5 Feet of Fury

Agreed: Booze and smokes nowhere near as annoying as other people’s children

Julie Burchill:

I can honestly say that smokers and drinkers combined have never come half as near to ruining nice days out for me, be they in restaurants, museums or parks, as other peoples’ children have – particularly the sort of entitled bourgeois brat whose moron of a mother is liable to say, as one cretin did in Waitrose a while back when her spawn came out with an ear-splitting scream: “That was a VERY good noise, darling – do another, even louder!” I’m NOT joking!

Yet increasingly there is no place to hide from the creatures – they eat for free in formerly civilised establishments, and turn decent pubs into crèches. Come back, Booze and Fags – all is forgiven!