The Government wants Britain to have a highly educated workforce so that we all can get well-paid jobs in service industries and afford to buy more of the lovely products that they make in other countries. To facilitate this they want a much higher proportion of schoolchildren to carry on into further education. Most middle-class children already go on to university so any significant expansion in numbers will need to come from the roughly 45 per cent of us who used to be known as the working class, but in this politically correct age are known as “people of restricted taste”.

The visual arts is one of the least diverse sectors of further education. The University of the Arts London, which comprises six of the most highly regarded arts schools in the country, is in danger of turning into a white, middle-class, female ghetto. Britain’s creative industries make up one twelfth of our economy, the highest proportion of any country in the world. Chances are that the hot talent that will power this vital sector does not exclusively burn in the breasts of nicely brought up young ladies, so initiatives have been launched to get students from different backgrounds into art school.

The National Arts Learning Network held a conference last week. It is a body set up to implement pragmatic solutions for the current situation. It is hoping that formalising routes for students to enter BA courses with vocational qualifications such as BTECs and National Diplomas rather than the traditional, more academic path will go some way to remedying this class imbalance. It also aims to support these students throughout their time as undergraduates and beyond.

Why working-class youth is underrepresented in art schools is multi-determined. Students, or nowadays “customers”, of universities, particularly from poorer backgrounds, want to know that their investment in education is going to lead to a lucrative job. Many arts courses, no matter how glossy the brochure, cannot guarantee that. I am a successful artist and I did not make a living wage until I was in my late thirties, hardly a glowing advert for a career in art for a generation growing up with their noses pressed up against the shop window of hyperconsumption.

When I was at college the grant gave me a freedom to become a trainee bohemian far from home; I learnt to survive on little money and plough my energies into making art and student life. Creativity often thrives on a ridiculous unconcern for the economic. Nowadays, with loans and tuition fees, poorer students often need to remain at their parents’ and have a job on the side, all of which makes it harder for them to develop their own culture and shake off the cloying mud of the old home town. Understandably, for these reasons people from a poorer background are more likely to be put off from pursuing a career where the real rewards cannot be read on a bank statement.

Students from working-class backgrounds are also often saddled with what is known as “impostor syndrome”. This is a deep-seated sense that the world of culture, particularly so-called “high culture”, is not for the likes of them, a feeling that at any moment they will be tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave. I still experience the odd twinge of this unease when my confidence is at a low ebb.

The big factor in preventing applicants from poorer backgrounds getting into art school is prejudice at the interview stage. Highly talented oiks are always going to get in. The Alexander McQueens and Damien Hirsts probably had an energy that shone through. But anyone who has sat in on degree-course interviews, as I have, will tell you that most of the task consists of sifting through mediocrity. At the age of 19 most talent has not blossomed so interviewers are looking for glimmers of potential.

Faced with a choice of two equally promising portfolios — one from a charming girl who reads The Guardian over her croissant, who has good eye contact, and quotes all the expected cultural references, and one from a monosyllabic youth dressed for CCTV whose passion for culture is hidden beneath a cloak of impenetrable cool — who do you think they choose? Who will they look forward to spending time with over the next three years and who do they expect to give them grief and give up because of impatience, debt or drugs?

All these forces conspire to exclude a large proportion of the talent available. Organisations such as the National Arts Learning Network are important not just for individuals but increasingly for our economy. I do not want our art colleges to turn into finishing schools.

There is a poignant sight I sometimes see at art-school degree shows. It is a middle-aged couple looking bewildered and dressed as if for a cheese-and-wine party at the local PTA. They have come up from the provinces to witness the fruition of their child’s three years study. At home they have one of his weird paintings hanging in the back bedroom. He introduces them to his bright and beautiful fellow students. The parents do not feel equipped to understand or judge the achievements of their offspring, but they are surely proud of him.

Trash that gives me a belly laugh

The cultural landscape is eroding into a plateau devoid of peaks or valleys. It is fashionable for highbrow types to confess to the sin of enjoying some trashy culture. So I have a peculiar postmodern pride in admitting that one of my TV highlights of the week is You’ve Been Framed. If I want a full-blown belly laugh I tune in at Saturday teatime to Harry Hill and a succession of drunken weddings, ingenious cats and fat aunties falling off garden swings. Hill’s surreal observations about the irrelevances in the background of the clips have added another layer of comedy to the ancient appeal of the pratfall.

I get annoyed at the obviously set-up scenarios. Why would anyone make a video of someone mending a shed roof unless they knew it would collapse? It would be good to have myself filmed all the time so when I do trip over a paving stone I can get £250 compensation without troubling the council.

Sticking with slim

The debate around size-zero fashion models drags on. I once had the chance to chat to two of my heroes, the avant garde Dutch duo Viktor and Rolf. I asked them: “Why, even though you have experimented with many aspects of the fashion show, such as having an an entire collection layered on to one model like a Russian doll, do you still use thin beautiful girls?”

Their defence was interesting and one I have not heard voiced anywhere else. They said that classic slim models are to the fashion show what plain white walls are to an art gallery. To paint the walls a different colour is always making a statement. To use different-sized or shaped models would distract from the already challenging concepts of their clothes.