Why the sudden clamour for courtesy? Is it class war by another name, or is it just an excuse for an ill-mannered moan, asks Shane Hegarty
Last year, we were concerned with bad English. This year, we're bothered by bad manners. Books on etiquette and manners are gently pushing for attention and it threatens to trigger an unseemly public row between the very people who believe unseemly rows should be conducted in private. Possibly in the drawingroom. Over port.
There's an appetite for etiquette. A recent ad for Kentucky Fried Chicken that featured office staff singing with their mouths full became Britain's most complained about TV ad of all time. Now, Lynne Truss - whose Eats, Shoots and Leaves showed a "zero-tolerance approach to punctuation" - is back with Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life, or Six Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door, which will be published next month. Truss promises no restraint.
"If you skateboard through Marks & Spencer, slaloming between old ladies while shouting obscenities into a mobile phone," she says, "I feel you deserve to be shot."
Truss's plea for manners will be filed alongside Guide to Modern Manners, Manners from Heaven: The Easy Way to Better Behaviour for All the Family, The Done Thing: Negotiating the Minefield of Modern Manners and Mind Your Manners by former Irish Times journalist Robert O'Byrne. Nor is the clamour for courtesy confined to print. On television, there has been Ladette to Lady, ITV's modern take on The Taming of the Shrew and RTÉ's recent documentary, Miss Etiquette.
The trend suggests a hankering for a society in which people give a pregnant woman a seat on the train, don't yell into mobile phones and make sure children do as they're bloody well told. Many are nostalgic for better days, an age of casual formality and social rules. A time, say, when an argument between gentlemen would be settled in a civilised manner. Such as a duel.
Largely, though, these books are coming from our British neighbours, where much of the debate about modern manners is simply a continuation of the old-fashioned class debate. Not that Truss sees it that way.
"This is the perfect time to reinvent the notion of manners," she insists, "now that standards of behaviour can be completely divorced from matters of class."
That sounds a little blinkered in an age when terms such as "chav" are being used as shorthand for
working class. Some of the books, though, are trying to update codes of conduct in an effort to deal with vital contemporary dilemmas. For instance, what do you do if the pregnant woman you gave your train seat to isn't actually pregnant?
Unlike Truss's hard-line approach, Thomas Blaikie, author of Guide to Modern Manners, says his intention is "more of an attempt to liberate people from uncertainty. I will be calling for the abolition of thank-you letters". He offers counsel on other vital issues, such as whether to tip your hairdresser. Absolutely not! You wouldn't tip your child's teacher or your lawyer, so why this "glamorous professional".
"Whatever happens, modern manners must not become like old manners - a way, through intolerance, lack of forgiveness, of being rude," writes Blaikie. "Well-mannered people are kind people, who take notice of others."
THE VOGUE FOR manners is not new. Debrett's New Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners has been updated regularly over the years, and remains essential reading for anyone who wishes to live their life as if they were a cast member of Brideshead Revisited. It covers such essentials as how to address Queen Elizabeth and what to do when faced with figs at a formal dinner. Who hasn't faced such a conundrum?
Commonly believed to be less respectful than previous generations, children are targeted by several books. Increasingly, there are also guides for men, with the American ones containing advice on such matters as when it is proper to wear a baseball cap with a
suit.
There's no doubt that people don't hand over their train seats as they ought to, that loud iPods drive bus passengers insane and that mobile phones are an occasional scourge.
Implicit in the trend is the notion that there was once a golden age of deportment and courtesy, as if there was a time when people were always decent to each other and children could be well-behaved without the constant threat of physical violence.
To believe that, though, you have to ignore the fact that mankind has been rude for generations. It's just that we go about it while wearing a T-shirt with a swear word on it.
Maybe it's because we really do care about social conduct and see rudeness as the thin end of the wedge in a crumbling civilisation. Or maybe it's because we have become wealthy enough that we have stopped worrying about the essential things, such as where our next meal will come from, and are instead whingeing about the trivia of life just to have something to moan about . . .
Forgive me. I have overstepped my bounds. I do apologise. I shall immediately challenge myself to a duel.
How to be: polite
Texting: "Don't text when you're with other people"
- Mind Your Manners
Phones: "Don't text with your keypad tone set on loud, or pass time on the train by going through your entire ring-tone collection"
- Debrett's
Giving up your seat: "You don't really need to think about whom you should give your seat up to. Someone who needs it more than you would be the rule"
- The Done Thing
Smoking: "Are you entitled to forbid smoking in your home? Yes you are. Will this interdiction be appreciated? No it won't"
- Mind Your Manners
Children: "It is polite to break off a Playstation game temporarily to greet a guest"
- Manners from Heaven