The programme for this week’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Life of Riley at the Oxford Playhouse features a panel opposite the cast list advising members of the audience on matters of theatre etiquette. I quote: “Please be aware that the rustling of sweet papers, bleeping of digital watches, the taking of notes and other noises can be distracting both to the actors and other members of the audience. Please turn off mobile phones.”

Were I of a more sensitive disposition, I could get huffy over the bit about taking notes. Indeed, I do take them, but I promise not noisily. After 40 years in the reviewing game I have still not absorbed the lesson that words scribbled in the dark will rarely prove to be legible the morning after.

Regular theatregoers will probably note the omission from the list (though covered by ‘other noises’) of the most infuriating distraction encountered in the stalls. No, I am not talking about the whistling of hearing aids — one of which marred a colleague’s enjoyment of the wonderful Master Class at the Playhouse last week. I refer to coughing.

So much of this was going on during Life of Riley on Monday that it seriously affected one’s ability to follow the play. I felt as if I were confined among the consumptives of The Magic Mountain. The most serious offender was a woman a little behind me in the stalls — say around seat J5 or 6.

All of us, I know, occasionally experience a tickle in the throat that can be eased only by a cough. The decision that needs to be made is whether to stay put and get on with it, or risk greater disturbance to one’s neighbours — up to 12 of them in this corridor-less auditorium — by clambering past them to the exit.

One thing I have noticed is that coughing is much reduced when the play being watched is truly gripping. Odd that.