Getting in touch with my inner Jim Davidson

It is the last day of some lengthy building works on my house, and two of the builders are laying some steps. Somewhat demob happy at the end of a six-month project, they are in relaxed mood – so relaxed, in fact, that one of them has brought in a portable television for them to watch while they work.

A television set on site: clearly there is something wrong here. The proper way to behave on these occasions, the manly thing, is to go out there and kick ass. I am paying these guys, the boss is away and these are important steps. It will be humiliating if, in future years, people trip up and fall flat on their faces as they leave the house because a couple of builders were watching Trisha rather than concentrating on what they were doing.

Assertiveness is what is required here – a spot of shouting, some deft, strategic swearing. Over the past few months, while living in a caravan, I have learnt how to do this, not only raising my voice but turning up on people's doorsteps and being rude to them, barking down the telephone and hanging up before the other person can reply.

It would be good to think that, in the self-consciously sensitive 21st century, this kind of emotionally dysfunctional behaviour would provoke little more than pitying contempt, but I can report that the opposite is true. There is no escaping the fact that, at the right time and place, shouting at people earns you respect and gets things done.

Yet, with the television problem, I remain mellow. Now that I live under a roof and am no longer angry and uncomfortable, my natural, liberal gentleness has re-established itself. TV, lads? Be my guests.

The problem of asserting authority without being thought to be inappropriately bossy, something of which women have complained for some years, has now reached the modern male. The grey line between assertiveness and bullying, where the empathetic shades into the merely pathetic, has become almost invisible.

Just now and then, there are opportunities for old-fashioned manliness. When, earlier this week while out shopping, the actor Christopher Cazenove happened upon a bank robbery on Clapham High Street, he was able to impose himself on the situation with commendable decisiveness, smashing one of the thieves in the face with a cutting board and managing to retrieve the stolen security box.

But, even today in a busy, bent city, the chances of being able to prove oneself as a have-a-go hero are limited. A more common challenge is that experienced on the same day by the Tories' favourite comic, Jim Davidson.

According to Davidson's version of events, the Marriott Royal Hotel in Bristol, where he was staying during a pantomime run, was not providing the kind of service he expected for £150 a night. He was given a ground-floor room into which, he claims somewhat implausibly, people were able to look. The lights and TV were faulty, he received the wrong morning newspaper, "the food was so bad that even an SAS bloke wouldn't eat it," and so on. He complained about all this and, as a result, he says, was thrown out.

Assertiveness or bullying? Given some of Davidson's comments, it seems likely that he richly deserved what happened to him. The staff were all "fucking French, Dutch or Swahili and none of them spoke any English," he told reporters. The place was run by "a bunch of fucking Americans – bloody imbeciles". He had been particularly enraged by the Mormon bible beside his bed – "I don't want a bloody Mormon bible," he said.

On the other hand, it is just possible – unlikely but possible – that Davidson was behaving in the sort of way which more people might usefully adopt. How many of us have visited a hotel and have been through the cold food/wrong papers/Mormon bible routine, and have said nothing? It is not the staff's fault that they have problems with English, we tell ourselves. Raging to the management is likely to have less effect on their blood pressure than on ours. Who wants to appear a whingey, aggrieved Victor Meldrew type?

One could argue that, in his rough, unpleasant, bigoted way, Jim Davidson was striking out against the great conspiracy of apathy that is partly the result of citizens not having the nerve to make a fuss. Smooth-talking technocrats, whether they are covering up a spot of political carelessness in Westminster or are running a shamelessly inefficient railway company or are simply part of a large corporation in the leisure industry, have discovered the extent of their power over individuals. They know that apologies or explanations should only be given under extreme circumstances, when a voter, traveller or customer kicks up an uncomfortable ruckus.

This is not an argument for civic yobbery, nor a defence of the boorish behaviour of a celebrity. But just possibly assertiveness, a spirit of honest, confident bloody-mindedness in our dealings with those who run our lives, is a strong candidate for a New Year's resolution.

terblacker@aol.com