual existence, particularly as high intelligence does not imply that one has any real interest in intellectual matters themselves – but people should do more to rise out of the imagined snares of the class system.

Much of this relates to peer pressure, of course, which is one reason why I left school with absolutely no qualifications whatsoever and only went to university many years later as a mature student. There are people I remember from my teenage years who still drink at the same working mens’ clubs or who play in the same darts team. I have nothing against a parochial lifestyle, in some ways it can act as the very backbone of the authentic human condition, but failing to test oneself can often be a sign of stagnancy and non-fulfilment.

I prefer to see people break out, as I have, from the straightjacket of economic determinism. Not by seeking to become wealthy, but by rejecting the stereotypical parameters of class. If you are truly incapable of that, then I respect you, but for those of you with a higher calling who have yet to rail against the boundaries of your social conditioning, there is simply no excuse. I do not claim to be special, but neither should you be content with being ‘run-of-the-mill’. As a nineteenth-century German philosopher once said: “Become who you are!”