Why do we Brits keep saying sorry when it’s not our fault?

He was from Arizona, and went on to explain how people in the US don’t fall over themselves to apologise all the time like we do.

It’s true – we Brits are always keen to say sorry, often when it isn’t our fault. An hour previously I had said sorry to a woman who flung her backpack in my face while barging across a crowded rail platform – a ‘sorry’ hotspot. “Why did you apologise to her?” my husband asked.

He says sorry far less than I do, but then he is half Dutch, so maybe that explains it. I’m 100 per cent British and I apologise for almost everything. If someone steps on my foot I’ll say sorry. If someone lets a door slam in my face I’ll say sorry. In public settings I will often say: “Sorry, is this seat taken?,” when it clearly isn’t.

It drives my husband mad. “Sorry, but I bought these raspberries yesterday and they are all black underneath” I said while returning them to a supermarket last week. He told me: “Why are you sorry – they sold you rotten produce, you are entitled to return them.”

He’s always telling me to stop over-apologising for things that are not my fault.

I even apologise when I call helplines. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I will ask, while speaking with customer services.

British people say sorry on average nine times a day, according to research carried out last year by Babbel, a German language learning app. I would put the true figure at double that, for me at least.

In her book of English culture, Watching the English, social anthropologist Kate Fox identified a uniquely ‘English sorry reflex’. As part of her research she deliberately bumped into hundreds of people and intentionally jumped queues in towns and cities across England to record reactions. She encouraged colleagues to do the same while overseas, for comparison.

Fox found that around 80 per cent of English victims said sorry, even though the collisions were clearly her fault. Compared to when tourists from other countries were bumped, the difference was marked. Fox points out that only the Japanese have a similar culture, often leaving foreigners baffled by the constant apologies.

Saying sorry is definitely more a woman thing. In my experience females apologise far more often, and for far more trivial things. I believe it’s a sign of low self-confidence. We want to leave a good impression with others, so cover our backs by apologising. But in reality it works the other way, people don’t tend to respect those who constantly say sorry. They see us as weak, especially in the workplace.

But, of course, it’s a vital word in polite society. The well-known saying ‘Never explain, never apologise’ – attributed to the 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli – would make for a very unlikeable person.

Nowadays, politicians and others in high office are constantly being asked to say sorry.

Saying sorry is also a way of protecting ourselves, avoiding potential conflict. We live in hostile times, on a planet populated by many rude, aggressive people and the desire to avoid that at all cost is lodged within our consciousness.

Online, there’s no shortage of analysis over why we British apologise so often, and a host of theories as to why we do it. There’s no definitive answer, so if you expected to find one in this column, I’m sorry.