Whether it’s an A-lister or an old schoolfriend emerging blearily from the spare room, those first moments of the day are tricky

First thing in the morning, that’s the hardest time. Eric Idle told me this. A wise man, is Eric. Actor, comedian, songwriter, musician, screenwriter and playwright and, when it comes to mornings, a man of wisdom.

I interviewed him about his new book, which is a love letter to his house in Provence. He bought it more than half a century ago, before he hit the big time. It didn’t cost him much, because it was tiny, tumbledown and without water or electricity. Slowly, as the money came in from this job or that, he made improvements. By hook or by crook, the water and electricity started to flow, and with them a steady stream of guests coming to stay. These weren’t just any old guests: they were superstars, among them David Bowie, Art Garfunkel, Penny Marshall, Lauren Hutton, Brian Cox (the professor and the actor too, I think, although possibly not at the same time), Paul Simon, Carrie Fisher, Robin Williams and George Harrison. Also Michael Palin and assorted Pythons; Ronnie Wood and assorted Stones. And so on. There are photos of Wood sitting on the floor strumming his guitar; Bowie mooning about clad only in short shorts. Quite something, but all I could think about was how tiring it must have been to have so many guests turning up all the time. Let’s be honest: guests are a bit of an effort. A-lister or Joe Bloggs, a guest’s a guest.

It might seem a perfectly natural thing to do. But, on TikTok, a recruiter has expressed her dismay at gen Zs showing up with a takeout drink – and it’s caused a ruckus

Name: Iced coffee.

Age: Colonial troops in Algeria invented a sweetened cold coffee beverage known as Mazagran in around about 1840. However, in Japan, a cold brew was popular among sailors even earlier, in the 17th century.

My hosting persona is an edgier version of Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Invite me to yours, however, and I am a nonstop delight

My epiphany came between the starter and the main. At a friend’s place for dinner, I sat in awe as she put on a kind of magic show – the first course plates were cleared, but I never noticed her doing it. Delicious food was repeatedly produced with no lengthy disappearing act preceding it, no fuss, no panic. The candles on the table flickered invitingly, the background music was unobtrusive but atmospheric, the wine and chat flowed effortlessly. If I had later discovered she secretly had a full staff – planning, preparing, cooking, cleaning – it would have made perfect sense. But no, it was all her. And then I realised, the world is divided into people who are hosts, and people who are guests. You’re either one, or the other – nobody is both, apart from maybe the Duchess of Sussex. If you aren’t sure which camp you fall into, ask someone close to you if you’re a good host. If they pause for longer than 0.2 seconds before answering, you’re a guest.

As alluded to above, I am a terrible host. When welcoming people into your home, your mood sets the tone for what follows: if you’re relaxed, calm and smiley, they will be too. I am uptight, edgy – and very, very clearly on my last nerve as I open the door to let them in. I’m probably grimacing, I might be close to tears. I will then be so extremely laser focused on them having a nice time, that it will ensure they most definitely do not. I run from room to room. I yelp. I don’t engage in conversation, because even if I can briefly get it together enough to appear to be listening, I’m really thinking about whether I set the oven to the right temperature, and realising I forgot to look at the clock when I put the food in it. I am neither present nor absent, but an infuriating combination of the two. I loiter. I lurk. My energy is that of a surgeon dashing to the operating room, who has just noticed that they’ve forgotten everything they learned at medical school. Or perhaps it’s Manuel from Fawlty Towers. When it comes to hosting, I am a mess.

It was the fastest-growing emoji in 2025 – but if you’re older than 16, it has probably passed you by. Now, just as twentysomethings are catching up, it’s over

In the 2025 hit Netflix show Adolescence, DI Luke Bascombe’s 13-year-old son, Adam, has to explain to his father the way his generation use heart emojis. “Red means love, purple: horny, yellow: ‘I’m interested, are you interested?’, pink: ‘I’m interested but not in sex,’ orange: ‘You’re going to be fine,’” he explains. “It all has a meaning. Everything has a meaning.”

And those meanings are constantly evolving. Take the skull (), for example, which has come to be used as a reaction for finding something funny – a visual shorthand for the slang phrase: “I’m dead.” Or the wilting rose () which was, according to Google data analysed by the New York Times, the fastest-growing emoji in terms of popularity in 2025 – and was the 93rd most used. That the previously obscure wilting rose is now in the top 100 emojis is thanks to generation Alpha (those born between 2010 and 2024), who use it in place of the broken heart emoji () to signify sadness, or ironically, to suggest mock-heartbreak.

Would you hand in your phone at the door in exchange for a free bottle of wine? One restaurateur has tried that – and there are now many other gambits that are encouraging us to connect

Name: Phone bans.

Age: Their provenance is considerable; their time is now.

Conversations are supposed to be two-sided – but all too often we come up against someone who’s passionately, exclusively in love with the sound of their own voice. Time to fight back …

When I was in my early teens, I was often invited round to a schoolfriend’s house for dinner. Her family struck me as wildly progressive: they were Danish and indulged in all sorts of “out-there” activities – fondues, candle-making and, most terrifying of all, the talking stick.

Before the meal was served, someone would retrieve the sacred broom handle and it would be passed around the table. You could speak only if you had possession of the stick. Despite it being the most stressful thing ever (it meant being in the spotlight, and then remembering to keep quiet the rest of the time), I now frequently yearn for a more convenient version of that stick.

For example, I met a friend recently who I see infrequently but keep up with via voice notes. No sooner had we sat down than he launched into a long discourse about his new marathon training food plan. He only broke the flow to order an omelette: “Four egg whites, two yolks, is that possible?” (We were in my local greasy spoon, so the request was greeted with mirth.) When we left, 90 minutes later, he finally had the grace to turn to me and ask: “And how are things with you?”

Walking home, I felt a mixture of disappointment and irritation. Had he always been so self-absorbed? So uninterested in anyone else? I couldn’t help wondering if our one-sided virtual updates had played a part in the problem.

There is a name for this type of egocentric behaviour – “conversational narcissism”. Although it was coined by the sociologist Charles Derber in his 1979 book The Pursuit of Attention, the term seems more relevant than ever. “WhatsApp communication and voice notes are really a series of monologues,” says Charlotte Fox Weber, a psychotherapist. “In face-to-face situations, people are forgetting how to pause naturally, to make space to hear and listen. And people are chatting on the phone – an activity that at least requires turn-taking in a defined way – much less often.”

A lot of our communication online can feel weirdly transactional, focused on logistics or niche WhatsApp groups. According to Tamu Thomas, a life coach and author, this has damaged the art of improvised conversation. “People have less capacity for meandering conversations that don’t have a purpose,” she says. “A good dialogue is a back-and-forth between two people discovering new things about each other, even if they have known each other for years. Because there are now so many different channels available to stay in touch, some people are confusing communication with connection.”

Knowledge is power, though. If you can recognise the five types of common conversation hogger, it will be much easier to handle them.

If you’re called by an unidentified number, the advice is to remain silent until you’re sure there’s a human being on the line. Is this the end of an era?

Name: Hello.

Age: 200 years old.

Service charges used to be a matter of choice, but now consumers feel obliged to pay them for even a cup of coffee. How do we navigate this minefield and who is really profiting?

In a London pub, Greg Double was brutally confronted with the reality of Britain’s evolving tipping culture. “I was annoyed about the pint being eight quid, but then when you put service on top, it’s absolutely criminal,” he says. In the past, you might have told the bar staff to keep the change or have a “drink” on you, but since when did we routinely tip in pubs? Or coffee shops? Or, worst of all, at self-service machines? Tip creep is happening.

Tipping was awkward enough in the UK when the general rule was 10% at a restaurant, plus anxiety about whether you should tip the hairdresser, babysitter or food-delivery driver. Now, with tipping suggested ever more frequently, US-style, it has become a minefield to Britons. The amounts edge higher – in fancier London restaurants, a 15% service charge is relatively commonplace. And it’s often asked for – in coffee shops for example, when you pay – before any service is delivered.

Whether it’s paying for dinner, going on holiday or sharing a taxi, friendships can be fraught with financial frustrations, which are very rarely aired. Here’s how to break the taboo

Summer is the season of socialising, from alfresco drinks to weddings to group holidays. It can get expensive – and suddenly you start noticing those friends who don’t pay their way. Or the ones who splash the cash and make you feel cheap. In fact, there are a host of annoying money-related habits that can cause tension among friends. Here are 20 common sources of financial frustration – and how to resolve them.

Public displays of affection are widely mocked online and off, but they have a positive side – and now science has proved it

Name: Kissing in public.

Age: Kissing is 17m-21m years old – probably older than the notion of privacy.

Domestic dramas, bodily fluids, drink, drugs, rudeness and worse … ushers and box office staff have seen it all. So much for the myth of the ‘genteel’ theatregoer

‘Theatre still has a sheen of respectability, so people feel they can behave badly because where they are cancels out how dreadful they are being,” says John, who has been a box office manager for 15 years. From my early 20s to my mid-30s, I too worked in the box office, at some of London’s top theatres. During my decade in the job, I witnessed audience behaviour ranging from the odd and the outrageous to the outright belligerent. If you are under any illusion that theatre audiences are classy, allow my former colleagues to disabuse you of that notion.

The misuse of phones is one of the most common offences. In April, Cynthia Erivo stopped her one-woman West End production of Dracula mid-performance to urge an audience member to stop filming. Former Love Island winner Amber Davies, starring in a tour of Legally Blonde, last month asked staff to kick out an audience member who was filming the performance from the front row of a Dublin theatre. And in May, Rosamund Pike spotted an audience member texting during the climax of her performance in Inter Alia. After the curtain call, Pike returned to the stage and shamed the behaviour, without singling out the culprit. Part of me hoped that, like a teacher, she would make the individual in question read their texts out to the rest of the theatre.

The time-honoured tradition of standing up with a drink, gossiping and putting the world to rights is under threat. If councillors ban it, we’ll all lose out

It is unbelievable: unconscionable. Westminster Council is moving against “vertical drinking” in pubs, starting with Soho. It claims drinking standing up is noisy and disruptive. It makes pubs, the council says, boisterous places where customers crowd round bars, get drunk and become pains in the neck in the street outside.

Westminster’s new draft licences would require pubs to be only for seating, to have “table service in place of open bar space”. Pub users should, presumably, sit down, shut up and wait to be served, like decent Westminster people who use wine bars.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

It’s easy to lose your cool when you’re crammed into a train, bus or plane with a bunch of strangers and one of them is playing music without headphones or fighting you for the armrest. Here are the rules everyone should be following

Public transport can be a hot, noisy, cramped and stressful environment – and that’s before you add in people with pungent food, questionable hygiene and giant backpacks. Most of us know the general rules – though we don’t all follow them – about letting people off first, not putting bags on seats, where to stand on escalators and offering your seat to others. But what about the vaguer conventions? How can you avoid chatty passengers? Or manspreaders? Is it sometimes OK to put your feet on the seats? (Spoiler: it’s not.) Here, three etiquette experts show us the way to public transport propriety.

Social media has supposedly ramped up our impulse to judge each other on the most trivial grounds – but is this really a new thing?

‘Are we living in an “era of microsnobberies”? Writing in the Washington Post last week, the lifestyle influencer Victoria Wolff asserted that we are, claiming that the fragmentation of American taste facilitated by, and expressed through, social media had created a new phenomenon of “hundreds of tribes” judging each other on highly specific sets of status signifiers.

Wolff cited a few – “your children’s lunch boxes, whether your roses are native and if your olive oil has a story” – that left me feeling like a grubby little peasant with my narratively inadequate oil, but also relieved not to live in Amagansett in the Hamptons, as she does. It sounds like a Nancy Meyers meets Edith Wharton hellscape. Indeed, I was reminded of reading earlier this year about the tiny-batch $80 (£60) fruit pies you’re supposed to bring as a “hostess gift” in those parts (etiquette specialists advise Hobnobs remain an acceptable hostess gift in the eastern suburbs of York).

There’s nothing worse than the unannounced ‘pop-in’. No wonder young people simply refuse to open up

The latest age signifier has nothing to do with knowing what music the kids are listening to, or whether your socks are showing: it’s all about your doorbell. Namely, if you weren’t expecting anybody, and it rang, would you answer it? Apparently your reply to this pressing matter (no pun, etc) instantly identifies which generation you’re part of.

Millennials and gen Z wouldn’t dream of opening the door. Bonus points for being aware that if it was a fellow gen Zer calling, they wouldn’t have rung the bell in the first place – they would have messaged “outside” or “here” instead.

First it was weddings. Now, going overboard on birthdays, planning murder-mystery breaks or mini-festivals with dress codes and branded merch, is the norm for many. Is this driven by monster egos, or a search for connection in a fractured age?

MikeFest takes place every year, over the August bank holiday weekend, in a large leafy garden on the Cornish coast. Birthday boy Michael’s nearest and dearest turn up in their sparkliest gear (as per the invitation) with tents tucked under their arms. Masks with his face printed on them are handed out, as are handheld fans and sippy cups branded with each guest’s name. Organised fun ensues, including a compulsory talent show. Michael always wins first place with his interpretive dance routine.

Michael is not turning 10; he is about to be 44. And he accepts the title of “birthdayzilla”, admitting that he’s guilt-tripped friends who were unable to make it and barred those who miss two festivals in a row from future events. But he’s quick to defend his fellow birthday fanatics. “It doesn’t feel like there’s much to celebrate these days, and it’s harder than ever to get people together. So yes, I’m militant about my birthday,” he says. “I just think: I’ve managed to build a life I like and a network of people I love, why not make a fuss about it? I don’t think expecting them to show up for me once a year is such a big ask.”

Back in the day you had to be rude in person – now you can do it anonymously from home

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When is it OK to go shirtless? What time can you start drinking on holiday? And can you ask a stranger to apply your sunscreen? Experts explain the behaviour that’s hot this summer – and what’s really, really not

Summer means a loosening of rules and norms. Eating with your fingers is suddenly encouraged, near-nakedness is everywhere and a 6am airport pint is unremarkable. It’s a hot, sticky recipe for social chaos and – if you share my view on showing off ungroomed feet – possibly the end times of human civilisation. Here, then, is everything you need to know about summer etiquette.

Do you keep your headphones on at the checkout? Or chat people up then never follow through? You need our expert guide to the new social faux pas – and how to avoid them

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The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

This week’s question: Are there places on Earth where humans haven’t been?

Why does silence feel so horribly awkward? Ruth Thompson, by email

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Someone you know well: silence is fine. Not listening to them is fine, too, but you might wish to tell them that you are switching off, just in case they have something of import to say.

Someone you don’t know and do not plan to know: silence is fine.

Someone you do not know, but will have to know (colleague, inherited family members): talk about the weather, scenery, seating, anything bland and immediate.

Someone you do not know or not well but looks scared or stressed (shivering, twisting hands, looking like they need the loo): smile blandly and make a small comment that does not require an answer.