What horrors of ill behaviour have you witnessed in restaurants?

City boys behaving badly. Photograph: Getty

What is it with bad behaviour and restaurants? Admittedly, with the country's most successful chef effing and blinding his way towards a hundred million, nicking Marco Pierre White's reservations book and spitting food all over Graham Norton's carpet along the way, I'm not surprised we're a bunch of ill mannered louts when it comes to dining out.

I'm certainly impeccably behaved at all times* but I have had occasion to witness the odd act of culinary indecency.

Late one night, a charming young lady of my acquaintance threw up in a curry shop in Glasgow. At the table. She lifted the (circular) woven placemat, deposited a matching circle of what appeared to be tinned tomatoes and diced carrot, then replaced it neatly just as the waiter appeared.

"Lamb bhuna?" he inquired.

"Mine" she said, without so much as a blink.

He deftly put her plate down on the floating mat, smiling. She smiled back, wiping the corners of her mouth.

A group of sales-execs I know - think turbo-charged Lee McQueen to the power of six - have a highly amusing trick. They order, then if one of them is idiotic enough to go to the loo, they all scarper. The poor chump emerging from the gents then has to explain (a) why the table now appears to be deserted (b) how he's going to pay the full bill. Then he has to find his mates in whatever restaurant they've repaired to. If they're feeling particularly mean, they switch their mobiles off.

Only last night I was told by an executive of a manufacturing company about the time he did a "runner" - only he'd left his jacket behind, complete with wallet and passport. He went back gingerly, only to find his jacket still hanging where he'd left it, so he did another runner, and got away with it. He found this side-splittingly funny.

I doubt the restaurateurs share the hilarity with which these tales are generally told. But I suspect that we Brits have always been a bit wanton in the manners department since eating out was democratically extended to the lower orders, although Lord Snooty and his pals have always been prone to launching the odd bread roll.

Before Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares transformed "Loves" in Brighton from idiosyncracy to bleached-blonde uniformity, those same premises once housed Le Café de Paris, where the food was generally used for target practice by revellers who'd clearly necked too much of the house vino. Sunday lunchtimes were always the best, if you liked to order while dodging olives and baguette slices, but I always advised guests to settle up and depart before the jelly and ice cream was served.

And they're not so genteel in next door Hove either. At dinner in a delicate establishment there one evening the general happiness of the evening was spoiled when a woman arose and threw her plate of food at a diner on another table, breaking the gentle buzz of couples' contented chatter with the words "you fucking tart" just as the spaghetti and meatballs connected with their target, apparently the mistress of the plate thrower's husband. The ensuing fight was a messy affair, accompanied by much screaming, crashing and smashing. I suspect the staff weren't all that enamoured.

Petty larceny, throwing up, we haven't even got to screaming children, marital rows, and drunken brawls. Are we really just uncivilised, uncouth vandals? The epicurial hooligans of Europe's dining rooms? Is it fun, bad manners, or criminally offensive?

What customer incivility have you witnessed in a restaurant? (I'm assuming all Word of Mouth readers are paragons of virtue when dining out, but you may have seen something). A memory of irresponsible behaviour from your youth perhaps? The editor of this blog confesses a blurred teenage memory, skedaddling from a restaurant without paying. Just a chain though, she pleads, as if that would make a difference in court. Shame on her.

But what about you?

* Full disclosure. When I claimed to be impeccably behaved at all times, I may have missed a detail or two - I have a collection of antique nicked ashtrays (yellow Ricard, metallic Quaglino's) from the days when it was de rigueur to snaffle them (Conran caught on and started to sell them, Nicole Fahri has taken it one stage further and sells everything on your table) but that's small beer. Isn't it?