“Oh, it used to be frightfully unusual for anyone to drink too much,” says a titled lady who is unwilling to be identified. In fact, all sorts of behaviour now considered normal was frowned upon then, leading to the immortal remark of Lady St John of Bletso who, at a Fifties ball, on seeing her young protegee Frances with a cigarette, shrieked “My Fanny is smoking!”My anonymous aristocrat – we’ll call her Lady Spiffington – well remembers Lady St John of Bletso. The Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup was handed over, and congratulations offered through gritted teeth, to a team called Pommery, sponsored by the rival champagne house.Champagne has always flowed liberally throughout the Season, although 40 years ago it was considered extremely poor form to get drunk Times have changed dramatically At Henley, it is now considered poor form not to get drunk. Corporate sponsorship, of course, keeps the Season alive, just as the patronage of the aristocracy once did. Henley is the only major event still unsullied by corporate money Besides, sponsorship can lead to complications.

In fairness, he was just as likely to be a marquess as a Marcus.The creche was sponsored by Givenchy, who supplied tasteful goodie bags – it wasn’t their fault that my four-year-old took an enthusiastic bite out of his rabbit-shaped bar of white chocolate before realising that it was soap. Unforgettably, she pointed at a three-month-old baby and told me, “His mother says he’s a marquess”, only to be corrected by her colleague, who said, “Actually, I think his mother said he’s called Marcus”. My children played merrily in the creche with the children of the elegant actress Patricia Hodge.The creche was staffed by boisterous young Australian women, one of whom was deeply impressed with the lineage of her charges. And these were genuine fans, people who would not expect a mint if you shouted “polo, anyone?” At the Cartier International Polo Day tomorrow, celebrities will descend in their droves and maybe their helicopters, but at Cowdray they were fewer and classier.

But is it typical of the modern Season, or are there still unadulterated occasions where the spirit of past decades prevails? In search of the latter, I went last Sunday to the Veuve Clicquot Polo Gold Cup Final at Cowdray Park in West Sussex It was frightfully pukka. According to someone I know with reliable binoculars, there was no need for a stewards’ inquiry to determine what they were up to This year, I sat next to five attractive women having lunch. One had particularly shapely ankles, yet a pippin of an Adam’s apple She was a he As, on closer inspection, were they all. Whether transsexuals, transvestites or simply City boys on a dare, I wasn’t sure.Whichever, Royal Ascot has become something of a freak show.

On a bench beside the rails at Royal Ascot, a couple of years back, a woman in a billowing dress sat squarely on the knee of a man in a morning suit. In a recent issue of the inimitable Spectator magazine, a contributor bewailed the raucous behaviour of the crowd at Wimbledon – a crowd, moreover, “which does not belong to the lower depths of our society, from which uninhibited vulgarity might be expected, but rather to that portion of our society with a large disposable income and time on its hands”.In fact, uninhibited vulgarity, as The Spectator’s correspondent termed it, is now a distinctive feature of the Season, no less than Pimm’s and poached salmon. Eliza Doolittle could grace Ascot’s opening day now without the slightest need of elocution lessons. In fact, there may soon be a call for de-elocution lessons as downward mobility gains momentum.

“Get a bleedin’ move on!” she shouted at her friends further down the platform. It was Estuary English only insofar as she had a big, wide mouth Otherwise, it was pure Dagenham. Boarding the Ascot train at Waterloo station, I paused to admire a woman in a red silk dress and understated black hat, with a fine aquiline nose and aristocratic legs. I went to Royal Ascot last month expecting to mingle with the upper classes but, like a tourist in a foreign city disgruntled by the number of tourists, was disappointed to encounter mainly state- educated riff-raff like myself.Sometimes, it’s hard to tell.