By Steve Harley in The Times  - 1st March 2010

There can be few ruder acts than twiddling with your BlackBerry at dinner

Mid-morning on Wednesday: my wife and I are on the train. Seated near us is an agitated guy, late twenties, on his mobile; he’s arguing with his live-in girlfriend, Carol. Apparently, she’s accusing him of being overfriendly with a barmaid. We, his fellow travellers, are obliged to digest this tale in all its intimate detail. I offer a stage-whispered heckle: “Dump him, Carol!” Can’t be sure if he heard.

Now here is a paradox. I still believe it is discourteous to use a mobile in a busy train compartment. Others, however, have no shame in conducting private phone conversations in front of strangers. And if you object, that could well be an infringement of modern etiquette.

I am not a grumpy Luddite. As a musician, I couldn’t tour as I do or make records without advanced technology. I have a website where I upload an infrequent diary, and I take a mobile on awaydays and holidays.

Use, however, is one thing; abuse something else. There is surely no more ill-mannered act than twiddling with a BlackBerry while in conversation at dinner. What can be so crucial that you must divert your attention from real people to check your in-box? Handheld electronics, anthropologists would probably say, are a kind of validation. A shiny box with twinkly lights shows the owner is modern and important.

I have never found a need for instant messaging or any other digital networking. I am . . . a grown-up. Instant messaging, Facebook and Twitter were designed for teenagers, weren’t they? Intelligent, mature people should learn to live without a MySpace or Twitter account.

As Stephen Fry would have it, networking sites go under the collective term “social media”. More like “antisocial media”. Messages posted online will never replace the nuances and gestures of face-to-face conversation. The hundreds of “friends” that users collect are not real friends: they may not have even met.

It’s an oddly lonely public life on Facelessbook, where everyone’s a megabyte star and there’s no hiding place. It’s addictive, too. The hours children spend online are at the expense of conversation and reading.

We’re none of us perfect, of course. This week, I was filming a short piece-to-camera for television. I was hitting my stride when a familiar (it doesn’t happen often, I swear) trilling was set off in my coat pocket just before the conclusion. My mobile. A text message. Always intouch; always reachable. Embarrassing. Could we go back to the beginning, please?

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