I have a new candidate for the world’s worst thing ever. It’s worse than traffic wardens, than call centres, than toast always landing banana side down.

It’s worse than paper cuts, toe stubs and missing the last train home by one minute because it left two minutes early. It’s EasyJet’s speedy boarding.

The name is bad enough. “Can all the speedy boarders come to the front?” inquires the schoolmistressish lady down the Tannoy, as if she were saying: “Can all the total losers come to the front?”

At which point, you have to come forward all urgently and pushily, and say: “I am a speedy boarder.” Thus allowing all the nonspeedy boarders trying to bundle onto the plane way before their turn to look at you hatefully and mouth the word “loser” at you as you elbow preejaculatorily past.

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It used to be farcical. You used to speedy-board the bus, wait for everyone else to unspeedy-board, then get on the actual plane en masse. You were, in effect, paying to be first onto the bus, but last onto the plane. Now the system has been tightened.

Clearly, a militant gang of die-hard speedy boarders kicked up a fuss, so now you speedy-board a special bit of the bus, then speedy-board the plane as well. Some poor guy in a hi-vis jacket stands in front of the speedy-boarding door, blocking a relentless onslaught of nonspeedy boarders. He has the world’s worst job.

Last week, I was a speedy boarder. I’m not sure why. It just seemed like a box worth ticking at the time. And it was on the bus that I really began to regret it. I was watching as a fellow speedy boarder loudly objected to a couple of nonspeedy boarders trying to walk through the bus into the speedy-boarding section. Suddenly, life just seemed hugely depressing. Next time I go, I imagine they’ll have a glass partition down the middle of the bus. With armed guards.

But it’s so hard not to get involved. The sheer stress of waiting on a bus to see which doors open first, worrying constantly that your fiver was money pointlessly spent, that someone from Group B, perish the thought, might make it onto the plane before you, is surely reason enough never to be a speedy blimming boarder in the first blimming place. But I was, and I had become determined.

The doors nearest to us pinged open. We had a shot at actual on-plane speedy boarding – but no... a young mother and her baby were blocking our way. I waited for the mother to gather her nine million accoutrements of babying. I should probably have helped, but then I would have been stuck.

Mr and Mrs SB, behind me, were more ruthless. With a loud “ ’Scuse us, we are speedy boarders,” they trampled past us, over the baby, out the doors and onto the plane, knocking a few blind people and octogenarians and small, endangered animals and priceless Ming-dynasty vases off the stairs as they went. Nothing would stop Mr and Mrs SB.

I rushed after them, desperate to make use of my priority status, abandoning all sense of discipline and good manners. I burst onto the plane to find the only three seats with extra legroom at the front already taken. Five of the six in the middle with an inch more legroom were taken too. Curses.

Two of them were now occupied by the SBs, who had split cunningly into an aisle seat and a window seat, thus making the middle seat unattractive to newcomers. They were pretending not to know each other in order to have all three extra-legroom seats to themselves. SoBs.

The rest of the passengers were now boarding, all calmly taking their seats, all still mouthing the word “loser” at me because I’d spent the past 40 minutes in a big sweat about being first onto a plane where all the seats are the goddamn same.

And my wife was mouthing the word “divorce”, because they were right ... I am a loser.

It was then that I snapped. I abandoned my regretful wife, walked back over to the SoBs, who were still studiously avoiding eye contact with each other or anyone else, and asked if Mrs SoB in the aisle seat could let me through.

I had called their bluff. And this is why speedy boarding is worse, even, than your bag of shopping bursting just near your front door and your bottle of gin smashing all over your microwave curry. So wound up and unreasonable had I become, I’d made the decision to fly the three hours to Marrakesh stuck between two of the most annoying people on the planet, rather than next to my own beloved, stroppy wife.

It was worth it, though. I have very pointy elbows.

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