THIS week, I shall mostly be talking too loudly. It's all the rage down my way. Of course, it may be the price I pay for living in a market town, but excessive volume does seem to be the way to go.

I'm sure you've all encountered men of middle age and middle class, who've apparently been voice-trained to speak like Brian Blessed in a force nine gale. For some reason I always picture them in white linen suits, possibly with a hat or cane.

They draw out their vowels, spit out their sibilants, and yes, in true Carry On fashion, they roll their Rs.

Now I'm all for clarity of speech, and in these days of constant extraneous noise it does no harm to speak up a bit to be heard.

But what I object to is having their theatrical tones foisted on me from across, say, a restaurant (one of their favourite haunts).

Now there are reasons actors have voice training. Chiefly, it's so they can be clearly understood, and also so that their voice will carry a fair distance from the stage.

But the "stage" the objects of my bile like to occupy is the restaurant, museum, art gallery, or bookshop.

These are ideal places to enhance their credentials, but not acoustically suited to their foghorn tones.

And the conversations! Really, it's the verbal equivalent of wearing a shocking pink t-shirt with the words "Look At Me, I'm Great!!!" in flashing neon. And since I hold the view that anyone who uses more than one exclamation mark at a time should be immediately sectioned under the Mental Health Act, I think you know where I'm coming from.

I first noticed the phenomenon in restaurants, where displaying wine snobbery merely to one's own dining companions proved not enough for one human megaphone.

And so the entire room was treated to "fascinating" anecdotes about this fellow's trips to the vineyards of France, and the essential secrets he had been told by wily grape-treaders. It was a bit like having Swiss Toni yell in your ear for half an hour.

But I've noticed the whole thing grow until it's almost become a subculture of its own. Theatre bars are full of them, pontificating on the hidden nuances and subtle metaphors of, say, Whoops Vicar, Where's Your Trousers?

I'm rarely in an art gallery, but sooner or later you'll usually find someone thundering about how "what the artist is really saying here is that a world without art is a world without love". And here's the rest of us thinking it's just some bird smirking enigmatically.

Truth is, they're everywhere. Paunchy chaps pushing fifty, bellowing their opinions to the hoi-polloi, their every roar really meaning: "Look at me, I'm really, really sophisticated, I am."

My message to these people is a simple, but heartfelt one: tone it down, chaps. It's all right to have your views about these things. We just don't want to share them.

The world doesn't need you foisting your half-baked opinions on it in a bid to look cleverer than you really are.

Who the hell do you think you are? A newspaper columnist?