When I was about 14, I was ridiculed at school because my father was a 'brush maker'. The girl's father was a civil servant. I was wounded by her spite, and did not know how to defend myself. When I took this story home to my parents my father remarked that he, unlike the majority of civil servants, was actually creating something and thereby contributing to the wealth of the country.

My father also said on another occasion that he liked to regard himself as classless. As an adult myself, I now find this an admirable proposition. My father was not a manual worker but Managing Director of a small but successful business. Remarkably, it was virtually a one-man operation where he did everything from operating the machines to doing the paperwork and accounts. He built that company himself and had more creativity, initiative, business skill and self-discipline than most 'civil servants'. He was 'classless' in the sense that he covered the range of activities from factory floor to business strategy. He once said to me that after many years of business, he still got satisfaction from happy customers, and it still amazed him that people gave him money for what he did.

During 'A' level Sociology, I remember clarifying for myself that class was less to do with money than attitude. There were plenty of working class people earning large amounts of money; the old stratification was breaking down. That trend has continued, and it is no longer true that middle class aspiration or status equates with money. One of my sisters is a teacher; my brother started as a BT apprentice at 16, and after many years of business related enterprises, earns far more than my sister as owner of a designer clothes shop. Yet class still dogs this country.

The US looks towards us as nation with a secure identity built on heritage and tradition. I look towards the US as a super-nation that has largely avoided that kind of nonsense. I may be wrong, and certainly there is an elite network associated with the Ivy League and the prestigious universities, and an underclass at the other end. But the prejudice, stratification and inequality is not inbuilt; the ethos of the US is based on opportunity for everyone. Americans like our John Cleese and Monty Python humour, where class issues often appear. They probably fail to understand the full significance of the situation, with our aristocratic privilege and honorary titles.

I once met a woman who had been to Cambridge, first as an undergraduate and then for law training. She had a formidable intellect and had just started work at the London firm of solicitors that was representing Diana Spencer. Her mentor was the solicitor who dealt with Diana; he has more recently become an author and social commentator, appearing on television.

The solicitor and I were on holiday in Greece, and I began to see the kind of world she had easy access to, based on her privileged background. We met another person who was a BBC producer, and I could see they had an automatic rapport and common set of references which I did not share.

I went to a Comprehensive school - unfortunately. I could have chosen a Grammar school, but I was inspired by the vision of the Bunsen burner flames I had seen in the Comprehensive school chemistry labs, and the stories I had heard from my three older sisters. I would probably have fared better at a grammar school, being a quiet and bookish kind of person, unsuited for the physical and emotional roughness of the more down-market place my sisters had been to.

Some years later I chose not to consider Oxford or Cambridge as possible destinations, because they offended me as symbols of class based privilege. When I arrived at Lancaster University, after a few weeks I felt I had perhaps made a dreadful mistake as I began to suffer from constant lack of sleep, kept awake by loud and drunken antics. I felt that Oxford or Cambridge were probably more civilised.