“Simon Zinc-Trumpet-Harris: he’s married to a very attractive table lamp. Nigel Incubator-Jones: his best friend is a tree and in his spare time he’s a stockbroker; and finally, Oliver St John-Mollusc: his father was a Cabinet minister and his mother won the Derby; and he is thought by many to be this year’s outstanding twit.”

So ran the commentary for the Monty Python sketch “Upper Class Twit of the Year” in which hapless, chinless toffs fail miserably at such tasks as leaping over matchboxes, kicking beggars and insulting waiters.

Did you laugh, or did you find it offensive, a typically chippy sneering at the upper classes from proles who went to minor private schools or – shudder – state grammars?

Why is “Upper Class Twit” any different from “Chav Hunt”, the spoof internet video by pupils at a Scottish private school, which has been condemned for showing toffs in hunting regalia chasing a pack of Burberry-wearing, bling-rattling chavs across the countryside?

No chavs were harmed in this video

Public school pupils from Perthshire have posted a spoof video engaging in a pursuit they called 'chav hunting'

Perhaps worried that Glenalmond College’s association with the film would dissuade chavs from paying its £23,000-a-year fees, the school’s head has called for it to be removed from YouTube, the video website, and emphasised that “it does not reflect the ethos of Glenalmond”.

So, Glenalmond’s ethos does not encourage satire, let alone applaud those with the nous to make a film and broadcast it on the internet.

In a way, this was a typical summer non-story designed to fill space by bored newsdesks. Finding po-faced, humourless politicians in Scotland to get outraged about it was as easy as, well, finding a chav in TK Maxx during a sale.

The video does not encourage violence or even hatred towards chavs (the hammed-up “killing” of the victims – flying through the air in slow-motion – shows the lack of seriousness) and, while it may reveal a contempt that the rich have for the poor, well, the poor have never hidden their contempt for toffs.

All this story proves is that class is alive and well and a perfectly good subject for humour. Today’s chavs are the descendants of Shakespeare’s mechanicals; the gormless aristos are found throughout literature. Chav Hunt is no more or less offensive than Vicky Pollard, Delboy Trotter or Catherine Tate’s “Am I bovvered” schoolgirl. In return, the toffs are ridiculed with Tim Nice-but-Dim and Giles Wemmbley Hogg. And it is not just a British sense of humour. The two most popular comedies in America over the past 15 years featured a working-class dullard called Homer and a pretentious, pompous prig named Frasier.

It’s the middle classes who deserve the most pity. Not only do they live in envy of both the upper classes (who have money) and the lower classes (who don’t care that they haven’t any money), but the middle classes do not even get any decent sitcoms written about them.

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