The report, carried out under commission from T-Mobile, found that although 80 per cent of British office workers consider it unacceptable to send or read a text message during a meeting, a staggering 61 per cent also admit to ‘practising poor mobile manners’ themselves.

Surprisingly, however, although 87 per cent of those polled also admitted to ‘feeling irritated’ when a mobile phone rings during a meeting, over 50 per cent of firms appear not to offer any guidance with regard to acceptable use of mobile equipment at work. Media companies (73 per cent) appear to be among the worst offenders in this respect.

That said, British workers do appear to be rather more rigorous in terms of their adherence to appropriate linguistic convention. This is because the survey discovered that good grammar is important to the majority of BlackBerry users, with 74 per cent typing full sentences and punctuating properly. Pedants rejoice!