WELL, I have done my bit for civilisation this week - though I thought I was going to be chucked out.

It was the Geoffrey Boycott lecture at Lord's cricket ground and I went as the guest of my mate Alfred, the giant Trinidadian churchwarden of St Michael's here in the City.

There was a delightful drinks and nibbles reception before we were asked to take our seats for Geoffrey's talk. We walked into the lecture hall to the noise of shish-titty-shish-titty-shish piped disco music. This was Lord's mind you - not some degenerate nightclub or the foyer of a trendy advertising agency. I said: "You keep our seats, Alfred and I'll go and see if I can get it turned off".

I approached the men with their headphones and sound equipment and asked: "Will you kindly turn that racket off please?" They did so immediately and I went back to my place warmed by a sense of quiet satisfaction at having struck a blow for common decency against the barbarous hordes. But a few minutes later, up comes this... lady with a clipboard and a smile like acid indigestion. She turned out to be the Public Relations Apparatchik, the Commissar-in-Charge of the proceedings.

She spoke to me in the tone Miss Kelsey used on me when I was in the infants school. She wanted to know why I had had the "music" turned off. I said: "Because it's rubbish, isn't it? It's an irritation and nobody here wants it".

"It's not rubbish," she said in that combination Lady-Di-Virago-Gorgon tone. "It's background music".

"Well," I said, "you can call it that. But it's still rubbish. Drivel. Look, this isn't the disco - it's the MCC. There isn't a bloke in this room under the age of fifty. We're all diehards. Old farts. Traditionalists. Cricket-lovers. Civilised. We don't want this oikish stuff spoiling our night out".

The big Scorpio lady huffed and puffed - but the racket stayed off. She demanded to know my name and I gave her my calling card. Next morning she phoned and my wife took the call. The Madam complained that I wasn't a member of the MCC. I picked up the phone: "I never said I was a member. I was a guest". She wanted to know the name of the member who had taken me. I could hear her scratching her database. I gave her Alfred's details, knowing she would get no change out of him.

There's a point to be made here and it is that there is a place for shish-titty music - though I can't tell you exactly where in a family newspaper. But it is not among the gentlemen at Lord's. Why do we have to endure this crap wherever we go? Every time you pick up the phone, you're kept waiting with the same noise - except when it's Vivaldi, which is arguably worse. Every TV programme begins, continues and ends with this mindless din. It infiltrates the sports results - and even news reports.

The image of the British people which the purveyors of this idiot noise possess is of a dumbed-down infantilised mob fit for nothing but to be stupidly diverted by audible filth. I urge you to do your bit. You don't have to take it. Turn it off. Put the phone down and ring back when it's stopped. Can we have our civilisation back, please?

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange