At a time when it is hard to get people to agree on barely anything, here’s a truism we can all sign up to: good manners cost nothing. You may think courtesy is over-rated, or unnecessary in a digital age, but I’m sure you can accept that there is no financial implication to saying “please” and “thank you”.

Gordon Ramsay is with me on this – he has six kids and says teaching them manners is the thing he’s most proud of as a parent. I assumed that having manners and instilling basic etiquette into all of our children was still a thing, but on an almost daily basis, I see examples that make me wonder.

I get the train to work every day, and I have sympathy for what happened to the money-saving expert (and occasional Newsnight panelist) Martin Lewis recently. He was traveling with his wife and 13-year-old daughter when people on the carriage started playing videos on their phones and everyone could hear.

In those situations we are the ones who don’t want to seem rude so we usually put up with it. Martin didn’t intervene until they started watching – and therefore broadcasting – a video about serial killers and he felt he needed to politely suggest they might turn it down as the content wasn’t suitable for his daughter. It is usually mortifying to........

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