The new way of making money

Blaspheming on the airwaves. That was a snippet of news that caught my eye a few weeks back in the acres of local news that have long lost any sparkle of newness. The item in itself was anything but extraordinary. For blaspheming so peppers run of the mill conversation that it seems to grate on fewer and fewer ears.

Add surly shop assistants, surlier waiters, rude telephone operators, churlish bus and taxi drivers, passport-shoving police, brash professionals, savage driving, sheer arrogance and abject inconsideration, and you have a reasonably accurate sample of our culture. A culture that for years has been flaunting rampant bad manners with impunity.

We're not the only ones. On either side of the Atlantic, bad behaviour has also become equated to being clever, not just in the media, where the highest paid hacks are invariably the most abusive, but in all professions. Until now.

Suddenly anybody who is somebody is polishing perfect p's and q's and getting noticed for doing so. Tom Ford awed his hostess, Lucy Yeomans, the editor of Harpers & Queen, by having a thank-you note for dinner hand-delivered to her office by 10 a.m. the following day. Nicole Kidman showed up early rather than diva late at a recent awards dinner in London - a detail that took more space than the fabulous gown she was wearing.

Not to be upstaged, Madonna also turned up on time at one of her latest fashion shoots, with just one assistant and behaved incredulously well. In her case, however, the polite thing was short-lived for her outrageous demands while currently performing in Up for Grabs at London's Wyndham Theatre made William Ingrey resign as theatre manager after having held the post for 27 years.

In her latest stage role, the uncouth Material Girl has demanded a complete behind-the-scenes refurbishment, the addition of burly bouncers and also requested that large sections of the theatre be declared off-limits to staff during performances. Allegedly people who had to deal with her while she was filming in Malta can fully sympathise with Ingrey.

Now there's no end to celebs monopolising the headlines. It's the sure way for publishing houses to rake in millions. The same editors are gawking at the revival of the civil list spinning anecdotes and advice for how to behave before, at and after your next dinner party.

They are even talking to each other rather than turning their heads the other way when they meet at fashion shows and subsequent parties. All this may seem trivial, but if you are the CEO of a company, you're bound to feel a perfect fool if you cannot use a knife and fork and making intelligent conversation to the A-guests at your table.

According to the British and American press, tycoons acting like barbarians are increasingly frowned upon. Good manners are making a comeback - and money.

Apart from stationers selling classy 'thank-you' notes and florists selling an unprecedented amount of bouquets for no particular reason, protocol schools are booming.

Manners matter so much that business schools in the UK and in the States are running etiquette classes because this is what you need to get, keep and advance in your job. The Carnegie Foundation has just published a study rating good manners at 85 per cent and skills at 15 per cent of successful employability.

Across the Continent, Europeans are also seen to be increasingly keen to hold fast onto their respective polite and familiar modes of address. Meanwhile, Asian courtesy is serving more and more of an inspiration.

The courtesy revival, therefore, is not merely illustrating parameters of race and social standing. Like any code it is reflecting and expressing a generation thing. In a world dominated by fear of crime, terrorism and global recession, the need for social cohesion is axing the in-your-face brashness revved up by callowness, intolerance and decadence. (Whether the newly found social graces will help to dent or entrench the hypocrisy of rigid etiquette is another argument.)

Sociologists and psychologists are all out to explain the new trend as a result of September 11. Directly or indirectly, the response to the horror of that day triggered off a new fad that like all fashions react as a rejection - and a continuation - of the immediate past.

If only Malta would show that "good manners are in". Fat chance when you look all around you. Wherever you go, you will have little doubt that we live in country of glorified bad behaviour. Minding your manners may be hiking profits overseas. Given that we have been erroneously equating schooling with education, Maltese entrepreneurs have a tough time catching up.