GEORGE Bernard Shaw's wonderful comedy of class mobility, Pygmalion, is currently playing at the Old Vic, and though Sir Peter Hall's production is resolutely traditional - positively Edwardian in fact - its appearance could not be more timely.

Class war is raging again. We have an Old Etonian as Mayor, an event which was marked almost immediately in Hackney by a local graffiti artist, whose urgent, expletive-filled messages at the end of my road might be paraphrased as "stuff Mr Johnson and his posh school friends".

Labour's by-election defeat in Crewe and Nantwich now suggests a Tory victory in the next general election, which would lead to a Cabinet positively brimming with Mr Johnson's Eton friends. Labour's attempts to play on the Tories' poshness backfired in Crewe - but that is not to say that the powder keg of envy and resentment that is the British class system will not be ignited in the near future.

Where does Eliza Doolittle, the cockney flower girl trained to be a society belle, fit in with all this?

Watching the play it was impossible not to be struck by its resonance in 21st-century London. Not least because the irritating woman sitting to my right - whose non-verbal outbursts ("harrumph"; "pffffwahaha"; "oink") suggested expensive breeding - reinforced the message that being born into the upper class is no guarantee that your manners will be nice.

Shaw suggests, through the kindly character of Pickering, that treating people with respect is the best way to draw out their inner gentility. While the snobbish, slovenly professor Henry Higgins barks at Eliza to fetch his slippers, Pickering instinctively addresses her as a lady - and it is from him that she truly learns how to become one.

But the rich man is burdened too, we learn in the timeless opening scene where the dim young gent Freddy has to hail a taxi for his exasperated mother and sister in rainy Covent Garden, despite there being none to be had.

Of course, the class system is far more complicated now than in Shaw's day. Deference barely exists any more, the traditional working class are now known as "chavs", and it is the much put upon middle-classes who most resent the posh and their atmosphere of privilege.

However, Pygmalion's main message still rings true: that adaptability is the most useful ability of all, and that seeing through a veneer of breeding will equip you well.

And should an understudy ever be required to stand in as Henry Higgins, with his classical references and messy hair, I can think of few better candidates than the present Mayor - provided he could find the time.