Diane Duffin, a 36-year-old woman from Leeds, faces an Asbo for relentlessly playing the music of Dolly Parton. News of anybody reducing their neighbours’ lives to a state of “living hell” by loudly playing Nine to Five 20 times a day is always going to be a little bit funny (could you, for instance, resist the urge to tell the sufferers that it’s only “enough to drive you crazy if you let it”?).

But sniggers should be silenced by the news that more than 40 per cent of the UK population suffers from noisy neighbours, a 2005 survey listing loud music as the most cited grievance. Worse still, one third of us admit to being too noisy ourselves (unlike the defiant Duffin, who maintains that she and her 15-year-old son “like Dolly Parton”, and “do play it a lot,” but “don’t disturb anyone”).

When it comes to noise complaints, Dolly seems eerily recurrent. In 2000, Knowsley Council decided to combat the problem of loud techno music by visiting schools and playing pupils Parton songs until they couldn’t stand it . . . and then asking them how they liked it. And in February this year, Billy Hillan, a hairdresser from Lanarkshire was given an Asbo for playing Stand By Your Man – admittedly, the Tammy Wynette version, but still blonde, slightly camp, country and western.

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010