'Jammers blocking phone signals are, sadly, illegal in the UK': Sophia Money-Coutts on what to do when your mobile goes off in a theatre

Whoops, how excruciating. You can show your face again, but I wouldn’t venture to the same theatre any time soon in case an usher recognises you, and points and laughs.

Is this problem becoming more common? It seems to be. I went to a big opening night recently for a dazzling and glamorous new play called The Party Girls, about the Mitford sisters. There was a particularly poignant moment when Nancy was talking to Unity, not long after she’d shot herself, when the latter was likened to a puppy because the lodged bullet had left her incontinent, with a mental age of 10, and Nancy was saying something very moving when 'TRING TRING!' Two rows in front of me, a mobile went off.

The audience member panicked, as we all might, hissed ‘S**t!’ and started rummaging frantically in her bag as the actors continued, despite this racket trilling only a few rows away.

That woman wasn’t the only culprit. I’ve never been to a performance with so many mobiles pinging all over the place. It must have happened seven or eight times. Not with the same woman. She really wouldn’t be able to go to the theatre if that had been the case. But different punters’ phones rang out from different parts of the theatre. Poor old actors.

A theatre director friend says the problem these days is directors don’t like pre-show announcements instructing the audience to turn their phones off. It ruins the pre-show atmosphere, he argues, and they want the scene set as soon as someone steps into the auditorium. This is, apparently, why you now often see actors in character, marching up and down the aisles holding signs that tell you to switch them off, instead. But should we really need reminders? You’re going into a darkened, hushed, enclosed space. Do you want Ride of the Valkyries to ring out just as Hamlet wades into all that stuff about slings and arrows?

Although it’s not just ringing that can cause a disturbance. It’s also people taking their phones out during performances. I can just about stomach this in the cinema, if it’s brief, because there aren’t live people acting in front of us. But a friend who went to the recent re-run of The Lehman Trilogy says he confronted a woman who kept taking her mobile out of her bag and tapping at it during the first half. Do you know what she hissed at him? ‘Go f**k yourself.’ I’m not sure that woman should ever be allowed in the theatre again. Unless you’re the prime minister, you don’t need to be looking at your emails during a show. And if you are the prime minister, what are you doing at the theatre? You have important matters of state to be getting on with.

Jammers blocking phone signals are, sadly, illegal in the UK, but I’d back their use in theatres to combat precisely this problem. I imagine quite a few of the middle-class theatre goers around me during that Mitford play would take a dim view of the youth who play YouTube videos aloud on public transport, and yet there several of them were letting their mobiles shriek during a play. I know what I think’s more shaming, and it isn’t the kids.

Here's an idea. If you’re going to the theatre tonight and you’re forgetful, set an alarm on your phone for 10 minutes before the performance begins, reminding you to turn it off. And then actually turn the thing off. Don’t for heaven’s sake set the alarm for after the show starts, though. That’s all we need.