One of the benefits of being a small cog in the well-oiled vaccination engine at STEAM is the insight it gives you into human nature.

And I think I now have the answer to one of the leading questions of the year, which I will reveal in a minute.

Mostly directing cars in the car park, sometimes herding people indoors, and latterly squirting them with anti-bacterial hand gel whether they like it or not, one of the things the experience has taught me is that people’s jobs are defined by whether they have to deal with lots of people, or - as was the case with my career - you mostly avoid the public.

I spent the majority of my working life alongside friendly colleagues, and if I did interact with the public, it was either one-to-one or in dribs and drabs. But if you are a shop assistant, policeman, receptionist, waitress or, indeed, an NHS hero, you have probably amassed enough information to write a book about the different characters you encounter every day - from the best to the worst.

So meeting hundreds of people on each shift has opened my eyes over the last six months.

At the beginning, the vaccination programme only provided us with an insight into the older generation and others who found themselves near the front of the queue. They obviously had more than their share of mobility issues, but - even more poignantly - sometimes came with a new kind of anxiety, caused by venturing out for the first time in nearly a year.

And while all volunteers were touched by the old folk’s overwhelming friendliness, gratitude and often fun, the burning question was whether it would be the same when the vaccination list worked its way down the generations.

We all wondered whether the youngsters would be the same pleasure to deal with. As we saw with reactions to the England football team recently, there are a small number of people in this country who crave spiteful division and - for reasons best known only to themselves - waste their lives trying to spread hatred around.

They would be only too glad to find some examples to justify their pointless prejudice and discrimination against people who are different in some way, including a hostility to people based solely on age.

Well, I have bad news for them. The youngsters coming for their jabs may not be as chatty and self-confident as their older counterparts - we’ve seen very little evidence of the cockiness some might assume would come with youth - but otherwise there are only two other differences, as far as I can see.

They generally move quicker, and they all have their mobile phones out, ready to show you the confirmation of their appointment. They are just as polite and just as patient.

So what about the tiny minority of rude, self-important people you find in every generation? We couldn’t comment. Life is too short, so we have already forgotten them.