What is a chav? I ask a man called Paul. He's standing having a fag outside the Hare & Tortoise on Brentwood High Street, Essex, and he answers with absolutely no hesitation at all.
"A chav is someone who wears a tracksuit, has an earring, and a haircut which is grade zero on the sides, grade three on the top. A chav is someone who does his top button up. That gentleman over there," and he gestures down the pavement, "in the Ralph Lauren shirt? He's a chav."
Everybody knows what a chav is, it seems, but no one is a chav. But then it's a word unlike any other in current usage. Not just because no one is exactly sure what it means, or if they are sure, they all have a different answer, or even because it's still not entirely certain where it suddenly came from, although theories abound – from the Romany for child, as an acronym for "Council House And Violent" – but there's not even any agreement on whether or not it is or isn't a term of abuse. Whether it's snobbish. Or not. Is it a harmless bit of fun? Or a vicious class-based insult?
Click on the link to find out more about the 'demonisation of the working class' on TV, in film and when you're sat round the dinner table...
