Silver surfers must face the music

I was recently in the auditorium at the wonderful Bridgewater Hall in Manchester watching Petula Clark in concert. It was a lovely setting for some lovely music and lovely singing. How could anyone ask for more? Perhaps not surprisingly, there were very few youngsters among the 500-strong crowd. Judging by their appearances, at least 90 per cent of the audience could have been fans of Petula during her heyday in the 1960s.

But I very quickly realised that there was rarely a second when somebody, somewhere, in that mass of music-lovers, didn’t take their mobile phones out of their pocket to have a quick look.

They may have thought no one would notice, but the light emanating from the activated phones gave the game away.

We were in a beautiful concert arena with the most beautiful music, yet people couldn’t even leave their phones alone until the interval or the end of the performance.

And these were generally older people, not teenagers. Sorry, but I find that pathetic.

Philip Munro, Manchester