It's time to end the intrusive democratisation of the private

I wasn’t born into a world in which people made free with Christian names. My friends and I, all of whom aspired to be novelists, addressed one another as Cher Maître

'It’s not the obscenity but the familiarity we object to, the assumption that we are all one happy family in facetiousness' (GARY DOAK / Alamy Stock Photo)

Odd that in principle we care so much about the sanctity of private space, yet have so little regard for it in practice. In Pret a Manger modern Britain, where everyone who sells you a sandwich is your best pal, the concept of distance has gone the way of honorifics.

I have an agreement with Boots the Chemist that they collect my prescription from my doctor and text me when they’ve dispensed it. I am not ungrateful. The system is efficient and convenient. But I find it intrusive – akin to having a stranger peering into my bedroom window – to be texted by someone I don’t know. And the notification isn’t business-like. No “Dear Mr Jacobson, this is to inform you that your pills are ready for collection. We await your visit with eager apprehension and guarantee you our kind attention at all times. Yours faithfully, The Management.” Instead, they call me Howard. Not even “Howard, if we may be so bold”, just plain, next-door neighbourish Howard. If I didn’t delete so quickly I’d probably discover a yellow smiley face wishing me a great weekend.

Complaining is out of the question. They won’t understand the offence. And I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Besides, I’m not sure it’s wise to mess with a dispenser of poisons. They could put anything in those pills the next time. “Take 20 of these, 10 times a day on an empty stomach and a bottle of whisky. Sweet dreams, Howard.” Accompanied by an emoticon of a dead man.

I wasn’t born into a world in which people made free with Christian names. My friends and I, all of whom aspired to be novelists, addressed one another as Cher Maître. At school I was ’Obson, and I doubted that anyone at Cambridge knew that Jews had Christian names. My bedmaker called me Sir (and just occasionally Naughty Boy); the college porters did the same, albeit with a snigger. F R Leavis called me Jacobson; my moral tutor called me Fagin; the Master called us men and the only girlfriend I ever had at Cambridge called me a name I cannot repeat here. Thus do the educated understand the importance of respecting distance.

When we did not otherwise want to be addressed or disturbed we shut the double doors to our rooms. This was called sporting one’s oak. And no one of any breeding knocked on a sported oak. You could be burning in your bed but still no fireman dared transgress against that code. A Cambridge man had the right to perish in inviolate privacy behind his oak. Whether this tradition still persists I have no idea, but I fear for it given that a friend who has a son at Trinity tells me his boy steals do-not-disturb signs from boutique hotels to hang on his college door. Not the old-fashioned signs politely requesting a little quiet, but the ones that say Up Yours or Go Fuck Yourself I’m Jerking Off.

How long before there’ll be no need to nick them from the latest bordello B&B because you’ll be able to pick them up, three for the price of two, at Boots? “Dear Howard, this is to let you know that Shove It and Sit On This are now in stock. You’ll find them in alternative therapies. Have a great weekend. Smiley face.”

How it is that hotels have become sites of gross sexual collusion between hoteliers and guests is a question I leave to sociologists of the hospitality business. But no longer does one need to sign in on a false name and rinse the sheets the morning one leaves. Now, if there’s been no congress, you have to fake the signs of it for fear of disappointing the chambermaid. Why else the reproduction of a lascivious Fragonard on the bedhead? Why the fridgeful of energy-boosting drinks? Why the bath oils and body washes whose uses baffle the imaginations of travellers with only business matters on their minds? Why the machine selling fruit-flavoured condoms in the reception area? Why the bar of soap that says “Gettin’ jiggy wit’ da figgy” and tells innocent users “we can tell from that grin you’ve been committing the fifth deadly sin”? What business is it of theirs, and since when was the fifth deadly sin a grinning matter, anyway?

We aren’t prudes in this column. We are pleased hotels are more accommodating to the needs of their guests. It’s not the obscenity but the familiarity we object to, the assumption that we are all one happy family in facetiousness. Call it the democratisation of the private. This is what you get when the necessary divisions in society are broken down: an end to deference, difference, manners and, above all, gravitas.

A Virgin train I regularly catch to Manchester to see my mother – Mrs Jacobson, to you – has the message “Hey, good looking” on the mirror of the toilet. The impertinence aside, what makes Virgin think it falls within its brief to entertain us? You want us to arrive at our destination in a good mood? That’s simple: get us there punctually; don’t check our tickets at both ends as well as on the train; don’t keep asking to see my senior railcard – of course I’ve got a senior railcard: I am a walking senior railcard – make better sandwiches, and don’t run out of them before the train’s left Euston.

But that’s not all. Over the lavatory bowl is a list of things they would rather we didn’t flush – “nappies, sanitary towels, old mobile phones, unpaid bills, your ex’s jumper, hopes, dreams or goldfish”. I’m surprised they lost their nerve and didn’t add Richard Branson. For it is he, of course – he and the thousand other Branson clones – we have to blame for our nation’s descent into indignity. “I love,” he says on his Virgin blog, “when signs and announcements show a little sense of humour.”

Shame, in that case, you don’t have one, Dickie.

PS: “Love when” isn’t English usage. You must be spending too much time in your balloon. Have a lovely weekend. Smiley face.