Full marks for Esat Digifone which, despite those cringe-inducing advertisements, at least has the good manners to realise that there are times and places where the cellphone is intrusively anti-social. The company this week initiated a campaign to promote "mobile manners", encouraging people to use their phones in a considerate manner. The "Digisense" promotion hopes to heighten users' awareness on where and when to cut the umbilical cord, such as making a call while eating a sandwich and steering an Opel Ascona (not necessarily simultaneously).

But why risk using the wretched things at all? Although pooh-poohed by the industry as scaremongery, medical research has thrown up some worrying questions about the prolonged use of cellular phones. The electromagnetic field has been positively linked to the development of cancer in mice (or negatively linked, if looked at from the mouse's point of view) and prolonged use of mobiles is said to temporarily impair the ability of rats to learn simple tasks - the effect on managing directors and middle management has yet to be determined. So when next you see an Opel Ascona driver making a call, swerving wildly between lanes, don't condemn him as an idiot - he's probably just forgotten how to drive the car!