A petition was started recently by disgruntled Tube passengers. Those last three words are perfect bedfellows, in the vein of Ant and Dec, chips and gravy or Rhubarb and Custard. This time however, the DTPs weren’t complaining about the usual commuter gripes of high fares, shoddy services or the work-shy, strike-happy staff body.

The petition called on TfL to issue a ban on manspreading. How, if this is ever to meet the end of the moaner’s motorway, it would be enforced, remains to be seen. Maybe they would employ a manspreading operative, tooled up with a metre stick and set square to undertake a height/spread analysis and issue perpetrators with on-the-spot fines.

Much as it pains me to say it about the DTP’s, who have the time and gumption to commence such a campaign, but I’m with you all the way brothers, sisters and non-gender specifics. Studies have shown that manspreading may signal dominance and sexual attractiveness toward potential mates. Now, Tube travel is fraught at the best of times with the deluge of thronging crowds, an atmosphere as welcoming as Farage at a People's Vote march and the battle to retain control of the arm rest (if you can get a seat). Add into that equation a stranger, who feels the need to spreadeagle his groin whilst grinning manically, is beyond me.

It is these minor annoyances that make me somewhat a misandrist as, generally, my fellow men are the perpetrators of such unsavoury action. Another bugbear is people eating too loudly and sharing the contents of the inside of their mouth as they dine, along with those who dare to breathe on me. After a long day at work, it’s fair to say most of us could strip the paint off a sideboard at 20 paces, especially after the hunter’s chicken smothered in garlic mayo and the bag of Nobby's Nuts we scoffed at lunchtime. Most of us attempt to hide our embarrassment by diverting the smell of rotting chicken away from our fellow humans, or by brushing your teeth before called into the social arena once more.

I go to the gym to escape such annoyances and, despite possessing a pair of Bluetooth headphones, I can hear the guy on the bike next to me shouting, on loudspeaker, about an upcoming drug deal. In place of weed he uses ‘food’ in the mistaken notion that his bravado in letting the gym members into his conversation will brazenly fool us all into thinking he is on the blower to Ocado.

I walk out of Sainsbury’s and encounter the lollopers. These people, seemingly incapable of walking in a straight line, waddle side to side. Each time I dart left they go the same way as if they possess the dolphin skills of sonar. I dart right and the same occurs. It is the only time you will see them move quickly is when you attempt a stealthy overtaking manoeuvre.

Then we have the incessant gum chewers. Of particular annoyance are the slow chewers who are reminiscent of a Friesian cow chewing the cud. We also enjoy the ‘hands down the pants crew’ who enjoy fondling themselves in public, the tappers and the inappropriate friend. He is of the potty-mouthed variety; you have been mates for years, but he has no filter around kids. We all have the capacity to eff and jeff like troopers, and we do, but we tone it down when kids are present, apart from this guy.

During a five-minute conversation he can easily secrete 30 swear words, many of the coarse variety, and, despite asking him to tone it down each time, he continues, oblivious, until the only solution is to extract him from the environment and take him to the pub where his swearing can find its home.

There are the incessant phone addicts: at the pub, during meetings or in the park, they would rather stare at a screen that listen to the mundane bile you are spouting, which makes me wonder why they bothered coming out in the first place.

The irksome stand on the wrong side on the escalator, tap their feet or won’t let you go first with your one item to the only till as they not only complete a week’s shopping, but then spend an hour trying to buy 1,000 lottery tickets, on different forms, that they did not fill in correctly.

So yes, Tube passengers of the disgruntled variety, I’m with you. If you get that one past the TfL overlords, there’s plenty of ammunition for further campaigns with which to rid the world of the irritants who are manspreading like beasts possessed.