Oh yes, we’ve all been there. You’ve arrived by yourself and you’re drowning your sorrows on your own at the bar. And then the music starts, and before you know it, you’re no longer the sad loner at the bar, you’re John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever; Justin Timberlake in front of thousands of adoring fans; Michael Jackson before… Before he became Michael Jackson! The floor loves you and you it, it is a night to behold. Problem is, that’s all in your drunken head.

What everyone else is seeing is a little bit different. You’re staggering from side to side in some weird repetitive motion to the beat (it’s more fighting the urge to land on your ass) and before you know it, you’re getting a little too close to that person; running your fingers through their hair and heaven forbid, dancing and rubbing up against them. Uninvited.

So not everyone’s a culprit of that last bit (thankfully it’s a small minority that can boast that), but after having suffered being a “rubbee” (rather than the “rubber”) on a night out in London, I thought it was time to post this: if your natural instinct to meet people is to rub against them or to dance closer to them in a strange and awkward manner, please use every moral fibre in your body to fight it. It’s not pleasant for the recipient, and may earn you harsh words, a glare or worse still in our situation, a big burly security guard that eat guys like that for breakfast.

No-one realistically meets people by rubbing their crown jewels against a complete stranger (unless it was that sort of party, which it most certainly WAS NOT) and worse still, when your future child(ren) asks how you met your potential partner, do you really want your answer to be “Well, I rubbed up against them and they melted.”? Hardly.