Take home a weekly wage packet, eat fish and chips for dinner - and you're working class. Wear a suit to work, get paid every month - and you're middle class.

But do such class boundaries still ring true? A recent poll for Radio 4 found 55 per cent of people believed they were working class. But what does class mean in nineties Bradford?

The Telegraph & Argus took a straw poll of people in the city and found...

High flying Steven Bullas - chief executive of catalogue giant Grattan - said he didn't believe in the class system.

A son of a plumber, he said that rigid class boundaries only exist in Britain.

"When I talk to colleagues overseas they don't recognise class. It's terminology put about by the aristocracy to keep the rest down."

Chartered accountant Alan Biggin said he was working class - and proud of it. "I view myself as working class because of my background and Yorkshire accent. But people seeing me drive about in my Lexus might think different."

Leader of Bradford Council and retired trade unionist Ian Greenwood said he was working class too - having represented workers and been brought up in West Bowling.

But Kiwi rugby ace Robbie Paul, of the Bradford Bulls, said he was baffled by the preoccupation with class in Britain.

"I'm still coming to terms with it," he said, "it doesn't work like that in New Zealand.

"My dad was a taxi driver and a labourer which is working class.

"But I don't work nine-to-five and I get paid more than a working class man, so I don't know. I think professional sportsmen are in a class of their own."

Bradford City manager Paul Jewell muddied the waters still further: "I'm definitely working class", he said. "But it's not as important nowadays. When I was growing up in Liverpool, if you had a car you were well off. But everyone has one now.

"You take people for what they are."

Senior sociology lecturer at Bradford University Alan Carling said social class boundaries were the greyest of all grey areas - because people don't agree what they are.

He said: "Most people will say they are working class but they all mean different things by it." Many will say they work for a living so they must be working class - but that doesn't mean they identify with unions."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.