After a lifetime of service in the frontline, I can state with complete confidence that the class war is fought largely in the mind. We are what we think we are.

True, we live in the most class-ridden society on earth, but it doesn't really matter a damn to anyone outside the ranks of snobs and wannabes who consider a plummy accent more important than talent.

Of course the subject never goes away. Like the weather, it is a British obsession. Columnist Lynda Lee-Potter, a leading exponent of our craft, has a book about it called Class Act published this week.

She once called yours truly a loud-mouthed yob, which caused me a great deal of pain. I put her down as a toffee-nosed yahoo who, like many others, thought my Cockney accent meant I was an illiterate oaf.

So it came as some surprise to learn Lynda is a decorator's daughter from Lancashire who married into the medical establishment. Her husband Jeremy is a former chairman of the British Medical Association.

Lynda reckons the class system is alive and powerful in Britain today. "The divisions might be more blurred, but ask anybody what class they belong to and they'll tell you without a second thought," she writes.

That reference to asking people proves what I am saying.

We decide where we belong in the social strata. Background, upbringing and political preference persuade us to come up with a subjective rather than objective answer.

All my life I have proudly claimed to be working class. I have never disguised my accent nor hidden my origins. Yet I've been a high earner since escaping from the slums half-a-century ago.

These days it's difficult to bracket people by the way they speak or dress. You have to take their word for it. Look at Michael Parkinson, suave, articulate, a former Army officer. He is very much working class, the son of a Yorkshire coalminer.

Lynda Lee-Potter herself rubs shoulders with the high and mighty and still describes herself as working class. She admits to being insecure in earlier years "trying to pretend to be something I wasn't."

Whatever class we may claim for ourselves, there are plenty of signposts that give the game away. Lynda says she still goes bright red if she makes a mistake and apologises when she has done nothing wrong.

I know the feeling. One of my problems in life has been to be tongue-tied and uncomfortable in the presence of people out of the top drawer, which is not my normal response.

Accent intimidates me, not riches.

Be true to yourself that's my philosophy.

Anyone who doubts where I belong need only pass through my front door. On the wall opposite they will see three china ducks flying ever upwards.