STOP talking with your mouth full - it's rude. At least, 1,671 people thought so. They complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the KFC ad, which featured workers in a call centre chomping on some KFC delight while dealing, or not dealing, with customers' calls.

Isn't it wonderful that all those people were so bothered about bad manners? I didn't think anyone cared any more. Certainly when you walk through any busy town you can usually see plenty of people chomping on burgers, talking away, spraying passers-by with bits of ketchup and unwanted lettuce.

Then there are all those mobile phone conversations we're forced to overhear, loud music we're forced to listen to - and that's when we're not being pushed off the streets by foul mouthed youngsters or pushed off the road by aggressive drivers. If only there were somewhere you could ring to complain about that lot.

In the great scheme of things, we suppose that manners - good or bad - are fairly trivial. But they're not. They are not some optional extra, they are actually the basis of a decent society. Good manners are not about some pointless etiquette, about how to curtsey to the Queen or even knowing which knife and fork to use. Good manners are essentially about consideration for other people, about putting their comfort above your pleasure. Whether it's about not inflicting your loud music on them, beating them away from the traffic lights, or leaving pools of vomit for them to walk round after your night out.

It might sound daft, but much of what we call the yob society is actually based on a simple lack of good manners. Banning hoodies, fining yobs, inflicting ASBOs are all dealing with a problem that might not have arisen - or been so serious - if good manners had prevailed from a very young age and were the basis of our lives.

Infants' schools still do their best - wait your turn, don't snatch, what's the magic word?, ask nicely - but they're fighting a losing battle against the rest of the world.

But now 1, 671 people have done something about it. So perhaps the rest of us could now try to do our bit too. And we could start by training any small children in our care. Please. If it's not putting you to too much trouble. Thank you.

When it's better

to be left alone

NOW they've discovered yet another hospital superbug that's killing off patients. Meanwhile, in another bit of nonsense, a hospital in Leicester has banned the Bible from bedside lockers.

Instead of banning Bibles, wouldn't it be better to ban visitors? Or at least, quite so many, quite so often.

In the days when hospital visiting was strictly limited to two people at a time, two hours a day and no sitting on the beds, infection rates were low. Now all day, every day, wards swarm with visitors bringing all sorts of germs and spreading them about. Not to mention children running up and down the wards causing havoc.

When you're ill in hospital, it's wonderful to have visitors. But sometimes, it's even lovelier to see them go and have the chance to be ill in peace.

SENTENCING an 18-year-old after he'd had a high speed race along a dual carriageway, Judge Durham Hall said there was something to be said for not letting young men drive until they are at least 24.

Too soon, too soon. How about waiting till they're 30, or maybe even 40?

Then that would give them a few years of sensible driving - until they strangely transmogrify into old men in caps who cause chaos by driving at 30mph right in the middle of the road.

Published: ??/??/2004