What is the number one thing to annoy you on the tube?

To celebrate The Little Book of Tube Etiquette now being available as a paperback in time for Christmas, I'd like to revisit what got me writing about tube etiquette in the first place.

One cold, wet and windy day, when all tubes were most definitely not 'operating a good service', and people's behaviour was shocking as a result, I met with my girlfriends and over a few bottles of wine we started reeling off all the behaviours of people on the tube that most irritated us.

From the lack of understanding of personal space, to clogging up the entrances and exits in the tube stations, playing deafeningly loud music to couples snogging and slurping cramped up against your ear and, of course not forgetting, the eponymous daring to get on the tube before we can get off, we soon had enough to get me thinking about filling a book and off I started writing.  Having commuted using the tube every day for several years, it wasn't long before I had more than enough to fill several books but what made it into The Little Book of Tube Etiquette were the experiences I thought were more common, rather than some of my rather more random ones (and there have been some very random ones!)

Everyone I speak to about The Little Book of Tube Etiquette has their own worst irritation, whether it's one of the above or something more obscure that I either havent experienced myself or didn't end up including in the book.

So, in the aim of recognising everyone's foibles and etiquette suggestions, I'd like to collect what people's all time top tube etiquette rule should be, based on a bad experience or irritation.

Please either tweet me @LauraKing14, email me at LauraKing14@hotmail.com or post on this blog your most irksome display of poor tube etiquette or suggested etiquette rule and, if you want to, the experience or reasoning for it being your number one.

I will publish the most popular and also the most obscure in a month's time.



Laura King is the author of The Little Book of Tube Etiquette, available now in paperback from Waterstones, Amazon and a number of online retailers priced at £4.99. The hardback is also available at Foyles and Cards Galore.
Follow me on twitter @LauraKing14