He is probably best remembered as the hectoring record shop assistant played by Jack Black in High Fidelity, although he gravitates towards writing about music rather than selling it, smugly informing you that, say, Teenage Fanclub’s early output was OK if you’d never heard of Big Star. Sometimes, he will even form a band — using interviews to cite influences so far-fetched that you wonder why he doesn’t make his records sound like them. I’m thinking of Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, with his apparent love of Miles Davis’s later work, or Ian Brown’s ceaseless referencing of the roots reggae star Sizzla.

Whatever form this character takes, we have all encountered him — from the obscuro-fetishist who tuts and rolls his eyes because Nick Drake is now so passé, to the blues connoisseur who will tell you that John Lee Hooker’s later records (the ones he actually made money from) were just shallow pop facsimiles of his gritty earlier stuff.

He’s the rock snob. And when all is said and done, his pronouncements are a kind of bullying. The rock snob may call himself a fan of good music, but he will differ from most music fans in one important respect. The rock snob will use his knowledge to create a barrier between him and people who know less than he does. If someone professes a fondness for Brian Wilson’s post-Pet Sounds output, the rock snob will tell you that it pales in comparison with Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue.

He has sure had some fun, all these years, but there are signs that the rock snob’s reign of subtle terror may be coming to an end. As more and more “classic” obscurities make their way on to CD and file-sharing networks, it becomes apparent that not all the stuff he lauds is that good. The cosmic space jazz of Sun Ra has an alarming tendency to sound like insurrection in a cutlery drawer; Tim Buckley’s daring free-form effort Starsailor may have pushed the envelope of folk-rock, but it also sounds like dentistry in the days before anaesthetic. Also of concern to the rock snob will be the success of Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures compilations in which the likes of Andrew Gold, Pilot and Cliff Richard remind us that the best music of the late 1970s wasn’t made by a bunch of spiky-haired morons who thought that it was anarchic not to know chords.

Now, with the publicaton The Rock Snob’s Dictionary, the game might well and truly be up. Though arranged as a reference guide, David Kamp and Steven Daly’s book in fact exposes the tissue of conceits that the rock snob uses to justify his position. How, for instance, will it be possible for any fan of the jackhammer-wielding, metal-banging avant-gardists Einst ürzende Neubauten to defend the group after reading Kamp and Daly’s reductive appraisal? “The concept of Einstürzende Neubauten was ultimately more entertainingly realised by such family friendly off-Broadway attractions as Stomp!”

Of course, it’s doubtful whether there’s a human being so honest in their tastes that they won’t, at times, feel an uncomfortable frisson reading some of these entries. Having spent years telling myself that Dexys Midnight Runners’ “brave” final album Don’t Stand Me Down was their masterpiece, it now feels good to admit that I preferred the fiddly-diddly Celtic pop of Too Ry-Aye instead. Better tunes, you see.

But for some people I’ve known, that feeling will be ten times worse. Had The Rock Snob’s Dictionary landed in the offices of Melody Maker circa 1992, I fear the now defunct music paper may have had to fold eight years sooner.

Fun music was frowned upon at Melody Maker. By the time I ended up working for it, I had a fair idea of how best to keep inconspicuous. One evening, when invited to see a reunion gig by the respected Krautrockers Faust, I politely declined — neglecting to mention that I was on the guest list for Björn Again instead.

I’d like to think I was above it all, but the truth is: who doesn’t just want to fit in with their peers at times? I still have pangs of guilt about the time I chose not to make Inspiral Carpets’ Saturn 5 Single of the Week. I have, after all, put it on more compilation tapes than any other song. And yet, when the time came, I gave the top slot to the briefly hip Sheep on Drugs.

Still, it was a learning process. And I should be grateful that I grew out of it. But in a world where one person’s discovery fans out into the quotidian at broadband speed, rock snobbery and the desire to turn people on can blur into one big misguided gesture.

Nowhere is the rock snobbery backlash more evident than at The Marquee Guilty Pleasures night. Last week, at the new Marquee club in North London, where Sean Rowley hosts the bi-monthly get-togethers, scenes of fervid abandon greeted tunes by the Nolan Sisters (Don’t Make Waves), Racey (Lay Your Love on Me) and the Bellamy Brothers (Let Your Love Flow).

Rock snobs may cry irony, but if the Abba revival taught us anything, it is that ironic appreciation is the first step to reappraisal. And if it annoys Bobby Gillespie and one or two of my old colleagues, all the better.

The Rock Snob’s Dictionary, published by Sanctuary Publishing at £7.99, is out now. Samples of the book are available at www.snobsite.com