Nobody really knows where the word “chav” originates. Some people say it’s from the Gipsy word, chavo, meaning “boy” - but I think that’s racism against good, honourable Romany folk. Others say it’s a derivative of Chatham, the Kentish town which came to personify the move south of a class of people previously seen in the “Essex girl” phenomenon - a breed of lower-class-and-proud-of-it person with no taste and no manners, and therefore a penchant for crass superficiality.

I, personally, favour an acronym as the solution to this particular conundrum. I read this on a website of a particularly popular member of the British parliament, whereby Chav stands for Council House And Violent. The reason I favour this on is that it encapsulates everything that makes Chav-ness such a dispicable state of being. Of course, there are people who live in council housing who are perfectly respectable - just as there are those with a turn of violence who nevertheless command respect. But these are in spite of their surroundings, in the case of the council dweller, or in the case of the violent, for some other intangible reason.

But the chav mentality is encapsulated in the cliche of the violent, council-dwelling underclass, whose tastes run only to sub-cubic-zirconium jewellery, rap “music - a form of noise whose oeuvre is characterised by people shouting obscenities over stolen music, usually involving exhortations to “kill a pig” - a love for the inedible bilge served up by fast food chains, and an over-arching enmity for Goths. There is generally no ambition rather than to service the baser animal urges, and usually with little thought for the consequences. Indeed, the chav culture may also be categorised as what Terry Pratchett calls “the hard of thinking”, and they may well be perfectly happy living off state handouts. Of course, by and large chavs like bigger, better, brasher and brighter - just so long as it doesn’t cost them too much, and just so long as it brings them plenty of “respec” (their patois is usually categorised as “street”). Conspicuous consumption is a hallmark of the chav, even if the items they conspicuously consume are unlikely to carry any form of hallmark. Bling is the word - and they also tend to glorify the power they perceive in carrying a gun or a knife - although to be fair, most chavs will not wish to cause trouble outside their own little world.

It is possible to find a chav in a library - if said library has a computer on which he can either play violent games or download pornography. Of course, some do read - but only romantic pulp fiction and tabloid journalism. The thought of improving themselves in the way a scholar might understand the concept fills them with dread.

So why the rise in chavs? Chavs have always been with us - from the village idiots of old to the increasing underclass of today. They always will be with us, unless some draconian legislator decrees that they should be sterilised. But then chav-dom is, in a way, a symptom rather than a cause - of the collapse of meaningful organised religion, perhaps, or maybe a disaffection with the political systems under which we find ourselves. Perhaps the most likely answer is the rising need for qualifications in even the simplest of occupations, which alienates Pratchett’s hard of thinking and maybe the incorrigibly lazy. Of course, particularly in regard to the “bling” aspect, the gaudy show can often hide a pitiable lack of self esteem - usually the result of environmental reinforcement; they don’t know anything else, and lack the means or motivation to make their voyages of discovery.

The answer is as difficult to pin down as the origin of the question.