Who's ruining London? It's the headphones brigade, obviously

EVEN though it doesn't look like it, I regularly go to the gym, trying to stave off gravity and improve bone density by throwing myself around in my trainers twice a week.

- Dylan Jones

Recently, though, this has become something of a headache, and I mean this literally.

As I'm working my way around the rooms in my gym, struggling with my lat pulldowns and using the leg press as an opportunity to sit down for as long as possible (this is always a good moment to engage a wandering trainer in a conversation about something you didn't watch on television last night, but obviously something you have a strong opinion about), I will usually be treated to the sound of dumbbells crashing to the floor, or the weights on the multi-pack clanging against its base as they're dropped in exhaustion.

And it's loud. Very loud. Going to my gym right now is as bad as going to one of those German industrial metal gigs back in the Eighties featuring the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten or Laibach. My gym usually reverberates to the sound of low-level R&B, innocuous background music that is non-threatening and vaguely encouraging. These days it sounds like a heavy metal nightclub.

And not in a good way.