I had arrived in Calcutta in the early hours of the morning and was taken to a smart guest-house owned by a corporation I had come to write about. The porter, who had to be woken up to show me to my room, insisted on carrying my bags up several flights of stairs in suffocating humidity. He showed me in and then started to hover. I had been in such a rush that I hadn’t picked up any Indian currency and was now in the embarassing position of trying to explain that I didn’t have a single rupee to offer as a tip. “Nothing?” said the porter scornfully. “I’m sorry,” I said and then compounded the offence by asking for a bottle of water.

I could understand why he might be put out, but I was taken aback by his hostility as he stomped off and brought back the water without a word. My previous experiences of Indian service had been wonderful. I would never have expected such a breakdown over the small matter of being caught without the cash for a tip.

But the world is changing. The culture of tipping is spreading fast and gratuities are now expected in countries where they were previously unheard of or, at least, not generally expected. In China, where traditionally tipping was seen as a capitalist mechanism that promoted inequality, the practice is taking off ahead of the Olympics next year.

The growth of tipping worldwide is driven by business and leisure travellers from the West, particularly America, where tipping is a crucial component of the economy worth an estimated $26 billion (£12.9 billion) a year.

Tipping is said to have originally stood for “To Insure Promptitude”, but these days the tips we pay out are a reward for the competence and charm with which a service is provided. Or so we think.

Michael Lynn, an associate professor of Consumer Behaviour at Cornell University, has been studying tipping behaviour for 20 years. His research into what motivates people to tip found that, although the majority of people say that they tip to reward good service, the correlation between the quality of the service and the size of tips is, in reality, minimal. Whether or not the sun is shining on any day affects the size of tips as much as the quality of the service. Tips are influenced to some extent by the rapport between a waitress and her customers, but, in the vast majority of cases, people simply give the standard percentage and do so to ensure that they win the approval of the waitress and those in their party and to make them feel better about themselves.

A few decades ago Americans paid tips similar to those in Britain now – about 10 per cent. Now the trend is upwards, says Lynn. “A tip of 15 to 20 per cent is neutral. There is upward pressure. People are trying to buy social approval.”

The etiquette of tipping in Britain is fraught with perils. Although modern tipping is thought to have originated in Britain, as a nation we are not generally very generous tippers. Lynn is more tactful. “You just don’t have the same norm.” Americans are the biggest tippers, while in Japan, Iceland and New Zealand there is very little tipping. Lynn puts Britain around mid-table.

I’m a particularly anxious tipper, partly because I spent a few years in America, where restaurants carry signs that read “Tipping is not a city in China”, and the huge number of occasions where one is expected to tip left me in a state of uncertainty when I came back to Britain. The result is that I tend to overtip.

In the US, come the holiday season (Christmas to us), I was rebuked by friends when they discovered that I hadn’t given a handsome bonus to each of the guys who delivered three different newspapers to my door each morning. Every year a hairy fellow emerged from the woods of Virginia in a pickup truck and delivered a stack of firewood to my porch. I paid him. But apparently I was also supposed to tip him. That may have explained his sullenness.

Websites such as Bitterwaitress.com and gossip columns in the US take great delight in naming and shaming mean, and praising generous, tippers. No doubt they pay decent tips for the tip-offs. The custom has spread to Britain. Earlier this year Prince William and friends on holiday in Switzerland were exposed for leaving a tip of just 1 per cent: Fr10 on a Fr1,000 bill. Perhaps they got confused with their arithmetic.

In restaurants in Britain it is now fairly standard practice for an optional service charge, usually between 10 and 12.5 per cent, to be added to the bill. This has become the norm because, according to The Times’s restaurant critic Giles Coren, “British people are stingy and don’t tip. In America, unless the waiter spits in the soup, they tip.

“You could say reasonably ‘I don’t approve of this service charge. I will just tip on the basis of the service you give me.’ ” He hasn’t quite had the courage to do that yet.

The problem, he says, is that most of the time the service charge is used to make up the staff’s wages and is not shared among them as an extra bonus on top of the wage. “I think that is dishonest.”

He will sometimes ask waiting staff if the service charge is paid directly to them by management and, if it isn’t, he will ask for it to be taken off the bill and he will then pay the waiting staff the tip in cash.

Some restaurants include a service charge and then, when the credit card bill comes, leave a space for an additional tip. Coren regards this as very cheeky. If the service is good he will add a little tip on top of the service charge. But then he worries that the waiter will think that he hasn’t noticed that service is included and that “I tip really stingily. So then you have to ask ‘is service included?’ and flash the fiver.”

Coren says that the whole percentages system is also wrong. “Why should the girl who is working really hard in Pizza Express get a fiver on a £40 bill when the waitress at Le Gavroche could get a ten per cent tip of £60?” He suggests it might just be better to tip a tenner regardless of the total bill.

One of the most awkward tipping scenarios can be in the hairdressing salon. If you’re a bloke paying £16 to the barber and you’re feeling generous you might hand over a £20 note and walk out of the door feeling like a particularly munificent monarch. It seems that it is trickier for women: do you tip the stylist and the colourist and the girl who washes your hair? And how much?

Hari Salem, The Times’s hair expert, has simple advice: “Tip well or don’t tip at all. The worst thing is to tip badly. It doesn’t go down too well.” Failure to leave a tip at all is “no problem. The only time you are disappointed is if you get a bad tip. That’s a bit of an insult.”

In general, clients at his south Kensington salon tip 10 to 15 per cent to the stylist and a similar amount to a colourist, with £2 to £5 to the girl who washes their hair. It would be regarded as a faux pas to tip the owner if he cuts your hair.

More tricky tipping dilemmas: do you tip the pizza delivery-boy when the pizza is late? It is probably the fault of the kitchen so it seems harsh to punish him, but then I lean towards the view that it seems ludicrous to pay anything extra for poor service. Lynn says he would pay a tip but possibly smaller than normal. What about the guy who lurks around in the lavatory in certain flash restaurants, waiting to spray soap on your hands and to make sure there is no funny business going on in the cubicles? It’s hard to imagine a more miserable job, but my harsh view is that I cannot possibly fork out a quid to a bloke who is standing behind me making me feel nervous while I’m peeing.

It can be risky to refuse to tip a taxi driver. I once told a cabbie that I couldn’t give him a tip because he had taken a completely bizarre and circuitous route to my destination “We’re not f****** geniuses,” he said and then wrote on the receipt: “No tip w****r.”

I hate those moments when you can see the meter ticking round and as you get close to your destination it has reached £9. If you carry on it is going to be very close to £10 meaning you will either have to give no tip or break into another £10 note just for the gratuity. So you tell the driver: “Actually, it’s fine if you just drop me here.” A short walk and an 80p tip is certainly preferable to completing the journey and having an awkward tip situation.

“It’s a funny old business, tipping,” says Bob Oddy of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association. “I think it’s fair to say you are disappointed if you don’t get a tip but these days not surprised. When I started 40 years ago everybody tipped. You could go a whole week, even more, without someone not tipping. And the proportion of the tip was higher than it is now. The average fare was four shillings (20p) and nine out of ten people would tip one shilling. Nowadays, although the majority tip, a significant minority don’t tip.”

He estimates this to be as much as 40 per cent. The average fare during the day is £7 or £8 and people tend to round up rather than tip a percentage. “If that’s £7.20 up to £8 that’s quite nice. If it’s £7.80 and they round up, not so nice. I think a possible reason is that a different type of person takes a cab these days. A more mixed clientèle perhaps. When I started people would say ‘Take a bob for yourself, cabbie.’ Maybe it was patronising, but, patronising or not, you usually got a tip.”

That goes to the heart of the matter. In the US there are no hang-ups about tipping. In Britain we get in a terrible tangle over what is appropriate. I once spent a wonderful couple of days on Kangaroo Island in Australia. But I now cannot think of the trip without groaning inwardly at my failure to give my terrific guide the cash for a few beers. You see, I was worried that he might be insulted. I should just have offered. If in doubt, tip.

A mistake not to tip

One of the mistakes that foreigners make is to tip sparingly or not at all because service is generally included – 15 per cent in the case of all restaurants and cafés. The French do not tip generously by American or British standards, but even when the service is included, they leave some extra cash to show their appreciation.

In cafés and restaurants where service is adequate or good, it is normal to leave up to about 10 per cent on top of the bill (which already includes the 15 per cent for service). Taxi drivers do not expect big tips. Rounding up the fare is usually fine. Hairdressers and their assistants do expect solid tips. The assistants often don’t have much other income.

Delivery boys (for pizza and other services) normally receive a couple of euros. Hotel doormen need a euro or two for hailing a cab, and the same for bellboys delivering baggage. Theatre ushers still expect to be tipped. Give them one or two euros.

Meaner than the English

The ground rule is to tip for all personal services, apart from those performed by bosses. The question is how much, and the Germans seem to be pretty mean compared with the British.

Restaurants do not usually levy a separate service charge and waiters are badly paid – €1,000 a month take-home is usual. You should tip 5 to 10 per cent.

If you are a regular customer you should tip at the upper end of the range as this will guarantee you a good table the next time. If you are a tourist on a quick trip, and you are not overwhelmed by the charm of your waiter, then 5 per cent is appropriate.

For drinks, round up. Germans are always meaner than tourists on this. They often consider it excessive to round up on a €2.40 coffee and give €2.70 rather than €3. Serving staff do not take this amiss.

If you travel first class on rail, the ticket inspector will offer to bring you food from the restaurant car. Since he is functioning as a waiter, you can tip him.

ROGER BOYES

Tipping through the ages

For feudal landlords the toss of a coin to a scrofulous peasant was a way of ensuring a safe passage, but tipping in its present form began in English coffee houses in the 16th century. There, if you wanted speedy service, you tossed a coin into a brass urn unsubtly marked “To insure promptitude” – notice the first letters of each word.

The practice of tipping ahead of service spread to pubs and became a way of demonstrating affluence, Sharon L. Fullen explains in The Complete Guide to Tips & Gratuities: a Guide for Employees Who Earn Tips. At the same time, household guests began to tip lowly paid servants, footmen and valets, though once servants began to expect the reward, the incentive to provide good service evaporated.

In America tipping emerged after the Civil War but encountered opposition from those who disliked patronage. As William R. Scott put it in a polemic in 1916, the tip is the price that “one American is willing to pay to induce another to acknowledge inferiority”. Anti-tipping campaigns led to six states banning it but today the tip is non-negotiable throughout the country.

Unncessary guilt trip

It used to be generous to slip a 10 rupee note to a hotel porter or a taxi driver but as India’s economy has grown, so has the tendency for the footmen of the service sector to turn up their noses at the face of Mahatma Gandhi on the second-smallest denomination note. In a five-star environment, tourists often feel embarrassed into giving 100 rupees, which is a little more than a quid. But it is an unnecessary guilt trip. Tipping is not expected. Handing out a sum that 800 million of the population would struggle to earn in a day is furthermore culturally insensitive. In most situations, 10 rupees hits the right note.

ASHLING O’CONNOR

Service is a new thing

Russia is relatively new to tipping, service being one of the many decadent Western activities frowned upon in the Soviet Union. Soviet-era habits and a Russian penchant for suffering mean that many staff still regard service with a smile as demeaning to their soul.

A typical restaurant tip is 10 to 15 per cent, though customers in cheaper places round up the bill to the nearest 100 rubles (£2). Rich Russians routinely splash money around at elitny bars and clubs, but tough feis control door policies ensure that bouncers never let in the sort of people who might blab about it to the papers.

One café on Moscow's touristy Arbat recently included a 15 per cent service charge on its English-language menu, but left it off the Russian version. Staff explained that it was because “foreigners don’t tip”.

TONY HALPIN

Less is more

Japan is, pretty strictly, a no-tipping culture — at least in the mainstream retail and services industry. Providing good service is simply regarded as a matter of pride by the Japanese, and they believe that there is a sort of social awkwardness inherent in then letting the customer calculate the value of good service. Bear in mind also, of course, that things remain very expensive in Japan, so most people feel that they have paid a full price for whatever it is that they have received.

The word chippu is sex-industry code for the money required to upgrade a “regular service” (eg, a massage) into an all-out sexual service.

You don’t tip in restaurants, bars, hairdressers, taxis. A sushi delivery man came to the house a couple of days ago. I told him to keep the change, but he flatly refused and handed over whatever it was (about £2, I guess). Golf caddies tend to be tipped, but in the form of presents which they can later redeem for cash at a set exchange rate at the golf-club shop. It is regarded as a bit low to simply hand them cash.

LEO LEWIS

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