Let's flush out this revolting phone habit

I came to this week’s topic having read a tweet by the Rev Richard Coles. “Man texting while at a urinal in the Wolseley. I call that bad form,” the good clergyman wrote on Twitter last week.

Which brings us to the revolting subject of using mobile phones while on the loo. Or at the urinal, as observed last week. And I’m sorry if you’re eating a lovely bowl of Bran Flakes for your breakfast, but if people are relieving themselves while using their phone IN FRONT OF A VICAR, the situation has gone too far.  

We’ve all done it, of course. Don’t pretend you haven’t. I spoke to my mother about this and she claims she’s never had a conversation on the phone while perched in the bathroom but I’m not sure this is true. I swear I could hear the gurgle of a flushing lavatory just before we hung up. 

There have been surveys on this matter. Seventy-five per cent of people admit to using their phone on the loo, which goes to show that 25 per cent of this country are naughty little liars. Because it’s too easy, isn’t it? We’ve become so wedded to our phones, so reluctant to put down our adult comforters, that carrying them into the loo feels entirely normal. In you pop for a quick bathroom break and, while you’re there, you might as well just check your email or scroll through Instagram. Have a quick squiz at Tinder. Or continue having a conversation with someone. 

“What’s that noise?” they ask suspiciously.

“Nothing,” you say. “Just the dog having a go at the postman again.”

My friend Hugo, the one I mentioned last week who nearly dropped his engagement ring from a chair lift, sent various of us a selfie from a cubicle in his office loos the other day. He looked a bit sweaty. And I’m generally not in favour of bringing back capital punishment but, if we have to, I reckon you should be done for sending photos of yourself on the job.

The problem is, business in the lavatory finished, you put your phone down, zip yourself up, wash your hands (according to the vicar’s tweets, he stayed to make sure the gentleman at the urinal washed his hands), pick your phone up again and merrily go on with your day. But you don’t wash your phone, do you? And according to an actual doctor, this is hazardous.

“There are water and air particles that harbour in the little creases of the phone,” says Dr Anchita Karmakar. “And phone covers and cases are usually made out of rubber, which is a warm and comfortable harbouring ground for bacteria.”

Shortly after the loo visit, someone will call you, so you answer your phone (which, just to remind you, has become a warm and comfortable harbouring ground for bacteria), and you hold it to your ear, which is perilously close to your nose and your mouth. Do you see what I’m getting at here? 

So, before we all die of some sort of plague, I’m going to float a suggestion. Last month, The Telegraph reported that we each spend an average of three hours and nine minutes on the lavatory every week. I imagine men might have pushed this figure up a bit because you lot like to linger in there. Anyway, an average of three hours and nine minutes. So what I’ve done is calculated how many hours it takes to read War and Peace. At 587,287 words, it’s apparently around 32.6 hours for your typical reader. Or, just over 10 weeks on the loo.

My suggestion is everyone furnishes themselves with a copy of Tolstoy’s epic (or Ulysses, or a lengthy Dickens or any of those other classics we pretend we’ve read), and you leave your copy in the loo. Very important this copy remains in the loo at all times and you don’t carry it around with you, otherwise that’s just as grubby as using your phone at the urinal. Then, whenever nature calls, you can improve yourself with a book instead of wasting whole hours on Candy Crush. Honestly, I can sense our collective IQ raising already. We’ll solve Brexit in a matter of days.

Alternatively, treat yourself to some antibacterial wipes – Dettol’s good – and wipe your phone down with those.