If I ruled the world, et cetera...

Last night, for reasons I won't go into, I went to bed musing on how annoying I find the modern act of people applauding themselves. God, it bugs me. Why do they do it? And when did it start? It certainly wasn't like that in the 70s and 80s, was it? Nor the early 90s, unless I'm misremembering? But how, when and (most of all) why did that start being a thing?

I was still thinking about it when I woke up, but more in the context of this question: if you ruled the world, what trivial, inconsequential aspect of modern life would you do away with? I'm not talking about the big stuff, like Trident or MPs lobbying for their second employers or Brexit or punitive social care reform, or anything like that. No, the trivial stuff that would make no material difference to life, other than to make it better for you. For me, people applauding themselves would have to stop ... and okay, full disclosure, this was triggered by catching a bit of the late-night re-run of Graham Norton's chat show last night. All the guests were at it, so much so that I wondered if they are told to do it by the floor manager, to get the crowd and viewers into a happy-clappy mood. Whatever, it gets my goat, and seems vainglorious. Having said that maybe it is very much in keeping with the "look at me, me, me" age in which we live. Urgh.

Anyway... what trivial aspect of our rubbish modern life winds you up, whilst simultaneously not really mattering one iota? Answers on a postcard to the usual address, i.e. the comments.

Of course, all of this "if I ruled the world" nonsense is really just an excuse to post an excellent live rendition of We Could Be Kings by Gene, from an indecent number of years ago.