The Duke was infamous amongst the chattering classes for his mounting debts and extensive antiques collection.
Much has been made of the confluence of anti-Semitic bile pouring out of the chattering classes.
By coincidence (or not), three senior intelligence figures have just been arrested, causing consternation among the chattering classes.
And so, though it offends many in the chattering classes to concede the point, is the sexual-harassment case of Paula Jones.
But in London, where the murder rate hovers around 200 a year, the chattering classes are unlikely to tolerate the occasional handcuffing.
Clearly, this is more than merely a gathering of the chattering classes.
The chattering classes of Jakarta, having concluded that Mr Susilo has the election locked up, are already discussing the next government's likely composition.
Mr McCain, once the chattering classes' favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains.
Could it be that exit and opinion polls remain largely a luxury of the chattering classes and a news media environment which needs prime-time excitement and spectacle?
Unfortunately, the chattering classes are behaving as though when faced with the specter of further European economic sanctions, we have no option other than to throw ourselves at Europe's feet and beg for mercy.
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The 37-year-old is already a household name in India and, thanks to the book, The God of Small Things, she is now well on the way to becoming the talk of the chattering classes in the West.
Since the chattering classes in Washington were determined to break this man, a fair number of Democratic voters round the country especially, as it turned out, women, Latinos and blacks, groups ever-sensitive to unfairness angrily determined to save him.
Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people.
The worst, (but all too plausible) solution would be to set up regional assemblies to appease the chattering classes in the English regions but then jealously to guard the powers of Westminster and Whitehall, as well as the privileges of local government.
Bill Stitt wrote in his reply that 'fortunately smokers are now (literally) a dying breed' - I find this statement appalling (there is nothing fortunate about anyone dying), but it sadly typifies the kind of attitude that has started to prevail amongst the chattering classes.
The chattering classes erupted.
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Clearly, it would be far easier for Mr. Bush to go with the flow, earning the kudos of the chattering classes at home and abroad by allowing agreements reflecting the lowest common denominator of scores of nations to become part of the growing body of supranational institutions and legal structures.
And somewhere out there, the tech chattering classes seem certain, is the debut of the iPad Mini.
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Both Mr Brown and Mr Cameron hope that by making enthusiastic noises about constitutional reform they will win over the liberal chattering classes, who have never cared much for the Tories and have drifted away from Labour since 1997.
The second group, the normally liberal chattering classes, is rather more confused about its enthusiasm for Mr McCain.
And this is why the novel, for all its shortcomings, is the talk of Jakarta's chattering classes.
Mr Ahmadinejad certainly has millions of enthusiasts, particularly in areas beyond the scrutiny of Tehran's chattering classes.
Nevertheless, the Scottish and Welsh examples also suggest that when local elites and chattering classes get enthused about regionalism as they clearly are in the North-West they refuse to drop the idea and eventually get their way.
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Somehow America's chattering classes seem to have forgotten the much-ballyhooed age of uncertainty.
According to a rumour that spread through Moscow's chattering classes this week, to thank Mr Medvedev for sticking to the deal Mr Putin offered him any job he liked (bar one).
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