The Proms, which started on Friday, are every bit as good as the hype would have it. By far the most varied and consistently high-class music festival in the world, they are in almost every respect a model of British cultural life.

In almost every respect. There is, however, one big problem with the Proms: the Prommers. Somehow the myth has taken hold that the people who pay £4 to stand in the arena - the area that would normally have stalls seats, which is handed over to the Promenaders for the duration of the Proms - are the greatest audience on the planet.

Nothing would, of course, suit the prevailing ethos of our time - access - better than those Prommers being the ideal mix of decorum, good taste and calm enthusiasm. It is an article of the arts establishment's faith, after all, that it is the people in the cheap seats who are the real fans, showing up the more expensively-seated philistines who snooze through Ein Heldenleben until it is time for a G&T in the interval.

Talk about the wish being father to the thought! There is no other audience quite so noisy, fidgety, intolerant, smelly and plain bloody awful as the Promenaders. I know how bad they are because I used to be one of them. I started when I was a student and for more than a decade I put up with their din, their restless twitching, their inanity, their cliquiness and, perhaps worst of all, their appalling personal hygiene. I did it because of the astonishing value of a £4 entrance fee. And if the Albert Hall audience was so awful, well, that was the price to be paid for obtaining such a fabulous musical education.

As I got older, work commitments meant that I was not getting good enough value from my season ticket and so I decided to buy normal tickets - seats, that is - for the half a dozen or so Proms that I could get to. And guess what? I discovered that it is possible to listen to a Prom without being surrounded by chatter, without having to put up with couples, oblivious to their surroundings, eating each others' cheeks, without having to hear crisp packets being opened during the softest pianissimo, without having to watch your neighbour pick her nose during the slow movement and without having to ration your in-breaths to avoid being asphyxiated by body odour.

The mythology is all wrong. The Prommers may seem a wonderful, romantic ideal of an arts audience. But they are not. It is the Prommers who talk to each other in the middle of the St Matthew Passion, and the boring people in the seats who listen attentively. It is the Prommers who lie flat on the floor and fall asleep and the seated enthusiasts who hang on the orchestra's every note.

The real problem about the Promenaders is that they are not there for the music, but to be part of a rather sad club that meets nightly at 7.30 and is defined by a series of inane rituals. So the highlight of their evening is not Martha Argerich playing Ravel, but the chance to chant "heave" when the piano is shifted onto the stage, or their asinine mock applause when the orchestra leader plays a note on the piano for the orchestra to tune up to.

I have always wondered what they do between October and June when there are no Proms to go to. Stay at home, I hope, for the rest of our sakes.
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