I could probably find all kinds of research into the ‘mobile phone effect’ if I cared to spend time looking but like a child contemplating the existence of Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, I’m not sure I really want to know. Give a particular form of human behaviour a name and class it as a disorder and you are expected to stop poking fun at those who show signs of having it.

I am referring, of course, to that strange behaviour some people exhibit when they are talking to someone on their mobile phone. If they were having the conversation with someone sitting beside them they would just talk normally. Put a mobile into their hand and suddenly they are an actor on a stage delivering a soliloquy for everyone to hear.

Myself and my dear wife travelled a few miles yesterday on a bus bursting at the seams with passengers making it’s way into the centre of Lincoln. There was the usual low murmur of various conversations taking place and if you listened carefully you might pick up a word here or a short phrase there as is usual. People tend not to bellow when simply conversing with a companion. But then, suddenly cutting through the background hum like a knife, came this one, youngish, female voice who appeared to want to inform everyone within a fifty yard radius all about her recent trip to the dentist.

Without going into boring detail we were treated to the whole saga from the pain to what the dentist told her – to the treatment she underwent in the dental chair right through to the antibiotics he prescribed for her. We even learnt that this was only the second time in her life she had been prescribed drugs, the first being her doctor prescribing her oral contraception.

Did I and my fellow travellers want to know all this? Of course we didn’t. Was this a rare event? We all know it isn’t because we experience this phenomena regularly. And yes – it annoys the hell out of the majority of people.

When the young lady finally finished her conversation and an eerie hush fell over the audience, I was very tempted to stand up and tell them all about my recent hospital experience with a delicate orifice, a small camera and a tube of KY but sadly for them we pulled into the bus station where were all to disembark so now they will never know.