But what I do mourn is the passing of the social optimism that the rise of Best so gloriously epitomised. It’s not that talented lads don’t emerge today from working-class estates to become footballing superstars. Of course they do. Master Rooney is a prime example. Rather, it is that Best’s astonishing progress from Belfast backstreets to worldwide adulation chimed so perfectly with the ebullient mood of his era — the feeling that, as Bob Dylan croaked, the times they were a-changing, social barriers tumbling, and the sky was the limit for kids with talent.

So many trends came together to loosen up social rigidities in the Sixties. Rock’n’roll empowered youngsters, culturally at least, as an increasingly prominent element in society. The CND marches, the rise of toff-bashing TV satire and “working-class realism” in the theatre and cinema, the student demos . . . all this attested to a determination to challenge the Establishment view.

And underpinning it all was a feeling that Britain’s class distinctions were finally dissolving. Thanks to the 1944 Education Act, a generation of bright working-class kids had enjoyed a grammar-school education and made their way through university into the professions and the media. Books such as Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy foresaw a Utopian future in which every citizen would be equipped with the intellectual tools to read widely and think for themselves. There was still a widespread belief that the Welfare State would eradicate poverty, and that universal free healthcare was workable and affordable.

I don’t deny that a lot of that optimism was bubbles and hot air: a national self-delusion fuelled by spineless politicians who found it convenient to turn a blind eye to Britain’s chronic economic problems. Throughout the Sixties we lived way beyond our means, no doubt of that. Nevertheless, there was a genuine feeling that, after a thousand years of feudalism, the nation was finally starting to reward talent and hard work, wherever it was to be found. Indeed, most of the era’s leading cultural and literary lights, from Lennon and McCartney to Bennett, Pinter, Larkin and Levin, had humble origins.

But 40 years on I hear only the desultory crunch of broken dreams and shattered ideals. Far from building on Sixties idealism, we seem to have regressed to the social inflexibility of the Victorian era. Our motto today seems to be “once a chav, always a chav”. Just look around. We have an apartheid health system, with vast disparities between the speed and sophistication of the medical attention that the well-off can buy and the tardy treatment patchily handed out to the poor. Our cities have become segregated into middle-class suburbs and desolate inner-city estates. Not since Hogarth’s time has London seen such a contrast between private wealth and public squalor.

And worst of all, the gap in quality between state and private schools now seems (with a few exceptions) wider than ever. The most recent evidence of that is last week’s revelation that the most able state-school pupils are only half as likely as their private-school peers to achieve top A-level grades. Even that statistic, however, disguises the true extent of the chasm, since huge numbers of state-school children drop out of education long before A-levels. On top of that, consider the less quantifiable disadvantages of British state education in 2005: the woeful lack of playing fields; the patchy provision of art, music and drama facilities; the low-grade but cumulatively catastrophic disruption in many classrooms; the condescending simplification of the curriculum. What it means, I believe, is that for a bright kid from a sink estate to make it to a good university, and thence to a stimulating job, is far more difficult now than it was in the Sixties. We’ve gone backwards.

It’s bizarre that eight years of Labour government have accelerated this trend, not reversed it. It’s even odder that many Tories, far from seeking to exploit Labour’s dereliction of egalitarian duty, think that their best hope of winning power is to elect a leader who is the epitome of privilege. What’s happened to social conscience in that self-regarding hall of mirrors, the “Westminster village”? Will nobody speak for that once cherished ideal — equality of opportunity? Or has that gone the way of kipper ties, flower power and the late, great George Best?

No fat turns at the opera

Greater love hath no prima donna than this . . . that she lay down her pasta for her art. Yes, it really is true that Italian opera singers have gone on hunger strike to protest about Silvio Berlusconi’s proposed 35 per cent cut to state subsidy of the arts. One mighty soprano from La Scala, Milan, has refused solids for two weeks and shed 13lb, though photographs of the fasting songbird suggest that she is still delectably upholstered.

Who will crack first? Opera is to Italy what vodka is to Russia, so there must be pressure on Berlusconi to give way before his country’s prime lyrical assets shrivel into twiglets. On the other hand an opera company, like Napoleon’s army, marches on its stomach, and few believe that the singers will be able to forgo a square meal for long. Their next step, of course, will be to refuse to perform altogether. In which case, this row clearly won’t be over till the surprisingly slim lady sings.

Trouble in store

The “curse of Hello!” is a well-known media legend: the alleged tendency for things to start going wrong in the lives of celebrities who allow themselves to be effusively profiled in the magazine. But what about the curse of Country Life? This month the green-wellied fogey’s bible anoints Hexham in Northumberland as the nation’s “favourite market town”, not least because of its “wide range of specialist shops” and traditional traders.

Oh dear. I wonder how this delicate local ecology of cheese shops, butchers and bakers will survive the other big news in Hexham this month — the opening of a giant 24-hour Tesco superstore.

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