"Provided you actually have a cough," writes Zoe Williams in her recent radio blog, you should "cough whenever you want to cough." She is attempting to revise what she imagines is an ancient covenant between classical concertgoers and the listeners at home who get an earful of hacking and spluttering every time the music on their wireless comes to a brief moment of pause.
Now, although we classical types are supposed to be living in a past age of decorum and gentility, if you honestly think a Prommer who has been on their feet for several hours at the Royal Albert Sauna and Baths is stifling their natural bodily functions for the benefit of some innominate radio listener relaxing at home on their couch, you are sweetly deluded. We have far more immediate reasons for assuming the standard anti-cough position (doubled-up with cheeks puffing in and out as though stifling the urge to be sick) - namely, the wrath of our fellow concertgoers.
You see, to make noise - really, any noise at all - during the musical bits of a concert is to be the instant recipient of 100 hateful stares, usually accompanied by one or more irritated fingers-on-lips and the occasional audible "shhh" from someone who has clearly missed the point of shushing altogether. They're not hurling ocular daggers in your direction for the sake of Radio 3 listeners who, as Zoe correctly surmises, don't really give a toss.
Having been on both the giving and the receiving ends of these rebukes, I can sort of see what the finger-waggers are getting at. I, too, drilled imaginary holes through the skull of a man who insisted on counterpointing a Beethoven slow movement with an extended foray into his coin-filled pockets the other day, while the hypnotic close of Mahler's Ninth Symphony last Wednesday - one of the most sublime silences in all music - was quickly displaced by thoughts of murder most foul upon the owner of the mobile phone whose ringtone cheerfully broke said silence.
But there is enough intolerance among classical audiences as it is, and having been read the riot act for taking notes during a concert - I was reviewing it, OK? - I simply gritted my teeth and made mental images of telephone-related injuries. Frankly, I hope the egalitarian ethos of the Proms would inspire others to keep their indignation to themselves and let the perpetrators' own mortification suffice.
