My wife is so confused by mobile phones that it reduced her to being politically incorrect when she returned from a shopping expedition in Huddersfield at the weekend.

Her problem comes from the hands-free wireless kits that allow mobile users to keep their phone in their pocket, listen through an earpiece and speak into an almost invisible wire microphone as they walk down the street.

Of course it’s confusing.

”You can’t tell who the nutters are, any more,” she said. She meant people who talk aloud to themselves and tend to sit next to you on the bus.

“I thought that town was full of them today, until I cottoned on. I had noticed the wire coming from the ears of people not speaking, but thought they were wearing hearing aids.

“It was a relief to realise they were just talking on the phone.”

But why do people have to be connected all the time? Are their jobs and lives so urgent they have to have their finger - or earlobes- on the pulse of every second of every hour?

In the early days of the cellphone phenomenon, an apocryphal story went the rounds about a chap who went into a lavatory stall at Manchester Airport, sat down and the bloke next door said: “Hi, how are you?”

Being embarrassed but polite, he replied: “I’m fine, thank you very much.”

”So, what are you up to?” “Err, I’m just sitting here.”

”Can I come over?”

“No. I’m a little busy right now.”

To which the chap said: ”Look, I’ll have to call you back. Someone in the next cubicle keeps answering my questions.”

Conversations are no longer private. Long gone are the days when you stood in a sound-proof box and dropped four pennies in the slot.

You could talk forever in the knowledge no one else could hear.

On the plus side, you couldn’t stroll around town, catch buses or annoy fellow travellers with inane conversation.

My wife and I have mobile phones for essential calls only: “Come and pick me up”; or, “Can I order a take-away curry, please?”

The only person, apart from my wife, who phones me is my daughter Sian so I was shocked to get a call the other day from a complete stranger on her phone.

It was my turn to be confused.

”Is Sian there?” I said to the chap.

”No. Are you her dad?”

”Where is she?”

”I don’t know. I’m trying to find her.”

My imagination was hitting every TV highlight from Casualty to The Missing.

”Why? What’s happened?”

”This is Customer Service at the bus station. She left her phone in the toilet.”

Today I was flushed with relief is no exaggeration. And many thanks to the great staff at Huddersfield Bus Station for tracking both me and her down.

That’s the trouble with mobiles. People walk around talking to themselves and the phones are easily lost.

Not a patch on red boxes and four pennies in the slot and an hour’s chat with your girlfriend. You couldn’t lose those and you didn’t scare or annoy innocent citizens you passed in the street.