No-show? That offends me.

Over the last two evenings I have been sitting on an audition panel for a fundraising show I'm MDing for a London amateur company. It's been interesting, enjoyable and fruitful, but there has been one thing which has really surprised me: several people, especially young pros, simply failing to turn up for audition slots they had booked. I know that sometimes an audition becomes impractical or you realise you can't/don't want to do the show, but there is a reason why we give you a mobile number to contact on the day. I attend auditions quite frequently, and I wouldn't dream of simply failing to turn up.

Let me explain. There are many forms of rudeness. Some are direct, or active: pushing someone out of the way when attempting board a crowded train, for instance. Some are indirect, or passive: failing to respond to a polite email, perhaps. But they have this in common - they arise from the implicit belief that my time and priorities are more important than yours. I will not bother to travel to the venue and audition for you, but I don't think it at all important if you have to wait around for half an hour because I haven't bothered to spend twenty seconds sending you a text saying "Sorry, I can't make it".

That it is so easy to let someone know and yet some people don't is revealing. A failure of courtesy at a level as basic as this tells you everything you need to know about the person in question. One of my colleagues on the audition panel proposed a 'blacklist' for these people and said, if he were a casting director, he would set one up. Simply put, anyone who failed to turn up without informing the company would never be cast again. Casting directors are used by a large number of companies. It would work.

Unfortunately, we have become so used to this sort of basic, selfish rudeness it seems unlikely to happen. And what do we do about the person who turns up half an hour late for a meeting and fails to apologise? Or the people who reserve a table for a Saturday night at a restaurant and then don't turn up? Or indeed that berk in a suit who always pushes in front of you when you're trying to get on the tube in rush hour?

Let's blacklist them all. Next time someone does something like this to you, they have demonstrated that they have no courtesy, and deserve none in return.