Another birthday party where I know the host, Ms Shanthi, but few of the friends. Though at least it’s seated. It’s a drinks gathering at the Duke pub, on Roger Street off Gray’s Inn Road, embedded deep within the mishmash of streets between Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell, Farringdon and King’s Cross. Quite a bohemian, arty place. No Sky Sports, no pool table, no TVs.

For some reason, though, the pub stereo plays Robbie Williams’s greatest hits. We muse on ‘Old Before I Die’, his early, desperate attempt to Fit In with the Oasis crowd, followed by ‘Millennium’, when we try to remember what we were doing on New Year’s Eve 1999. I wish I could keep quiet that I know the song uses a sample of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘You Only Live Twice’, but I blurt this factoid out at the earliest opportunity, like a knee jerk reflex. I live alone.

I go to the pub straight from writing an aerogramme near the enormous Mount Pleasant sorting office. The building’s post box has a collection at 7.30pm, the latest in the Central & North London area. I often sit in a cafe near there and write letters, knowing I have this extended deadline in which to post them. At the pub someone tells me Royal Mail are actually planning to sell off Mount Pleasant, as it’s prime Clerkenwell real estate.

Once again, it’s a party where I feel I only know the host, and at first – as ever – I wonder if I’m the Token Strange Person, surrounded by Normals Who Speak Fluent Mortgage. But I manage to chat away for hours with them, and no one sets fire to me. The wine helps. The wine always helps.

People ask me how I know Ms S. I tell them it was at Prom Night, a semi-ironic club night held at the Buffalo Bar in Highbury Corner, where they played the sort of 80s tunes heard in John Hughes movies. Like the US slang usage of the S-word I mentioned earlier, for years school proms were entirely baffling and alien things British people only knew about through watching movies.

Prom Night the club had its own Prom King and Queen crowned at the end. Shanthi was a regular, but when I went it was my first time. I managed to be crowned Prom King – to my joy – while Ms S was roped into being my Queen.

She was utterly appalled.

As a regular, she knew it was only a matter of time before the distaff crown came round to her, but on this particular night she felt dressed down and not looking her best. There’s a photo somewhere of us together in our sashes, me beaming, her looking horrified.

After the photo was taken, she tore off her Prom Queen sash, threw it to the ground, and flounced off. So I donned it and posed for photos as the Prom Queen instead. Anything for a camp laugh. Some time later she apologised, and we became friends. I still have the sash.

At the pub tonight, one young (British) lady tells me her school had a Prom Night in her GCSE year, which I suppose is a sign of the times. She adds, however, that it didn’t go as far as having a King and Queen. I wonder if that’s because the British are still riddled enough with genuine class differences as it is, without having to compete for ersatz ones.

I go on to tell the lady how ‘Hello’ magazine used to have bona fide aristocrats on the cover, with coverage of upper class society debutante balls, ‘coming out’ parties, that sort of thing. That all still goes on today, but it gets a lot less mainstream media coverage. Today, showbiz celebrity has utterly taken over, though it’s still something that can be inherited by birth or by coupling.

So now there’s the case of Peaches Geldof: someone who is famous by an accident of birth like any duchess or princess, it’s just that her surname is her title. Likewise people who go on celebrity TV shows: often they are only famous by association with others, like Lillie Langtree and Wallis Simpson before them. The definition of primary fame may change, but secondary fame is eternal. There will always be a fascination with tapping into the sap of privilege.

I mention to the young lady one upper class cliche during my own student years in Bristol. In 1990, the running joke was that Bristol Uni was full of all the posh people who were not clever enough to attend Oxford or Cambridge.

And then of course, she then tells me she’s a graduate of Bristol. I apologise until I fall over.