According to the LSO's latest e-newsletter (subscribe here), they asked the audience at their 24 September concert what they found most irritating at concerts.
The table below shows the results. The gold medal went to coughing, with mobile phones and rustling sweet wrappers coming close behind.
I'm not sure who they asked (not me for one) but judging from the low score for bathroom queues (the bane of the Barbican) I'd guess a high proportion of respondents were male. And who were the 3.08% who voted for running out of programmes? Whenever has that happened?
My own LSO bête noire is unlisted: on-stage nose picking (no names but u kno who ur). Every so often musicians have those ostrich moments where they're not looking at the audience, and don't realise that out of a thousand pairs of eyes, there's a fair chance at least one will be trained on them. Being tucked away behind the cellos (clue) is no protection. Get a handkerchief!
