Three ways your fellow commuters are broadcasting their private lives into shared public space, whether you consented or not.

Number one: loud music on public transport. Headphones exist, they're cheap, and yet every journey someone's got their phone speaker facing the carriage, playing the same 30-second clip on loop while an entire train quietly dies inside.

Number two: speaker phone calls. Full conversations, both sides, completely audible — relationship problems, salary negotiations, dental appointments broadcast to sixty strangers who never asked to know any of it.

Number three: notification sounds. Ding, ping, buzz - every single alert, at maximum volume, because muting a phone apparently takes more effort than subjecting an entire carriage to it, all day, every day.

From a TikTok on full volume at 8:47am to the impossible social contract that says you can't ask someone to turn it down without becoming the villain — this episode is a plea for basic respect in shared space. Your convenience is not more important than everyone else's peace. There is a mute button. Use it.

Featuring a bonus mini-rant on loud conversations on trains — the most innocent-seeming, hardest-to-call-out form of audio pollution of them all.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, go to my website and access the back catalogue at https://amioutoftouch.buzzsprout.com

OR susbcribe https://bit.ly/4x7eilH

Indicators are apparently optional now, caravans have declared the middle lane a personality trait, and somewhere out there a man in a woolly hat has put his convertible roof down in October and is not backing out of it. This week Alison takes on the three unwritten rules of British driving that everyone's quietly ignoring - plus a modest proposal for solving the caravan problem once and for all. Is it me, or is everyone else losing the plot?

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, go to my website and access the back catalogue at https://amioutoftouch.buzzsprout.com

OR susbcribe https://bit.ly/4x7eilH

A bonus rant on pumpkin spice: the flavour that broke free from lattes and infested literally every product category on earth.

Pumpkin spice lattes were fine. Seasonal. Normal. But then pumpkin spice stopped being a flavour and became a personality marker, proof that you "get" autumn, you're into the vibe, you're the pumpkin spice person.

And once it became a tribal requirement, the food industry descended. Now it's in donuts, cereal, yoghurt, cream cheese, butter, and inexplicably - toothpaste. None of it tastes good. It all tastes like you're eating a scented candle that's gone off.

The worst part? You're not buying it because it tastes good. You're buying it to announce you're into Spooky Season. You have to own the crisps, the toothpaste, the cereal. You have to perform it. Corporations turned a latte flavour into proof of belonging to the right tribe.

Verdict: pumpkin spice lattes are fine. Pumpkin spice in a crisp? In toothpaste? "That's when it stops being a flavour and starts being a trap."

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, go to my website and access the back catalogue at https://amioutoftouch.buzzsprout.com

OR susbcribe https://bit.ly/4x7eilH

Retail's broken the calendar, Christmas starts in September, and autumn is now a personality trait you're required to perform. Three reasons the year has collapsed into a series of algorithmic performance requirements: American Halloween arriving months early, the entire retail calendar divorced from actual time, and "Spooky Season" as proof you're fun, seasonal, and doing Instagram right. From Tesco skeletons in August heat to pumpkin spice as tribal marker, we've let shops and algorithms hijack every holiday. By the time the actual date arrives, you're already exhausted. Pull-quote to graphic, then I'll create the visual.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, go to my website and access the back catalogue at https://amioutoftouch.buzzsprout.com

OR susbcribe https://bit.ly/4x7eilH

Lashes so big they've got their own weather system. A skirt so short it's legally more of a belt. And nails so long they need a translator to place a phone call. This week Alison stares down three beauty trends that have quietly gone completely feral — the forty-minute "no-makeup" makeup tutorial, the great skirt-belt identity crisis on the high street, and the American talon economy — and asks the only question that matters: is it me, or has everyone else lost the plot? Three rants, three verdicts, and one sincere plea for someone to teach these women how to peel a satsuma.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, go to my website and access the back catalogue at https://amioutoftouch.buzzsprout.com

OR susbcribe https://bit.ly/4x7eilH

Nobody's actually listening to anybody anymore, and this week I've got the evidence. First up: text speak, and the modern message that requires a decoder ring, a phone call, and a small prayer to understand. Then: selective hearing, or as I'm increasingly convinced a very specific, undiagnosed medical condition that only ever affects requests to take the bins out. And finally: the yawn, delivered directly into your face, mid-sentence, like your Tuesday update about the printer was personally exhausting to witness.

Three crimes against basic human communication. One verdict. Am I out of touch, or is it genuinely getting harder to be heard?

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, go to my website and access the back catalogue at https://amioutoftouch.buzzsprout.com

OR susbcribe https://bit.ly/4x7eilH

Someone at a dinner table pointed their knife straight up in the air like they were about to knight a Yorkshire pudding — and that was the final straw. This week: the great cutlery confusion (outside in, people, it's not complicated), the correct way to park your knife and fork between mouthfuls (there are two positions, it's basically Morse code), and the napkin that got used to clean someone's phone screen at an actual wedding.

Plus: a fond, slightly tragic look back at the days when John Lewis had silver service — an actual man in a waistcoat, spooning your carrots for you, next to the escalators — versus now, where the height of dining formality is unloading your own plate off a robot. And finally, the show draws a hard line on afternoon tea versus high tea, because they are not the same thing, whatever the hotel website tells you.

Full episodes every week. If this one landed, rate it, review it, and send it to whoever in your life still points a knife at the ceiling mid-sentence. Got a rant of your own? Leave us a voice message at speakpipe.com/amioutoftouch.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, go to my website and access the back catalogue at https://amioutoftouch.buzzsprout.com

OR susbcribe https://bit.ly/4x7eilH

Two bonus rants a week, subscribers only. Because apparently once a week isn't enough for me to be annoyed about things. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2625633/support

It's the one where I go abroad — or at least, where I roast the very British way we all go abroad. This week I'm covering three national holiday traditions we refuse to admit are unhinged: the 6:47am sunlounger stakeout (towel down, book on top, straight back to bed), the astonishing British ability to fly four hours to Spain and still order egg and chips at a pub called The Red Lion, and the deeply held belief that any language barrier can be solved not with a phrasebook, but with volume.

Sunburn, baked beans imported specifically to keep resort pubs stocked, and "DO. YOU. HAVE. A. TABLE. FOR. FOUR." — delivered slower and louder like the problem was never the language. Three verdicts, one very British holiday, and me promising I won't become "Terry-with-a-towel" next week. (I will.)

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/amioutoftouch — and if you want more rants, subscribe for just $3/month for bonus mini-rants.

Am I out of touch? You tell me.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, go to my website and access the back catalogue at https://amioutoftouch.buzzsprout.com

OR susbcribe https://bit.ly/4x7eilH