TV presenter Fern Britton’s biggest annoyances include packaging that’s too difficult to open, cashless shops, and being asked to rate services online after using them.

She has shared her everyday peeves as she researches a book and invited others of a mature age to say what drives them to distraction. To help out, we asked several notables to vent their annoyances…

The first Nokia phone apparently had more computing power than it took to land the first man on the Moon, though I’m not sure to what end.

My iPhone is so over-specced that half the time I can’t use it. Our TV, too, has so many options it takes three remotes and a few blind rages to locate a news programme. 

All the beeping and flashing from my appliances like the fridge, microwave, and dishwasher have made it impossible to hear anything, even the doorbell. What happened to “Keep It Simple, Stupid”?

Esther Rantzen, 84

Journalist and TV presenter

When MasterChef judge John Torode says would-be chefs should cook ‘for Gregg [Wallace] and I’, he means ‘for Gregg and me’. He’s not alone. The word ‘me’ is critically endangered, almost extinct. It’s a kind of grammatical snobbery to use ‘I’, and it’s wrong. And don’t start me on apostrophes.

Writing great songs used to be prized as a rare skill, but no longer. Compare the wonderful poetry of composers in the 1930s and 1940s, like Jerome Kern (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes) and Cole Porter (Every Time We Say Goodbye) with the non-rhyming improvisations of today, when singers claim to be composers because there’s money in the writing royalties.

Janet Street-Porter, 77

Broadcaster and journalist

Here is a particular breed that rankles: Puritan pensioners.

These former party animals of my generation – who behaved badly from the 1960s to the 1990s – are now so determined to live to be 100 that they’ve undergone a radical transformation. These longevity zealots count steps (a minimum of 15,000 daily), drink just two evenings a week and eat minimal carbs and ‘nothing with a face’. Their last 40 years might have been spent smoking, drinking or sampling party drugs, but these days, it’s lights out at 10pm to the sound of whales whispering.

They make me want to reach for a large plate of liver and bacon.

Griff Rhys Jones, 70

Comedy writer and actor

Motorbikes screaming through built-up areas, inane additions to alarm systems that want to tell you the weather outside (wrongly)… and that’s just in the last three minutes. I feel just as harrumphing as I did ten years ago, only, now I’ve come to realise that life is too short to waste.

Are you a keening, agitated, single-issue minority? Screech elsewhere. I don’t want you to block my street or stop my traffic.

Businesses, I don’t want to give you ‘feedback’. Or buy an extra bottle of water at the checkout.

Employees in food outlets, don’t ask me if I have ‘ever eaten with you before’. Just take my order.

And to all those street ‘chuggers’ and unsolicited emailers, no, I haven’t ‘got a spare moment’ to hear your unthought-through theories about the planet or Brexit or even my gut biome.

‘WTF,’ I hear them cry. I’m sorry, but it’s ‘Who Gives AF’.

Mariella Frostrup, 61

Journalist and presenter

Any woman over 50 in the public eye who dares to wear a bikini is greeted with raised eyebrows and hysterical headlines. Why should we feel pressured to hide ourselves away?

Once we hit a certain age, society feels we are only interested in incontinence pads and retirement living – at least that is the impression I get from the constant stream of online advertising I’m subjected to, featuring people who look 90.

Tech isn’t my strongest suit, but surely I shouldn’t need a degree in computing to operate a car. Give me round dials, a gearstick and a map to satisfyingly focus the brain. Those were the days!

David ‘Diddy’ Hamilton, 85

Broadcaster

The King’s English should be important to my colleagues in TV and radio. Yet I wince when I hear a question answered with ‘so’. So what? And a special place in Hell is reserved for those who say: ‘I was, like…’

Then there are the TV continuity announcers seemingly dragged in off the street. I heard one the other day say: ‘Dem fings’. It amounts to a dumbing down of broadcast media – as does the TV interviewer who interrupts their guest, and the radio personality who shouts into the mic.

I find it, like, so annoying.

Angela Rippon, 79

TV presenter and journalist

There was a time when a problem with a service or product could be solved with a telephone call to a human being.

Now, to hair-pulling frustration, ‘bot’ chat-rooms connect you to a computer. At first, you’re given false hope with the words: ‘How can we help?’ But you soon realise the offer is empty, as it never asks the questions that relate to your problem. Instead, it doles out algorithmic platitudes masquerading as answers, making the chance of getting a resolution zero.

Jenny Eclair, 64

Comedian

Ooh, vent time! Teenagers spitting (repulsive) and cycling on pavements (you’re a big lad, get on the road). Other peeves include the lack of cultural concessions for over-60s, especially in theatres; being massively patronised, usually with the phrase, ‘Ah bless’; adult female models pretending to be pigeon-toed for added ‘cuteness’ (yuk!); and how few women there are over 60 on the telly (I mean me).

Michael Howard, 83

Former Tory leader

It’s churlish to mention, but I get annoyed when I’m offered a seat on the bus or Tube. It’s kindly meant but reminds me of how old I must look.

But what really drives me round the bend is when I ring a company and get the automated message: ‘We are experiencing an unprecedented number of calls.’ Since I get this from everyone, at all times, it cannot possibly be true.

After pressing endless numbers, when an automated voice tells me how easy it would be to visit their website, I want to throw the phone down in a wild rage. Then comes the final indignity – a message asking for my feedback. How funny that I used to think they really wanted to know!

Charlie Mullins, 71

Founder of Pimlico Plumbers

The rude behaviour I see on planes drives me nuts. The second we touch down, anxious passengers bolt from their seats, scramble for their bags in overhead lockers and make for the exit as if the plane had been hijacked.

It’s selfish and completely unnecessary, and continues to the luggage carousel, where I resign myself to wait until I’m the only passenger left.

The same lack of courtesy, which seems to niggle me more in my older years, is on show when I hold open a door for someone to barrel through without a word of gratitude. I blame mobile phones. People are so glued to their screens, it’s easy to be oblivious to the rest of the world.

Julie Burchill, 65

Writer

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’ How affectionately I recall this old saw from my working-class girlhood in 1970s England. How did it get reversed? When did words become ‘literal violence’ and feelings start mattering more than facts?

Why do people think it makes them ’empaths’ if they boo-hoo a lot? It just makes them wet and boring.

How I miss the stiff upper lip which made life so easy and breezy – and how I hate the permanently quivering lower lip which makes modern life seem like a sponsored weep-a-thon.

Joan Bakewell, 91

Journalist and TV presenter

I may have been a member of the over-60s club for some time, but I want to stay within the mainstream of public discourse and opinion. We old matter just as much as the young!

OK, my memory is faulty, but I will retain my wits and independence for longer if I’m spoken to directly, not via another person as if I wasn’t there.

Jeffrey Archer, 84

Novelist

What annoys me? How long have you got? Let’s start with rugby – a sport I’ve loved all my life, now corrupted by the obscene amounts of money sloshing through clubs since it turned professional in 1995. I laughed when Margaret Thatcher’s husband, Denis, told me we’d regret it. He was right.

And then there’s pavement politics. I’m a passionate believer in equality – I was inordinately proud when my wife Mary became the first woman to chair the Science Museum. But I don’t like to see a man walk on the inside of the pavement, leaving his female companion on the kerb. It’s impolite.

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Source: CNN