What is it to be a true ­gentleman? If I had considered such a question at the age of 18, I would probably have mumbled something about holding doors open for women.

I might have deployed the phrase ‘ladies first’ and cited as the epitome of gentlemanly conduct the old legend about Sir Walter Raleigh removing his cloak and spreading it across a muddy puddle to spare the shoes and dress of Elizabeth I.

I’d have told you a gentleman never asks a lady her age, always pours her wine before his own and steps up to carve the Sunday roast even if he hasn’t lifted a finger in its preparation.

In polite company, a gentleman stands when a member of the opposite sex excuses herself to powder her nose. In a restaurant, he ensures she is seated first, perhaps helps her out of her coat and pulls back her chair to facilitate the parking process.

Naturally, he settles the bill – won’t brook any argument – and sees her to her minicab, maybe even slips the driver a few quid to cover the fare before banging the roof of the car to send him on his way.

Yes, this is the ground I would likely have covered in the mid 1980s as I entered adulthood, and the eagle-eyed may have noticed a theme permeating my examples. Every one relates to the gentleman’s treatment of women. Back then, we called it chivalry.

I am much older now and, I fondly imagined, much more gentlemanly than I was as a gauche fresher at university, splitting the bill at Pizza Hut on first dates, scoffing at their favourite bands, waving them off at the bus stop.

It has been a long road, full of missteps – and I am prone to them still – but progress, surely, has been made. Unless it is progress along entirely the wrong road.

Guidance edited by etiquette expert William Hanson appears this week and suggests not only that my route map towards perfect gentleman status is out of print but that any remaining copies should be burned before reading.

A total of 39 examples of the dos and don’ts in this pursuit are offered and almost none of them relate to a chap’s conduct around women. It is almost as if the male of the species exists in complete isolation from them rather than is likely married to one or shares a home with one or hopes to catch one’s eye.

Indeed, the only maxim which explicitly mentions the opposite sex is the one about a true gentleman being happy to carry a handbag for a lady.

I am aware, of course, that some aspiring gentlemen are less interested in appealing to ladies in the way that others wish to, and that my 1980s understanding of decorous male comportment may have lacked a certain inclusivity.

I would be at pains to put that right today – but not to the extent that women were practically written out of the gentleman’s rulebook.

I am aware, too, that while inclusivity is a very 21st century word, chivalry was thrown in an unmarked grave late last century.

‘Ladies first’ was suddenly patronising. Holding doors open was tantamount to saying, ‘you are weak, so let me help’. Getting the bill became an expression of financial power, a crude assumption that my bank balance can take the hit more readily than yours.

RIP chivalry. You are still mourned. And not just by men.

So what does our 39-point checklist have to say about 2025’s perfect gent? Much that makes me wince. For example, he ‘learns and uses waiters’ names’. Really? Whenever I have been in the company of a man who addresses a waiter by their name my instant assumption is they are showing off.

I picture an earlier scene where they made a point of ascertaining the waiter’s name precisely so they could attempt to impress the assembled company with this knowledge later.

A true gentleman ‘believes Roger Moore was the best 007’. I don’t recall ever meeting a man who believes such a thing – only some women, and in their case it’s quite reasonable.

There was a sense of danger about Sean Connery – a visceral violent streak – and I’m not convinced his sexual politics bear scrutiny in the 2020s, or even that they did in the 1960s. But if the true gentleman believes that Moore outshone him as Bond then he should never become a film critic.

He ‘enjoys a gin in a tumbler, not a balloon’. Were I to be served a gin in a tumbler, the only reason that I would resist the temptation to rise and find an appropriate large glass with a stem to decant it into is I would consider this ungentlemanly.

I’d sit and smile through gritted teeth as the true gentleman often must do.

Still on drinks etiquette, he ‘agrees that only babies drink from bottles’. I respectfully disagree. He certainly does not slurp beer ‘by the neck’ at the dinner party or the drinks reception or even the restaurant because context is all. But dirtying a glass for a beer at home with your feet up watching Traitors? That’s crazy talk.

The perfect gentleman I’d like to be steers well clear of the slippery slope into punctilious fusspot territory. Oh, and he’ll only stop at a motorway service station ‘to use the loo’.

Would the refined male really be guided by so ridiculous a tenet? Isn’t he more practical than that – able to conceive of any number of reasons why such an admittedly unedifying pit stop may be the least bad option?

Speaking of practicality, this lunatic man, with his uppity banter with waiters, dodgy taste in films and oddball quirks around drinks and service stations, is also the type of chap who ‘has spare wellies for his guests’.

Not the sort of guy, then, who sends a text saying ‘bring wellies’, but the kind who ensures every shoe size is catered for should it be muddy outside.

Even Sir Walter Raleigh would think this bloke a fool who was trying too hard.

Finally, number 39 on the list, and perhaps the biggest insult of all to us strivers. A true gentleman ‘doesn’t take anything too seriously’.

Seriously? I wonder how he would get on not taking his wife’s toothache too seriously – or his responsibilities to his children, or meeting mortgage payments.

Isn’t the gentleman worthy of the name instinctively cognisant of what is serious and what is not? Indeed, isn’t this discernment among his finest qualities?

I wouldn’t argue with some entries. Yes, we should know when to call it a night, how to iron a shirt, not to care where someone went to school.

But other maxims pertinent to our times are missing. A true gentleman does not go on social media to start a fight.

A true gentleman eschews emojis, writes his text messages in sentences and uses words rendered in full, not in shortform.

Where a true gentleman learns someone’s name, he ensures he can spell it.

Ever fewer do.

Onward on my road I travel, then, even if Mr Hanson might deem my route map obsolete. A true gentleman is his own man.

j.brocklebank@dailymail.co.uk