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‘Cancer on Board’ sounds more like the name of a band than ‘Baby on Board’, so whenever I’ve worn my badge on crowded trains I haven’t been offered a seat.

But I was once asked to give up my priority seat when I was on the tram on the way to the hospital.

One mother explained that her son liked to sit in that chair because it was “his favorite.” I had a chemotherapy pump connected to a vein in my arm and it slowly dripped cancer-killing drugs into my body, just millimeters away from my heart.

Unfortunately, the woman didn’t seem to think this was a reasonable excuse to sit there and she was angry when I suggested that her son could sit in one of the hundred or so empty seats.

I understand that not all disabilities are visible, so when she originally asked me, she may not have known that I had incurable cancer.

But after I told her, she surely should have been happy that her son learned the important lesson that not everything in life can go your way.

So when I saw that television’s second favorite judge (after Judge Judy), Rob Rinder, had posted on X about his experiences on the train from Plymouth to London, I appreciated both sides of the argument.

With services disrupted by Storm Darragh, his train was much busier than it would normally have been on a Sunday afternoon, leading to him reporting that elderly people had to stand for the four-hour journey.

He said he gave up his seat, but most people didn’t.

Many people asked if he was aware that most disabilities are invisible, so passengers probably didn’t give up their seats because they were disabled.

There are many hidden disabilities, but I would bet that rudeness is the most common hidden handicap of train passengers.

Most of the people on that train were probably well enough to stand for four hours (although obviously that shouldn’t have happened and the train conductor should have done his best to make sure everyone had a seat and everyone who stood got their money back had to get), but puts himself before others.

And then they probably put their bag second – putting it on the seat next to them instead of letting a stranger sit there.

I experienced something similar when I was on the train from Crewe to London last week.

The journey was going well until our service had a disruption and we all had to get off at Rugby and onto an already busy service to continue to the capital.

I secured a seat by announcing to a man who didn’t have the courage to remove his bag from the seat that he was going to move his suitcase because I have cancer and I had to sit down.

But a couple in their 60s struggled to find a place to sit, while a woman in her 20s pretended to be asleep as her huge bag took up a lot of space. I tweeted about the issue hoping the conductor would tell her to stop being an idiot and realize her bag could fit above her head, but he walked past it three times and said nothing.

And this is another part of the problem: there is a gridlock on public transport between people who are too rude to move their bags and give up their seats, and those who are too polite to ask.

On days when I’m suffering from the side effects of chemotherapy and feel like I’m going to collapse if I don’t sit down, I don’t have the courtesy to ask.

But on days when I’m feeling good, I’m more of a Rob Rinder character, albeit without his TV career, where instead of saying something directly into the void I shout, “X” and hope someone pays attention.