How many minutes can you survive with your mobile phone switched off?

This is really funny – the latest “Don’t let a mobile phone ruin your movie” spoof from Orange. Take a look if you haven’t been to the cinema in the last few weeks. It’s the introduction of a two-minute ‘phone break’ every fifteen minutes during the showing, so that the film is put on pause and you can check your phone. The gushing responses from the audience as they leave are hysterical.

It’s funny because it is so painfully near to the thoughts we almost think. Maybe your child really does need to hear from you every fifteen minutes when you go to the cinema and leave them in the hands of a trusted babysitter? Maybe your friend will think you have died if you don’t call them back within a couple of minutes?

So I wasn’t surprised, a few minutes into Contagion (4/10 – very disappointing), when the guy in front of me pulled out his mobile to reply to a text. The problem is, with smart phones, that his screen was so ‘Amoled Supercharged’ (or whatever the term is) that it seemed to light up the whole cinema and force the rest of us to join in his own personal phone break.

I’d better stop, before I start sounding like ‘Disgruntled from Tunbridge Wells’.