But is there a human face behind the shiny suit, the whistle and card and the glaring misquote? Reporter Robert Collins spoke to four modern-day untouchables.

Think of the villains of any major football tournament. There is the striker whose dive led to a penalty, the defender whose clumsy tackle cost the team the match.

But behind them is the official who didn't spot the foul and made the outrageous decision. Entire towns, entire countries have hated them.

For 42 seasons this has been Whitnash man Duncan Macaulay's hobby and his job.

From Monday to Friday he works in Coundon for the National Referees Association, and on a Saturday or Sunday he puts his whistle round his neck and officiates at a football match.

This means volunteering for the shouts of "ref!", the protests and the accusations. Amazingly, he likes it.

"It's very enjoyable sometimes, I get real satisfaction from doing my bit," said Mr Macaulay. "Some days I come off the field wondering if I really did enjoy it, but I know I'll be back next week."

But the 63-year-old, who has never had to abandon a match, says respect is not what it was. He puts the blame not with the glamorous primadonnas of the Premiership but parents.

Mr Macaulay said: "They expect their boys to be the best and it's a case of win, win, win. The sportsmanship is terrible. They don't appreciate it's a bit of fun."

Mr Macaulay insists Premier League or European football is nothing like Sunday morning in the park, and top flight referees are enormously fit and well trained.

But even in under-11 matches, a parent does not have the same authority as a referee, and matches can't go ahead without them.

"They like to complain when they have a referee but they always complain when they don't have one."

Mr Macaulay admits he has made "plenty" of mistakes, including one that the players involved still tease him about. "There was an incident a few years ago," he said. "I made a right balls-up. The lads still ask me if I know the rules yet."

One set of people whose treatment of the rules is often under scrutiny is politicians.

They are supposed to know them, after all they make the rules. But every so often one pops up who seems to have bent them.

Stratford MP John Maples has seen a few scandals. The former lawyer became Conservative MP for Lewisham West in 1983 and has served in Margaret Thatcher's government, John Major's cabinet and William Hague's shadow cabinet.

He believes people have two conflicting beliefs about the people they elect, informed by what they read and see, and their actual experience.

Mr Maples said: "If one MP seems to be abusing their expenses then everybody is seen to, or if one person employs a member of their family or says something stupid we are all thought to be doing it.

"People are very unhappy with the political process. They feel quite removed from it and that parliament isn't listening to what they want. I don't take the hostility at a personal level. Most people who come into contact with their MP find they stand up for their interests."

A leak during Mr Maples' time in John Major's cabinet in 1994 was his worst moment.

A research document into why the Conservative Party was unpopular found its way into the Financial Times, and then almost every other paper in the country.

Mr Maples was embarrassed, but in the light of later events it hardly seems a remarkable story.

With accusations of sleaze never far away, he claims most people still believe politics is a worthwhile and exciting job.

Mr Maples said: "I remember one person who asked why I wanted to go into a low-status occupation. By the standards of most middle-class people in London it was not very well paid, but I didn't think it was low status and I don't now.

"We've gone through an age when there was a lot of deference towards institutions and now there is none, but as a society we have to be careful. Once you have destroyed all deference you have a wasteland of bad opinion.

"Politics is a messy business. It is trying to make decisions about things people can't agree on. You can't make everybody happy."

When politicians come unstuck, it is often at the hands of another set of people whose motives are seen as equally dubious.

Fleet Street is no longer the home of newspapers, but the image of the grubby little man with his foot in the door persists.

Former Birmingham Post editor Jack Reedy has worked at almost every level of the trade, starting on a morning paper in Sheffield and working for the Sunday Times and the Guardian before returning to regional papers and then working on the regulation side.

He said: "Journalists have always had a rotten public image, they have always been sneered at.

"Think of the classic detective fiction character, hanging around the gates of the country house after the murder - but normally it's a desperate scramble for some facts you can get together into something like a readable article."

In one of his early jobs Mr Reedy did 'the calls', visiting police stations and hospital casualty wards to find out if there had been any accidents or incidents.

If there had, he had to find out the victims' addresses and try to talk to them. In many years of this, he was told to "clear off" only once.

He said: "The general public forgets that journalists are there to tell them things they don't know. We're not there to keep secrets from people."

The notions of press intrusion and 'hounding' are mistrusted by Mr Reedy. He said: "There are celebrities whose career depends on press interest and when that interest becomes inconvenient it becomes intrusion.

"There are huge vested interests. Planning authorities, political parties, banks, insurance houses and lawyers live in a world of secrets. If some bright light finds out what goes, on that becomes press intrusion. What it is is telling people what's going on."

So far, none of the pariahs have felt that their trade deserves its public image.

But estate agent Antony Beltran thinks differently.

"We are our own worst enemies really," he says. "People ask what I do for a living. I hold up a crucifix and say I am an estate agent. There are only two types of salesman below us and they are door-to-door salesmen and car dealers."

The 39-year-old started 1989, before the first of the two 1990s housing booms.

Having had leukaemia at the age of eleven, he missed much of his education but found he was good at talking to people. Determined to build a career, Mr Beltran not only took professional estate agent qualifications but put himself through training as a financial advisor.

Despite this he complains that the profession is easy to enter for anyone hoping to make easy money.

Along with our jobs and our families, our houses are the things we invest most in, so perhaps it is no surprise people feel ill at ease with the stereotypical glib young man with a flash car and an approximate way with measurements.

Mr Beltran says members of his own family have been ripped off by people in his profession, and with the 'chain' system of buying houses he has seen hopes dashed by fickle decisions.

He accepts this responsibilty and admits people have even attacked him over sales that fell through.

He said: "The worst part is when somebody pulls out and you have to go to another family and blow their life apart. I've done the job for 20 years but my stomach still turns over when I think about the very first time it happened."

Mr Beltran talks in terms of bad estate agents and indecisive customers "messing with your emotions". If anything, this proves how much is at stake. It may not be obvious, but perhaps what unites all these trades is the responsibility they carry.

Every one of them has some kind of trust invested in it, and with every rotten decision, scandal, misquote or con there is the feeling that this has been betrayed.

The grubby hack, the pig-headed referee, the slick estate agent and the corrupt politician are the bogey-men we have invented. They are demons, but only because they were supposed to be angels.

We want to like these people, really we do.

*Each one of the people in this article is friendly and entertaining, as were the wheel clampers, parking attendants (soon to be civil enforcement officers) and Warwickshire Police, who politely turned down requests for interviews.