WHO am I, in terms of class? The question has been thrown at the face of the nation several times this week, each time demanding attention.

The first came from Stacey Dooley, Glitterball winner and documentary maker, the Luton council house girl with no qualifications who used to shoplift on Saturdays. These days she’s on a £250k a year retainer with the BBC. Dooley reckons she now has a “balsamic vinegar and oat milk” middle class palate.

What the presenter is suggesting is that class can shift. But that’s not what Scottish Labour Leader Richard Leonard has been saying. The private school educated politician has reconstituted Marxism in declaring that a doctor on £100k a year is working class, because he sells his labour to the NHS.

But is middle classness defined by a work contract? If that’s the case is Boris Johnson working class, given he sells his labour to the state, and to The Daily Telegraph?

We’ve also had BBC Media Editor Amol Rajan declare his own working class credentials in his (fascinating) documentary How To Break Into the Elite, even though he’s Oxbridge and earns £200k-plus for asking questions such as ‘What defines working classness?’

Rajan would claim we can still claim to be working class even if the circumstances by which we were defined in the first place have altered? He’d argue that although I grew up in a council flat my current postcode of Glasgow’s G12 doesn’t reassign me as being a bit Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

But is journalism a middle class occupation, given it’s populated by a range of income groups? And is lifestyle an indicator ? Being working class once meant keeping doos was almost compulsory yet I’ve never raced whippets or thrown arrows but instead play tennis, which is regarded by friends as the slippery slope to cricket.

I do go to the theatre, a lot, once regarded a middle-class pastime, but surely that’s changed? Can anyone really argue a night at the King’s watching Kinky Boots confirms toffery? And I tried opera once, which would have confirmed that I truly had middle class urges, but I have to point out I left at the interval. (The level of suspension of disbelief required being larger than the singer who played the ingenue.)

Yes, I’ve been on holiday to Tuscany, which suggest something very BBC about me. But I did travel sub-class, which is to say Ryanair.

Are material goods an indicator? Well, my car is German, which automatically implies its owner to be middle class. But one colleague said buying such cars is a working class trope. In any case, my pal Big Alex has a bigger one and he’s a painter and decorator. (And my phone is an iPhone 4, the likes of which are now displayed in a German museum.)

What about shopping? It sounds as though Stacey does Waitrose, but that’s anathema to me. (Have you seen what they charge for broccoli compared to Tesco Metro?) Or television viewing? I watch a lot of Newsnight, and Channel Four news, which is public school top heavy. But for some reason I’m not keen on Anthony Armstrong (the whiff of stale cheese?). Yet, I’m not that keen on Danny Dyer either. And where does Love Island fit the class viewing demographic? Bet it wasn’t only teenagers in council flats who were delighted to see the lovely Amber walk away with £50k tucked into the back pocket of her red ruffle shorts.

Yes, I like to eat out, which is so middle class, but I’m not likely to order up an avocado latte with soy milk and granola sprinklings anytime soon. Education? I did go to a grammar school and my best pal’s dad owned a pub, who bought him an Opel Ascona for his 18th, but I could barely afford a packet of Opal Fruits at the time.

I haven’t too many middle-class friends, but I did once have a girlfriend who was at a Swiss finishing school where she dated Roger Moore’s son, Geoffrey (“Nice guy.”)

I’ve been told I sound working class however. A colleague with a private school accent whom I won’t name (first name rhymes with spark, surname rhymes with myth) maintained that as soon as one opens one’s mouth one’s class credentials spill out like Iceland canned soup. Clearly he considers me a (slightly) better dressed version of Jamesie Cotter.

So have I turned? Alan Bennett believes we don’t really leave our class behind, regardless of education and cash. “What keeps us in our place is embarrassment.”

I think he’s right. We know instinctively we’re not growing to break into a grouping that is formed by wealthy parents who pay £30k a year to send their children to Eton, Charterhouse and the top jobs. That’s why 75 per cent of top judges are private school educated, as are 50 per cent of the Cabinet. Yet, only seven per cent of the nation’s kids go to private school.

So I’m guessing I’m not really a crossover like Stacey. In fact, a female of my acquaintance once said to me “You know something, Beacom, you have no class.” I’m sure what she meant was I easily straddle society’s pre-set strata.

Maybe.