LET'S change the world. Please. If you don't mind. While we all worry about the big things in life - war, terrorism, the state of the euro - they're not usually the things that get us down. It's actually the small things that can ruin our day.

It's the rudeness of strangers, someone jumping a queue, being ignored as though we weren't there, children running wild, an insolent teenager with his feet up on the train seat, being forced to listen to other people's mobile phone conversations. It's avoiding town centres on Friday nights so you don't get some binge drinker throwing up all over you.

Then there's road rage, trolley rage, even now rose rage, as neighbours come to blows over their adjoining gardens. And what it all comes down to really is a lack of common courtesy and consideration for others.

So hooray then for Penny Palmano, who has just written a book called "Yes, please. Thanks", which is designed to help parents teach their children manners.

And not before time.

Most small children are delightful. Many are a total pain in the neck. You know the ones - they're jumping on the seat of the train, running round the pub, shouting, screaming, interrupting conversations, demanding sweets, drinks, toys, attention. While their parents either ignore them or just smile indulgently.

The secret of good manners is to put the feelings of other people above your own - something that these children's doting and indulgent parents have never considered. They assume we will look on their revolting offspring as fondly as they do. Well, we don't.

I don't really believe in hitting children, but gosh, some of these little horrors make my fingers itch. And if no one teaches these children a pleasant way to behave, can you imagine what it's going to be like by the time they're parents?

Manners are not an optional extra or a snobbish afterthought. They are the oil that smoothes the machinery of society, especially when a lot of people are close together.

So, when someone lets you go first through the checkout, allows you in to the last parking place, refrains from blowing smoke at you, offers you the last chocolate biscuit instead of snatching it triumphantly from the plate etc, life seems a little better, a little less fraught and less pressured.

And, let it be noted, good manners in a man are seriously sexy. So let us start with the children. Let us reclaim 'please' and 'thank you'; not snatching or shouting or interrupting, but sitting still, waiting your turn and, 'What's the magic word?'

If you want people to like your children, it helps if you make them likeable. And that goes for grown ups too.

Has Alex's age

got her axed?

ALEX Kingston, left, is being dropped from hospital drama ER because, she says, at 41, she's too old. Ah well, just another 20 years or so and she might qualify for a part in Last of the Summer Wine.