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.’

It is clearly totally unexpected that a train will begin to move once the doors have closed. For this reason, there is no reason to hold on to anything.

Instead, you should perform one of two acrobatic routines when the train starts to move:

1) The ‘off-balance tap dancing shuffle’ along the train gangway.

Or

2) The ‘nearly lost my balance but managed to grab a support bar whilst punching the person next to me in the face’ manoeuvre.

You should aim to kick or tread on at least one person’s foot along the way.

When the door closing alarm sounds, if not yet on the train, you should immediately accelerate and attempt to jump through the closing doors. Approximately 50% of the time, you will make it through the doors and stand looking appropriately smug inside the train.

The other 50% of the time, the doors will close too quickly and clamp around your head/arm/leg/bag. When this occurs, you should attempt to free the trapped head/arm/leg/bag. Other passengers may come to your assistance and attempt to pull apart the doors.

Inevitably, none of the attempts to free your head/arm/leg/bag will be successful and the driver will begrudgingly have to re-open the doors.

At this point, when the door closing alarm sounds again, somebody else will repeat the above.

When arriving at the ticket barriers in a station, you should approach the front of the queue, then stop to search for your ticket/oyster card in your stupidly large bag or deep pockets.

You should do this regardless of how much time you spent motionless on the train or going up and down escalators.

It is also quite normal to scrunch up the ticket in said bag/pocket so even when it is found, it will be rejected by the machine.

(Thanks to Wendy for the tip)

When reading a newspaper on public transport of any sort, you should ensure that the paper occupies at least the space of an extra, fully grown adult. You needn’t worry about the people contorting their spine around you, they can read the paper too, for free – the cheapskates!

When faced with an inconveniently long queue of people waiting for a train, you should attempt to creep along the outside of the queue when people are not looking directly at you, ultimately ending up at the front of the queue.

For extra bravery, you can attempt to stand on the wrong side of the ‘yellow line of death’. This will make the waiting commuters behind you very grateful for protecting them from the high-speed rolling lump of metal merely inches away from your face.

If anyone attempts to block your movement to the front, move along to the next door and repeat or push them out the way when the train stops and board before them regardless.

(Thanks to Alex for the tip)

When mashed out of your mind you should wander around a station asking people for convincingly odd amounts of change, like 96p for example.

Even though the train fare is £1.50, and the ticket machine doesn’t accept copper coins.

To increase your chances, you should also explain that you’ve left your travel card at home. Of course, if you had genuinely left your card at home, you could already have walked a couple of miles in the time you’ve taken to stagger around the station asking for money.

Large groups of tourists/students/children should huddle in a large group and all try to squeeze in to one train door. This will ensure the group remains together in case one end of the train suddenly heads off in a different direction.