“HE’s 30 and single, what’s wrong with him?” She followed this remark with hoarse, animal-like laughter.

I was in a pub with a lovely couple and a cretin who clearly knew they had tried their hands at matchmaking but was unaware I was involved.

She went on to give her loud, unsolicited views on what she clearly considered to be the disease of being single. The couple exchanged uncomfortable looks and shot me an apologetic and nervous glance as if fearful I was about to fly into a rage.I wasn’t particularly annoyed that I was the inadvertent target of her ravings more at the way she smugly imagined being in a relationship elevated her above all unattached people.

This was in contrast to the girl I had been set up with, who was lovely. We went out a few times but I found the other woman’s comments more enduring in my memory as it epitomises an entity that plagues single people – the smug couple.

Some years ago I bumped into an old acquaintance who had always been unlucky in love and I was delighted to hear he was engaged.

When I asked how long they had been together I was shocked to find it was just two months. I must have looked startled as he hurriedly reassured me it was not like the other friends we had known who had planned to get married after several years of dating and then didn’t.

No, this was “the real thing.” I was a little annoyed at his derisory remarks about those with more experience and at the implication that he and his girlfriend had invented love. As these words left my lips he shook his head pityingly, no doubt lamenting the tragic fact that nobody could feel the same kind of emotion as him.

His girlfriend then came running out of a shop and the pair pressed their clammy bodies together as if one of them hadn’t just been in the middle of a conversation.

He then did the worse smug couple thing of all and abandoned his friends.

Occasionally there would be a break-up and the newly single man would be silently edged out of the group. I got a call from this person the other day casually asking if I wanted to go out for a drink.

We were never particularly close and frankly I was concerned he had my phone number. It was an awkward conversation as he adopted a tone of a lifetime drinking buddy which made me feel I had to hide the fact I didn’t know who he was.

Even worse are the friends who start to say “we” all the time. Unable to be separated they will bring their significant other into your life.

This is sometimes good but I must admit my heart fell when I arranged to meet an old friend for a curry and saw his nitwit of a girlfriend come tottering towards me. Throughout the night she whined about not liking curry.

It was clear he hadn’t wanted to bring her but didn’t want to have to deal with the squabble and tears that refusal would bring.

Then he said: “Oh by the way, I didn’t want my girlfriend to tag along anymore so I said you don’t like her.”