When I was at university circa 1960, we had one lecturer, a young Oxford graduate, who insisted on being called by his first name, and who called us by ours. He was considered very daring indeed. Even undergraduates were addressed as Miss and Mr.

I believe that in the armed services during the war women addressed each other by their surnames. It wasn't uncommon among the staff in girls' schools, either.

My father always found it very strange when in his eighties and nineties he was addressed by his first name in hospitals, but being a tolerant man he just laughed, and accepted it as something that had changed.

My gardener, who is, I suppose, in his early forties, always calls me Mrs Chambers (well, Mrs My-real-name). I call him Darren

T-p, on my one visit to St Petersburg in the mid-1990s, the people I was with were very surprised that shop assistants didn't smile. It didn't worry me - I thought they were just getting on with the job, and I actually preferred it to the "Have a nice day" kind of insincerity that has crept in here. I can't stand that -  or the increasingly common "Enjoy your meal". There is no proper translation of Bon appétit into English.

I shall bear it in mind next time Sinbad the Sailor looks up from his Guinness to rescue me in his strong arms from some fearsome peril.

I don't mind what people call me, whether I know them or not, except that when a shop assistant or someone in a bank or somewhere is being irritating in some other way, the form of address they're using can sometimes become an extra irritation.

I don't really object to 'Enjoy your meal', but the one piece of modern manners I really can't stant is the constant interruption of 'Are you enjoying your food?' which most British waiters seem to be trained to give. I usually want to answer 'I was until you asked', although I don't think I ever have said that!

Yes, R, that's why I said 'trained to give'. You're right about the wider trend, though: I do find it incredible that those who establish such things as 'correct procedure' don't realise how it's having the opposite to intended effect. I'm glad that when I worked in retail it was for a small-ish company that didn't force these things on me, nor ask me to force them on anyone else once I became an assistant manager.

Incidentally, speaking of my own experience in retail, I always took the attitude that we no longer live in a society with a clear distinction between those who serve and those who are served. I used to spend a good proportion of my day serving others but of course that didn't stop me from being involved in situations where I was being served (if I went to buy something in my lunch break, for example). So I just served people the way I'd expect to be served myself in a shop, and I never bothered about calling anyone 'Sir' or 'Madam', although of course I judged how familiar I could be with different customers based on my sense of the individual I was dealing with, just as I would do now if I was talking to a stranger in a bar or in the street.

In certain types of shop, which I prefer not to go into anymore, it is not uncommon to be asked, "Can I help you, mate?" 

That seems to me a much better rule than "say stupidly servitudinous things as often as possible". The shop where I spent most of my retail-employee time was a pretty old-fashioned place (Farringdon Records in Holborn Viaduct and Cheapside, 1980-83, if anyone can remember that far back) - we weren't instructed to say "Sir" and "Madam" but it was somehow understood that this was how the place worked. On the other hand, for part of that time we weren't discouraged from smoking behind the counter! Imagine! I was quite put out when the proprietor decided he would put a stop to it.

These of course.

In Bruckner 6, sir, I think you'd be best off with the Klemperer recording on EMI, it's like this old German dude with his mouth like hanging open and it freaked me right out...

I find myself fighting for breath if I find myself within fifty yards of one of those places so consequently I've never entered one. How do the staff survive it?