When fortunate enough to bag a seat on a train or bus, you should pretend to be asleep or so utterly engrossed in your book/newspaper that you fail to notice the standing elderly people and heavily pregnant women.

If you do notice, you should not make eye contact under any circumstances. If you don’t make eye contact they won’t know that you’ve noticed them, thus excusing you from needing to feel guilty.

Eventually, some other kind-hearted soul might give up their seat. If this happens, you may feel suitably smug that you have kept your seat and no longer need to feel guilty.

When you spot an empty seat on a train, in order to rightfully claim it you must move as close to the arriving train doors as possible. You must judge the exact momentum of the train to stand in exactly the right place as it stops.

When the doors open you should immediately and confidently stride towards the seat. When seats are at stake, you are exempt from letting people off the train first.

If anyone else reaches the seat first, you must glare at the person in a mixture of despair and annoyance. Try to hide the psychopathic voice in your head saying ‘That seat was mine. MINE I TELL YOU. You will die in a horrific accident involving a lorry and a rusty fork.’