Our etiquette rules need a makeover. Here’s what I’d do

Excuse me for interrupting, but may I have a moment of your precious time?

Do you find that to be a well-mannered introduction or just annoying and cloying? When I was young, the accepted wisdom was that “manners maketh man”, but what about now?

Etiquette was chiefly invented for people born with a silver spoon in their mouths to make people not born with a canteen of oral cutlery feel inferior. In my experience, “polished” people like nothing more than tarnishing the reputations of others. Etiquette is very rude indeed.

Gone are the days of traditional etiquette.Credit: Getty Images

Some of the rudest people I’ve ever met have been upper class. “Oh, you’re Or-stray-lian. That would explain your lack of class,” a British baron once said to me.

But it seems to me we no longer need to know how to address a marquis or which fork is correct to eat fish with. People who worry about using the wrong fork can fork off. The matters that matter most in 2025 are more to do with mobile phone usage, specifically not speaking on one while a red-blooded, fully vocalising human being is sitting right in front of you waiting for a real-life chat.

We no longer crave instruction on how to make the man walk on the kerb side of the pavement, but what to say if you bump into your boss on a nudist beach. And is a thank-you letter expected after an orgy? “Thank you for coming.” What if you accidentally sit a mistress next to a wife at a dinner party? Or if the toy-boy you met on Tinder turns out to be the son of a female colleague?

How best to deal with pronouns is another dilemma. Can I just call everybody “possum”? And how do I explain “non-binary” to my 96-year-old aunty? Would a lust-agnostic with homoerotic overtones make any sense to her?

I recently spotted a girlfriend’s husband kissing another woman. They were clearly intimate. I was flummoxed. What was the right response? Should I confront him? Tell her? Turn a blind eye? Where is my instruction manual for this sticky situation?

When we were growing up, there were so many strict rules and regulations concerning social mores. But we clearly need an etiquette update.

Top of my “Lette-quette” list would be keeping your food preferences to yourself. I was hosting a dinner party recently and stupidly asked guests if they had any dietary needs. By the time I’d taken into account the pescatarians, vegans, anti-dairy and non-carb cultists, all I could safely serve the group was a bowl of unicorn breath.

Parallel parking is another bugbear. Never, ever try to help, hurry, honk or even look at someone attempting this manoeuvre. Executing this precision feat requires the spatial perception of an Olympic gymnast and the intuition of a homing pigeon. If in the passenger seat, it is even more imperative that you say nothing, or face being flung onto the road and run over repeatedly until you resemble a speed bump.

Gossip. I know it’s tempting to indulge, but most of us are hopeless at it. So many times I’ve divulged a juicy bit of tittle-tattle then realised, by the mortified look on the recipient’s face, that the story is actually about them. Even worse is confiding a moreish titbit to the very person who swore you to secrecy in the first place. Gulp!

What else? We all love cutting loose, but best not get drunk at a kid’s birthday party. You’ll end up dirty dancing to the Wiggles with Hot Dad and all the other mums will hate you.

If watching a TV series with your partner, no cheating. Never secretly watch one episode on your own. This kind of visual infidelity can ruin a marriage.

Never ask a teenager what they want to be when they grow up. It is just far too easy for them to reply, “Why? Looking for some ideas?”

Most importantly, don’t foist your behavioural tips onto others. Is there anything ruder than telling people they’re rude? Let alone pontificating in the newspaper about it. Bloody cheek!

And how did I resolve the infidelity issue? I simply explained to the unfaithful spouse that to be an adulterer, you really have to be an adult first, then added that if he didn’t cease this love-rat behaviour, I’d tell his wife to get a fumigation order.

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