It’s parents who deserve to be shamed for their smartphones

Pointing out customers’ bad habits is a risky strategy for a hospitality business. But as a way of drumming up free publicity, Frankie and Benny’s No Phone Zone could hardly be bettered. The restaurant chain has introduced a new scheme (for one week only; they have to be realistic) encouraging parents to put away mobiles and talk to their children. Diners who surrender phones for the meal will be rewarded with free kids’ food.

It’s a newsworthy idea because it strikes a guilty chord in every parent. Loudly as we decry the screen addiction of the young, we are the ones with the problem. In a poll commissioned by Frankie and Benny’s, more than 70 per cent of children said they wished their parents would spend less time on the phone. One in 10 had hidden a parent’s device in order to get their attention.

Smartphones have made barefaced hypocrites of my generation. We lecture children about ipad addiction even as our thumbs twitch to refresh our Facebook feed. We worry about teenage cyber-bullying while shouting each other down on Twitter. “Your brain will turn to mush!” we chide the little ones, peeling them away from Peppa Pig; yet the average adult spends almost three hours a day staring at a smartphone.

Some is unavoidable. Parents have a lot of organising to do, and almost all – arranging playdates, paying for school trips, signing up to ballet classes – is done digitally. Most of the time, when I pick up the phone, it is to get something done. To my children, though, it makes no odds whether I’m buying their Christmas presents or scrolling through Instagram (and let’s face it, one thing does tend to lead to another). The blank, blue-lit face I present to them is just the same.

Not long ago, my children asked if they could impose a new house rule: no phones in the kitchen. My husband and I exchanged panicky looks, but the motion was passed. And although I can’t claim a spotless record (the children, like diminutive parking attendants, love slapping us with £1 fines), it has been a chastening experience. Sometimes you have to let wiser heads, on younger shoulders, prevail.

Shock news from the set of The Crown, where it turns out that some of the actors are just pretending. Olivia Colman – the new Elizabeth II – has revealed that she listens to the Shipping Forecast whenever she needs to assume an air of regal detachment. “My problem is, I emote,” she told Vanity Fair. “The Queen is not supposed to do it. She’s got to be a rock for everyone.” In sad scenes, Colman kept weeping. So now the crew have wired her up with an earpiece, through which they play the latest weather predictions for Dogger, Fisher and German Bight. This dries the tears up nicely.

I love it when actors – whose ability to move through emotions at will can seem near-mystical – come clean. I recently listened to an episode of the podcast Soundtracking, in which Hugh Grant confessed that he uses sad songs to make himself cry. Before filming a tragic deathbed scene in Florence Foster Jenkins, Grant made a playlist entitled: “Sad”. When that failed to induce the required volume of tears, he pressed the nuclear button: the Military Wives Choir, singing Wherever You Are. “Absolutely broke my heart. I wept like a baby.” Now that’s a professional.