With a year to go before the start of the World Cup, I can boldly predict what televisual phenomenon is going to sweep the nation next June and July: the mute button. It will be to football broadcasting what Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie would be to the live performance of rap music: great to look at, a nightmare to listen to.

If you don't know what a vuvuzela is, you will soon. It is a long, trumpet-like instrument made of plastic, which has been used by fans at the Confederations Cup in South Africa to make a din so horrific that even television coverage is almost insufferable. It sounds like a platoon of ninja bumblebees with a bad mobile signal have left you a 45-minute answerphone message. Or like your ears have developed the ability to filter out all sound except for that produced by Vespa scooters, to which they have become incredibly sensitive.

Some people say the vuvuzela originates in a tribal instrument made from the horn of the kudu, blown to summon villagers to important meetings. Others say the vuvuzela originates in a plastics factory in China. The truth is unclear.

"I think they should be banned," says Liverpool's Xabi Alonso, who has been experiencing the full vuvuzela treatment while playing for Spain. "We're used to people shouting but not to this trumpet noise which doesn't allow you to concentrate and is unbearable. They make it very difficult for the players to communicate with each other. They are a distraction and do nothing for the atmosphere."

Fifa, however, ruled out a ban last week after the host nation –who had featured the horns prominently in their advertising campaign for the event – protested that they were essential for "an authentic South African footballing experience". There was a time when an authentic English footballing experience involved hiding from marauding gangs of booted brutes before paying to stand in a bit of a crush with a close-up view of the back of someone's head and another man's urine dripping down the back of your trousers, and I don't recall Fifa standing up for that.

They will reconsider their decision only if the bugles are used in acts of violence. I'm not usually one to encourage hooliganism but in this case I would gladly take the blow myself, on behalf of the 400,000 people planning to go to the World Cup. Besides, one vuvuzela being used to assault me is one less vuvuzela being used to make an infernal racket.

"It's not for Fifa to say stop making noise in football grounds," said world soccer supremo Sepp Blatter. "It is not damaging. If you go to a disco in the night your hearing would be much more challenged." What's being challenged right now is my ability to ignore the mental image of Sepp Blatter at a disco.

"I always said that when we go to South Africa, it is Africa," Blatter added. "It's noisy, it's energy, rhythm, music, dance, drums. This is Africa. We have to adapt a little."

This seems to me an unacceptable use of popular stereotype. Africans – they're noisy and they dance a lot. What would Blatter say if the trumpets became popular in the US? "It's true that they are a bit annoying, but this is America, and the people are complete morons. We have to adapt a little"?

South Africa are not the first hosts to introduce into World Cup stadiums something that is not to international tastes, as anyone who tried the squid-flavoured peanuts on offer at many 2002 games will testify. It is just that a global television audience was always much less likely to get worked up about, or even notice, the unusual aroma produced when you combine nut and cephalopod.

Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium, site of next year's final, has been designed to send the crowd's noise echoing back over those inside. I can only imagine what the 94,000 present will experience as the tournament reaches its climax – and what I'm imagining is a massively over-amplified Metallica concert where the music is performed entirely on kazoo. "It will be the noisiest World Cup ever," boasted organising honcho Danny Jordaan. "They will come with their vuvuzelas, That noise will be captured in the dome." By all means capture it, but then keep it in custody and never, ever let the bugger out.

It's not that English fans are perfect – indeed they have their own musical irritant in the shape of a brass band that parps the theme to The Great Escape, often for hours at a time. But perhaps South Africa can learn from the loud wooden rattles that soundtracked British football in the post-war era – and fell out of favour when everyone realised just how annoying they were. I can only hope that one day soon a similar fate will befall the vuvuzelas. And Sepp Blatter, for that matter.