WE MIGHT be terrible at talking about our feelings, maintaining a usable public transport system and every sport ever invented, but if there’s one thing we British excel at, it’s complaining.

Nothing makes your average Brit happier than the chance to have a good moan about the weather or the fortunes of our football team or Freddos costing more than 10p.

If you have the chance to have a moan while in a queue, even better.

I once saw a guy in the Post Office on the first floor of WHSmith so annoyed at having to queue he punched a Nigella book in the face. I genuinely did not make that up.

The fact that complaining is such a British past time says a lot about our culture.

And it’s fine when it’s warranted.

But unfortunately our old friend social media has turned what used to be a fairly throwaway part of life into a public performance.

Spend a few minutes on Twitter and you’ll doubtless see someone sending a message about how they’re “fuming”

about something fairly minor, tagging the company and, if they’re feeling particularly irate, their MP or local newspaper, as if anyone else in the world cares that the guy on the till in Tesco was a little bit snippy after you spent 10 minutes trying to find your clubcard.

I have one friend in particular – it’s fine, he won’t read this – who takes to Twitter every time he’s remotely displeased with any level of service he believes he’s entitled to.

Yes, sometimes shop assistants are a little bit grumpy. You try working 10 hours in a supermarket with a smile on your face the entire time. I’ve done it and it’s not easy.

Celebs are even worse at it. There’s something deeply unfair about someone with a million Twitter followers sending out a brief message about their grocery delivery being late, which immediately becomes spread around the internet like some kind of entitled wildfire.

And of course faced with this sort of attention – which only tells one side of the story, of course – the company has little choice but to back down. Hardly fair.

I never thought I’d find myself on the side of big businesses, but here we are.

So if something goes wrong, complain by all means, but the whole world doesn’t need to hear about it.