ASIDE FROM the fact that it is possibly the only word in the English language containing five consecutive vowels, the lone significance of queueing is that it is in all likelihood the most boring occupation on the planet.

Queueing, for those who never got past "persimmon" in third grade, is British for what the Americans call "standing in line." Now you know what I mean by boring.

But rather than something to be stamped out at every opportunity, like cod liver oil capsules and Tina Turner CDs and pickled beets, queueing has assumed the mantle of religion in Britain - something to be done at anytime of day and most nights and weekends.

Standing in a queue here is regarded as a civic duty. If there is a line, get in it. They queue like statues, for hours at a time, to get to see a pop singer with an evident case of crotch rot or catch the 6:10 to Bicester North or to get into Madame Toussaud's to see other statues such as a waxwork Jack the Ripper.

This is not some silly English eccentricity like warm beer and jellied eels and train systems that quit running when leaves fall on the tracks. This is a serious business, stemming from the equally serious business of World War II.

During the war, queueing was a function of British stiff-upper-lipism - get in line, wait your turn for a scrag of pork or dollop of butter or weekly pair of eggs, recognizing that we're all in the same boat, fair's fair and all that.

Thing is, the war is an increasingly dim memory, Hitler's charred bones have long been raked over and sugar is no longer rationed. But queueing goes on and on, and may the Almighty have mercy on your wretched soul if you commit the heinous crime of - pardon my language - jumping the queue.

There are perhaps ways of courting greater public opprobrium - punching out the queen of England, maybe, or barfing on Edward the Confessor's tomb in Westminster Abbey, or pouring ketchup over your fish and chips. But queue jumping is certainly right up there.

That is not to say that you don't stand in line in other places. Belgium, for instance, has turned queueing into a sort of bureaucratic hell on feet. I still quake at the memory of standing in line for hours totaling more than a single day, going from queue to queue, trying to get my car registered.

And woe betide you if, at any point, you have so much as an "I" misdotted or out of place in the entire, three-inch-thick stack of documentation you have accumulated along the tortuous way.

One chap three victims ahead of me in Line 56 did. He was immediately banished to the rear of the first queue, to begin the whole 26-hour process all over again. I hate seeing grown men bawl.

On the other hand, there are other places where the concept of queueing is as alien as, well, warm beer and cockles (whatever they are). In Paris, the queue is replaced by something best described as a Mongolian cluster-smash, where the sole rule is survival of the fittest, or the biggest elbows.

Outside the Paris rail station, the Gard du Nord, the taxi rank resembles nothing so much as the New York Giants and San Francisco Forty-Niners chasing en masse a tiny ovoid of pigskin with the score at 43-43 with 19 seconds left on the clock.

But then, this is France, where the national pastimes are eating snails, losing wars and overcharging for the Beaujolais nouveaux, so little of civilization's finer touches have reached there. What has, is locked up in the Louvre, away from the peasants.

The French ignore queues, even in Britain. I merely hate them - queues, that is. When it comes to standing in line, I have the patience of a gnat on speed.

In fact, the only occasions I could envision a lengthy queue with anything approaching fondness would be if I were standing in one awaiting execution as a mass murderer, or in a soup line at the end of which stood a vat of cream of mushroom.

But cometh the hour, cometh the man - in this case, one Patrick Young. He is a Brit who directs a company called Q4U, which does exactly what its name says.

If you are standing in line to get tickets to "Cats" or to get into the Tower of London or just to use the electrified public toilet in Leicester Square, Q4U will send someone along to do just that - stand in the queue for you.

"We spend about a year of our lives standing in queues," is the sad statistic that Patrick Young parades. What he has done is to hire about 80 professional queuers, any one of whom is ready to take your place in the line while you nip off to the pub, public facilities or Paris, depending on the length of the queue.

Says young Patrick: "Some businesses or individuals simply don't have the time to do this (queue), so we give them the chance to pay someone else to queue for them. Our queuers either wait in line, then ring the business or individual when it's their turn, or carry out the transaction for them."

Queueing, as anyone who has done it knows, is simple. It's just that it's so boring. "It's a job that doesn't require a lot of skill or experience," says Patrick Young, in something of an understatement. "All you need is plenty of patience."

And, if you are the beneficiary of Q4U's services, a healthy bank account. Queueing doesn't come cheap, if you are paying for it - about 30 bucks an hour is the going rate for Young's queuers.

Ah, well, you can stay in the office and work a couple hours' overtime to make enough to pay the queuers. But that, alas, is boring, too. How about a service company that sends someone around to do the work for you...?

Thought for the Week: Artificial intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

"Notes From A Tangled Webb" is syndicated by: