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Your problems solved

Dear Mary...

Mary Killen

Wednesday, 3rd May 2006

Etiquette advice from The Spectator's Miss Manners

A. You have borne false witness against your neighbour. The way to scotch the rumours, as well as to pay appropriate penance, would be to confess to your blabber-mouthing at the same time as you make a sacrifice of the Georgina von Etzdorf scarf. Give it as a present to the innocent party. Insist that each time she wears it she explains its provenance. In so doing she will help not only to clear her name, but also to assuage your own guilt at having breached one of the Ten Commandments.

Q. What is the polite but expressive way to respond when people at parties surge up to me, faces aglow, leading me to believe they feel some joy in seeing me, and then proceed to make it clear as soon as they open their mouths that they are, in fact, simply pleased to be socially interacting with the younger sister of somebody very famous and brilliant? I love my brother as much as everyone else but I find it lowering to the self-esteem when I am invited to lunch in the House of Lords or hailed with enthusiasm simply because smitten admirers can’t curb themselves from telling me how they worship my older sibling and how they wish he were prime minister. Please advise.
R.J., London, W11

A. Why not put a permanent end to this nuisance by taking a tip from HRH, the late Princess Margaret, and retiring to Mustique?

Q. I belong to a modest lawn tennis club with grass courts and a few hard courts. Now that the season has come round again people are starting to say to me, ‘We must play tennis’ and I am aware that one of the reasons I am in demand as a partner is because they want to spare themselves the horror of a municipal court. Daily guest fees on top of the annual membership fee amount to a not inconsiderable sum. How do I tactfully make it clear that I would not be averse to guests offering to pay their own guest fees?
Name and address withheld

A. Next time one of your partners compliments you at the end of a match say, ‘I enjoyed it too.’ Then twirl your head round as though you have just had a brilliant idea â” ‘Why don’t you join the club yourself? Then you wouldn’t have to keep paying guest fees on top of your membership?’ ‘But ...I don’t pay guest fees,’ they will falter. Wear a daft expression on your face as you tut, ‘Oh no, of course you don’t! I pay them! How silly of me.’ You will soon see them put their hands in their pockets.