William Hanson doesn't make the rules, but he does enjoy them. He's one of the world's most trusted experts on good manners. Hanson offers bite sized advice on TikTok for everything from how to eat hors d'oeuvres to negotiating small talk effortlessly.
He's the Emily Post of the Instagram generation, with more than five million fans. For Hanson, society changes but good manners are timeless, classless and priceless. He co-hosts the podcast Help! I Sexted My Boss and has released his fifth book, Just Good Manners .
He says etiquette now is quite democratic: people discover by accident, and by design, what's acceptable. "We might have a bumpy patch, where we're sort of making mistakes, but we work out what is correct and what isn't." RNZ Afternoons listeners fired their etiquette queries at Hanson, from toast politeness to mascara application on public transport.
What we asked William Hanson What is the polite way to butter your toast? "If you want to do it in a terribly sophisticated way, and I would say it's a lot nicer, it's a bit like a bread roll in that you have your triangle of toast, and you just break a bite-sized piece off, butter that put some jam or marmalade on and eat that, rather than slather the whole thing and gobble and go, as people often do, as they're sort of halfway out the door, one leg in a pant." How should you refer to a new friend when you're unsure of their gender or pronouns? How rude is it to straight up ask? "I think it's always better to ask than.