Hamish Champ: When's a good time for a quick polish then?

It was mad-as-a-bag-of-cats Colonel William Kilgore, played by Robert Duval, who uttered the now-legendary line: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning…The smell, you know that gasoline smell," in Francis Ford Coppolla's seminal Vietnam war film 'Apocalypse Now'.

I know exactly what Kilgore - great name for a Wager of War, don't you think? - meant. We all our have favourite aromas, after all. I like the smell of garage workshops; of tar when it's about to be laid on a road; of damp earth in a forest just after a summer rain shower. And ordinarily I don't mind the smell of polishing fluid.

That said, there is a time and place for the liberal application of Brasso™, and I'm sorry but 9pm on a busy night in a pub ain't one of them.

Sitting with a friend in an otherwise very pleasant boozer in Blackheath, South East London last week my olfactory system went into overdrive as the unmistakable aroma of the fluid in question not so much wafted up my schnozzle as galloped at full pelt like an Ascot thoroughbred.

We were sitting at a table close to the bar when a member of the pub's staff had begun coating a number of brass drip trays in the stuff and leaving them on the bar to dry before polishing.

With my nose more or less level with the bar top the smell became gag-inducingly unpleasant, so we moved to another table further away from the offending whiff.

Later my friend, who has run bars and restaurants in her time, went to buy drinks and politely mentioned to the industrious member of staff that perhaps the cleaning could be done at the end of the evening, thus avoiding the scouring of punter's nasal linings with the acrid fumes emanating from the trays.

Clearly affronted, the barmaid retorted that she had always cleaned the trays around this time in every pub she'd ever worked.

When my friend suggested that she didn't agree with the practice since the smell could well put people off eating or drinking, the staff member said: "So you think you're right because you're the customer and I'm only bar staff?"

My chum returned to our table, smile fixed, but otherwise speechless.

To round things off, at bang on 10.50pm the same member of staff went up to each occupied table in the pub chivvying people to get a last round in, since the place would be "closing soon".

Customer service? Shite on a bike, more like.