THE English are now as rude as the French and less polite than the Americans, Germans and Spanish, according to a new survey.
For courtesy, London is only ranked 15th - equal with Paris - among world cities, the survey from Reader's Digest revealed.
London scored 57% in the politeness table - well behind the 80% of outright winner New York.
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Second with 77% was Zurich, Toronto was third with 70% and Berlin fourth with 68%.
Other cities to beat London included Stockholm with 63% and Madrid 60%.
Reader's Digest sent undercover reporters from its editions in each country to assess politeness in their most populous city.
In every location, they staged scenarios to see if people would hold open a door, say "thank you" after making a sale in a shop, and help someone pick up papers dropped in a busy location. Points were awarded for polite responses, and the results for each city were tallied and compared.
New Yorkers were particularly willing to hold doors open. Former Mayor of New York, Ed Koch was not surprised at the results, pointing to a rise in New York niceness since the terror attacks on the city five years ago.
"Since 9/11, New Yorkers are more caring. They understand the shortness of life," he said.
Zagreb residents were the world leaders in helping with dropped papers. One man insisted on helping despite having arthritis and a bad back. "I always help someone in trouble," he said.
Polite
In the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, even petty criminals were polite. Shop assistants were especially polite in Zurich and Stockholm.
But not every European city produced high courtesy scores. Moscow and Bucharest ranked as the continent's least polite. When a woman failed to hold a door in Moscow, she replied, "I'm not a doorman. It's not my job to hold doors. If someone gets hurt, they should be quicker on their feet."
The region that most lacked courtesy was Asia. Eight out of nine cities finished in the bottom 11. Every city except Hong Kong finished in the bottom 10 in the rankings for holding doors open, and no test had a success rate higher than 40%
Worldwide, the under-40s were the most courteous, and the over-60s the least. Men were less polite to women than they were to members of their own sex.
"This was the world's biggest real-life test of common courtesy," said Katherine Walker, editor-in-chief of the British edition of Reader's Digest.
She went on: "Our researchers conducted more than 2,000 separate tests. The results were often surprising and consistently thought-provoking."
Here are the percentage marks awarded for courtesy among cities surveyed:
