Do you remember when you were at school, sitting in assembly, and if you wanted to surreptitiously chat to your friend next to you, you’d cover your mouth with your hand while you spoke? That way of course the teacher wouldn’t be able to see it was you speaking – and it was as effective as the child playing hide and seek who covers their eyes and thinks they can’t be seen.

I was in a meeting the other day and I realised that I had discovered the adult version of the hand-in-front-of-mouth ruse. It’s the Blackberry under the table ruse: “If I hold my BB down beneath table top level, no one will know I’m looking at my emails.”

I’m sorry, everyone knows you’re looking at your emails, you may as well have hoisted a flag and sent out a press release to the other meeting participants – actually, just send them an email, because they’re probably looking at their BB’s too.