Ever wish certain people would pipe down? Us too. Here's our unlucky 13 genres of people we've heard more than enough from, thanks very much.
(Feel free to add your own in the comments below. You never know, they might even take notice...)
1. Vegans
Do you ever introduce yourself as
"a committed meat consumer"? Do you have "eats fish, meat and animal products" in your social media bio? Do you declare yourself "evangelical about dead livestock"? No, you probably don't, unless you're clinically insane.
Vegans have no such qualms about making their dietary choices a key part of their personality. Personalities which, let's face, often aren't terribly interesting.
At any communal meal, in or out, they'll make a big old look-at-me fuss. They believe veganism (veganitude? vegbianism?) is an all-encompassing "lifestyle", not just a diet. They're judgey and finger-waggy, forever droning on about "ethical" this, "compassionate" the other, putting you off your sausage sarnie. They're contractually obliged to pretend that vegan food (tofu, soya, almond milk, cheese that tastes of feet) is as good as the real thing.
Most of all, they talk about it. All. The. Time. What do you want, Holland & Barrett bore, a medal made out of kale?
2. Non-apologisers
Mate, if you're truly sorry, just say so. Admit you were wrong, express remorse and try to fix it. Enough already with the "different times", "personal journey" "taken the wrong way", "seeking treatment", "if you were offended" get-out guff. It's fooling nobody and you're making it worse.
3. Cyclists
21st century Britain is in the grip of a bicycult. Fleets of brainwashed pedallers are spending all their money and time (oi patriarchy, who's lumbered with looking after the kids when you're on a four-hour weekend "training run"?) on two-wheeled tedium machines. Cycling's the new golf - a mind-numbingly dull time-filler for middle managers to discuss after meetings and become pathetically competitive about.
Men (it's always men) have mistaken their expensive new hobby for the elixir of youth. They strut around in clacky shoes, phallic helmets, wraparound shades and BO-infused Lycra, deluding themselves they don't look utterly ludicrous. They talk about their "ride" with a straight face and share their "adventures" on mapping apps, like literally anyone cares.
Hate to break it to you, gents, but you're more Boris Johnson than Bradley Wiggins. Just a tubby office drone in the midst of a mid-life crisis. It's a mode of transport, not a way of life. You didn't hear us going on about our Grifters, Choppers, BMXs and Raleigh racers the whole time. They could do wheelies and were way cooler.
4. Parents obsessing about schools
So you've hired a tutor to help little Tarquin get into into the selective grammar? Obviously you'd rather support the local state school but it's simply not good enough for your precious darlings. Extra-curricular activities, right. Pastoral care. Mmm-hmm, postcode lottery. Catchment areas, of course. No, you'll only go private if you really have to, like someone's got a gun to your head or something.
Sorry folks but a nervous laugh while pointing out that you've turned into a middle-class cliché doesn't make it OK. Far too many social occasions are ruined by interminable schools-based "bantz". So please, parents of Britain: it's of the utmost importance to nobody except you, so just drone on to each other and spare the rest of us.
Property price bores are up there too, but at least most of us live in a house, so can summon up a passing interest for, ooh, at least two minutes. After that, eyes glaze over and thoughts turn murderous.
No such spirit of sportsmanship for today's over-entitled cry-babies, who believe they've got a divine right to always win. Every time they lose (or draw, or even not win by enough goals or with enough "style"), toys come out of the pram. They immediately pollute social media and radio phone-ins with diva-ish demands that managers get sacked or transfers get made. Stop it. Shut it. Suffer it. Be a gracious winner, a good loser and a proper grown-up.
5. Professional trolls
Let's not give them the oxygen of using their names but you know who they are. The mega-mouthed outrage machines. The "provocateurs". The "telling it like it is" merchants. The soulless, s***-stirring contrarians who you wouldn't want to get cornered by at a party.
Let's all start ignoring them and they might shut their poisonous pie-holes.
6. People who hate Christmas/Halloween/other festivities
Yes, yes, we get it. You're in some way superior to us gullible "sheeple" who prefer to embrace annual celebrations and have (*clutches pearls in horror*) actual fun. But keep your joyless griping and grumbling to yourself, Scrooge McGrinch, you're busting our vibe.
7. Sponsor-me beggars
No really, I'm delighted you've become a massive mid-life triathlon cliché. Well done for growing an hilarious ironic moustache or not drinking for a month or whatever it is, because I stopped reading your round-robin email by the end of the first line. What? You want me to log onto JustGiving and pay you actual money for it too?
At least the ones doing it for charidee make a pretence of public spiritedness, rather than pure attention-seeky self-promotion. The gap yah chancers who effectively want you to fund their holiday - sorry, sponsor them for trekking somewhere, saving something or half-arsedly helping at an orphanage/budgie hospital/amoeba sanctuary - they're the biggest b******s of all.
8. Public phone talkers
When did people stop self-consciously lowering their voices if they had to take a call in public? We miss those halcyon days.
Nowadays it's phone at max volume, complete with annoying ringtone and cranked-up keypad beeps. It's wandering around, shamelessly yelling into a hands-free. It's boring the faces off fellow bus and train passengers with your end of a tiresome conversation. It's one-finger-in-the-ear yelling in pubs and restaurants. It's rudely carrying on your chat while being wordlessly served in shops.
Memo to all of you: your phone call isn't remotely important enough to justify being an enormo-git to real-life humans. Also, you've got an awful voice.
9. Runners
Sometime in the Nineties, "jogging" got rebranded as "running" and became even more monumentally boring. Red-faced participants still trudge twice around the local park or sweatily plod to the office, except now it's not a keep-fit chore, it's a spiritual quest.
Rather than the annual London Marathon being the holy grail, they can now spend the entire year wanging on about 10Ks, half-marathons, Parkruns and Tough Mudders. They can upload their times and distances on social media, hoping for pats on the head like a needy labrador.
Some of them used to be tolerable company. Now they just chunter on about "PBs", compression tights, Nike+ apps, Garmins, wicking, blisters, Strava, shin splints and endorphins.
Two words: jog on.
10. Clean eaters
Some overlap here with vegans (see no.1) but the #eatclean #wellness bread-phobic brigade are arguably even worse - polishing their deluded, eating-disorder-in-disguise halos while spending the equivalent of an African republic's national debt each month on goji berries, chia seeds, agave syrup, flax oil, pomegranate molasses, nut milks, spelt flour, coconut water, matcha tea, quinoa, Himalayan pink salt and over-priced organic veg (chosen on colour rather than flavour - more Instagrammable innit?). Stick that in your Nutribullet and juice it, sweetie.
They add turmeric to everything for no apparent reason. They contain more avocado than a Seventies bathroom. They gullibly swallow such abominations as "courgetti", "spirulina" and "cauliflower couscous". They believe "superfoods", "detoxing", "bone broth" and "Buddha bowls" are actually a thing. They pretend they're gluten-intolerant when most of the time, they totally aren't.
It's all smugness, no science. Does that stop them wibbling on about it until the purple-sprouting broccoli gets bored, grows legs and walks away? Does it flax.
This article was first published in the Daily Telegraph UK.