Mary Killen Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How to stop cinema iPhone pests

First, take out your iPhone...

Q. At a private screening of a documentary about the artist David Bomberg, a woman sitting near me in the hand-picked audience carried on using her iPhone to send and receive messages. She had the phone on silent but was generating a rival source of light to the screen we were all supposed to be watching. Thus we could not fully concentrate. Was there an elegant way I might have put a stop to this insensitive behaviour? What would you have said, Mary?
— S.H-H., London SW3

A. There is no need to say anything. Cinema usherettes of yore would curb rowdy or undesirable behaviour in the stalls by shining a torch onto the miscreants. You might replicate this practice by using the iTorch facility on your own iPhone to project onto the culprit an exposing pool of light. As those around turn to follow the focus of the beam, the culprit is faced with Bateman- cartoon style censure and you soon see an end to the nuisance.

Q. I often get the train to school and there is a chap in the year below me who thinks we are good friends. How do I politely ask him to stop trying to ingratiate himself with me? Thanks.
— G.B., London SW1

A. He must be the only boy in the country who is unaware of the concept of ‘yearism’, which dictates that no schoolboy speaks to someone in the year above him. He waits to be spoken to first. Why not assert your superiority by assuming that the boy must wish to perform fagging chores for you, since otherwise he would not dare to even talk to you? For example, say, ‘Oh great.

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