LIKE it or not, you've been typecast. There is a whole army of people beavering away out there to find out everything there is to know about you.

They know how much you earn, whether you like your parsnips boiled or roasted, what size underpants you wear and how much you spend on beer, fags and sex toys.

They know how many rooms there are in your house, how often you shave, what you'd like for your birthday and how many mistresses you have (probably the same as what you'd like for your birthday).

Then they decide which social category to put you in so they can produce all sorts of forecasts for all sorts of sinister reasons.

At least Dirty Den could escape EastEnders and throw off the typecast image that might otherwise have been seared into viewers' eyeballs for ever.

But we are stuck with it unless we change our entire lifestyles. And even then, the Big Brother researchers (the original Big Brother, you fool, not that telly rubbish) will get you and squeeze you into a carefully-chosen pigeon hole.

The categories are frightening, laughable and depressing.

For instance, are you a Bedsit Beneficiary, a Sepia Memories, a Greenbelt Guardian, Twilight Subsistence or a Rural Isolation person?

Bedsit Beneficiaries are entirely dependent on the state, as are the Twilight Subsistence, people who have been independent but have become old and poor and need state help. Sepia Memories are, obviously, elderly and like listening to the radio.

Rural Isolation people live deep in the countryside in small communities that are untouched by urban influences. It may sound like an inbred community deep in the Louisiana swamps, but there's a mix of incomes, most own their own homes and they have a hidden wealth in small businesses as well as inherited land and property.

The categories are even given couple's names to represent Mr and Mrs Average for their grouping. There's Lee and Noreen, typical of Ties of Community, who live in established, old-fashioned communities and work in manual jobs. They live in 'cramped' places usually with two rooms and an extension downstairs and three small bedrooms with a modest rear garden (sounds like most of us to me).

At the other end of the scale are the Suburban Comfort types, the Geoffrey and Valerie couples, who have established themselves and their families in comfortable homes in mature suburbs. Their white-collar work is becoming less of a challenge, payments on homes and other loans less of a burden and they rarely get involved in the local community.

All these social types have been identified by consumer research organisation Experian using Mosaic, a postcode-based system that can predict behaviour not just by the area in which you live but even by the street.

The research information comes from the national census and a variety of surveys by internet, phone or in person.

It is so accurate it is even being used by the political parties in their battle for our votes. They know which streets to target and they know to the nearest inch what issues keep you awake at night.

The multi-million pound consumer research industry is used by manufacturers to design and market products to the nth degree, down to colour, shape, timing and deciding on prices that will not break the consumer.

The awesome power of the information is frightening. Governments could, probably already do, use it to control the masses.

In Roman times, Caesar would stage a gladiator spectacular to give his restless populace a bit of excitement so they forgot their problems.

Nowadays, when our emperor knows we are on the verge of revolution, he orders a double dose of Coronation Street to subdue us.

So the next time you get cornered by a jolly, clipboard-wielding woman in Survey Alley near the back entrance to Boots in Market Street, York, remember - she's after your innermost secrets.

"Can you spare a few minutes to help with a survey, sir? OK, how much do you earn, do you pick your nose, what's your inside leg measurement, how many people have you slept with and do you eat Walker's crisps? And don't lie because we already have all this information on computer."

Updated: 09:15 Tuesday, May 03, 2005