Sniff. ‘England flop Frank Lampard seems a bit worried about his tackle...’ Sniff. ‘Andy Murray will today get his teeth into World No1 Rafael Nadal – after munching up to 50 servings of sushi each night...’ SNIFF!

‘Beer loving Prince Charles looks more than happy...’ SNIFFFFFF!

‘Dear Deidre, I’ve never been that hot in the bedroom...’ SNIFF! SNIFF! SNIFF!

At times like these, I just want a chainsaw. Or a demolition ball. Or better still, a cattle prod. And trust me, I abhor violence. But if someone must insist on clearing their nasal passageways with all the might of a 747, you’d think they’d at least wait until they were in their own wind tunnel.

You see, I was on a coach last Friday morning, coming back from London, and if I’m honest, I was on crackin’ form – the week had gone well, the morning felt cool and refreshing, and, I felt I looked the same.

Reading my favourite tabloid – apart, from the Oxford Mail of course – I felt at peace with my fellow travellers.

I was calm, my karma was chilled and had someone cornered me with a collection tin, then yes, I’d have dropped in a luncheon voucher or two.

That’s how... bountiful I felt. But just an hour later, it was like that benign, magnanimous, munificent individual, known only by the name of Jezza, had never been born.

The world had somehow imploded, slipping beyond some cosmic event horizon, and nothing would ever be the same again.

So much so that just 60 minutes later, I was angry, confused and harbouring homicidal fantasies.

SNIFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

Now if the culprit concerned had been a six-year-old boy, I would have winced, yes, and cursed too the parent (under my breath); but that would have been it.

What tweaked the rat part of my brain stem on this occasion however was the fact that the ‘sniffer’ was in his 30s.

True, as bland as a pizza base without the topping and – by the look of his wire rimmed glasses – a ‘seasonal’ campaigner too (for what I don’t know and I don’t think he did either, but I guess under a warm sun, one police cordon looks pretty much like another), but clearly no-one had ever shown him a tissue.

And, because lives are turned on such simple oversights, here he was, systematically destroying the wellbeing of all those around him, sniffing and snorting and sniffing (like jelly through a straw...).

Whether he was suffering from hayfever, or a cold I don’t know, and maybe he hadn’t had time to buy tissues before getting on the coach. But couldn’t he have just used the sleeve of his shirt, his trouser leg, one of the pages from the book he was reading – or anything rather than his actual nostrils?

Fortunately, he may never know how close he came to being dumped on the asphalt of the M40. But I, at least, am grateful to the rather genteel and fragrant woman sitting beside me who, when he did finally alight at St Aldate’s, whispered: “I don’t know about you, but I had him boiling in a vat of tar.”

She made me look like Florence Nightingale.