• More than one third of Brits find PPI refund recovery calls the most irritating to receive

• The Irish have the least patience as 77 per cent immediately hang up a cold call

• More than a quarter of Brits are sympathetic to those making the cold call, realising it’s just a job

There can be fewer jobs tougher than being made to call random people to try and sell them something they didn’t want in the first place.

But cold callers are generally unwelcome, with callers always having to sound bright and breezy to the irate resident who answers the phone.

There is rarely a good time to talk to a cold caller. Somehow they either manage to ring halfway through EastEnders, or when the recipient is doing something tricky like feeding a baby/doing some intricate DIY task/playing Minecraft (delete as appropriate).

But while the callers are just trying to make a living, many of us don’t see it that way, and resent this telephonic intrusion of our homes.

Wired and wireless telephone headset provider Headsets4Business.co.uk carried out a survey of 1,500 people, asking what really gets our goat when it comes to cold calls. But firstly, they asked if we ever just hang up on cold callers.!

On average, 66.5 per cent of the UK puts the phone down on someone trying to sell them something.

But the people with the least patience in the UK & Ireland are the Irish – a whopping 77 per cent will immediately hang up on a conversation about double glazing or insurance.

As for England, it’s the East Midlanders who are least tolerant: almost 70 per cent of them leave their cold callers listening to the sweet sound of the dial tone.

Cold callers are guaranteed the warmest reception in the South East. More than a third of South Easterners (37 per cent) say they wouldn’t hang up on a stranger who called them out of the blue to discuss something like mobile phone tariffs (at least those who don’t slam the phone down give an excuse – 36.3 per cent are just really honest, saying they’re not interested; 10.8 per cent of us say we’re too busy, and 5 per cent of us pretend we’re just about to sit down to a meal).

When it comes to the topic of conversation, phone deals are apparently one of the least irritating – only 7.3 per cent of people said that was the type of call they had the least patience for.

The biggest bugbear, for over a third of us (38.9 per cent) is people trying to help you recover PPI refunds. Perhaps perhaps because it jogs people’s memory to actually do something about it, pensions is the least irritating topic, with only 1.9 per cent of us finding them excruciating.

And while the majority of us don’t actually feel sorry for cold callers, just over a quarter of us (25.8 per cent) do actually understand that it’s just a job, and they’re only doing what they’ve been asked to.

"It's a tough job, being a cold caller, but someone's got to do it," says David Whitehead from Headsets4Business.co.uk. "They're almost like unsung heroes, really! So give these guys a break next time you get a call and you never know – you might get a really good deal on your next mobile phone tariff."