Once again Mary has invited some of her favourite figures in the public eye to submit personal queries for her attention.
From Plum Sykes
Q. I have always given Christmas presents to all my five siblings and their children. Just to put you in the picture, the presents are at the Ralph Lauren cashmere sweater or Lanvin costume jewellery-type level. Although, being in the fashion industry, I do get enormous discounts on these things, they are still quite pricey. Last year I finally faced up to the fact that my siblings never, ever send me or my children Christmas presents. So I decided not to send any to them. The plan backfired as I felt tragic and mean and none of them even noticed the lack of presents from me. Only I suffered, because I love giving pressies and I didn’t get to do this. I shouldn’t mind — especially as I find that I rarely receive presents I actually want anyway — but I do! Please advise for this year.
A. Your siblings’ failure to embrace consumerism should not deter you from extracting a benefit in kind in exchange for your largesse. Enclose with your presents some IOUs, e.g. ‘I owe Plum 20 hours of babysitting’ or ‘I owe Plum 20 hours of waiting in for workmen’. They will be thrilled to be able to sidestep Taste Police anxieties and give you something you definitely want.
From Tristram Stuart
For thousands of years my ancestors have fed their Christmas (and other seasonal) leftovers to the pigs. But for the last 11 years, I have been at a loss as to what I should do with all those heaps of potato peelings and Brussels sprout trimmings. It has been this way ever since the foot-and-mouth outbreak, which the government blamed on a swill-feeder not cooking restaurant leftovers before feeding the pigs. The European Union banned giving any food waste to pigs, and instead we have all been paying an awful lot of money to have that useful stuff turned into electricity or, still worse, have it buried in landfill. Meanwhile, we are forced to pay for the Amazon rainforest to be cut down to grow soya to feed our pigs instead. Do you know how we could get this socially irresponsible, environmentally destructive and scientifically unjustified law overturned?
A. Why not take a tip from the artist Christo, who makes points about scale in works such as ‘Wrapped Reichstag’? Invite the denizens of Westminster, 70,000 of whom work in food and accommodation provision, to bring their bagged-up Christmas peelings to a pop-up rubbish dump in Trafalgar Square on Christmas Day, when there is no rubbish collection in the borough. Trafalgar Square was the scene of your 2009 event ‘Feeding of the 5,000’ (on food rejected by supermarkets for superficial imperfections) and this ‘installation’ should be another triumph. Let the black-bag mountain speak for itself as its image is transmitted around the globe — before the council resumes collection duties.
From Philip Mould
I am due to have dinner with friends, who are excited to show me their purchase of a painting recently bought at great expense from a leading auction house. I know the picture well — it is a pup which should never have been catalogued as an original since it is by some later follower of the eminent artist in question. Given that it will be hanging over the fireplace of the dining room, and that I will be asked for my considered response, how do I last three courses?
A. Why not retain your integrity by praising it in the following terms: ‘This is a very fine example of its kind’?
From Gyles Brandreth
I have been writing a series of ‘cosy’ Victorian murder mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle as my Holmes and Watson. Doing my research, I came across a dinner — a real dinner — at which the six diners were Wilde and Conan Doyle (they met in 1889 at the Langham Hotel), Willie Hornung, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson and the young J.M. Barrie. Since discovering the existence of a dinner at which the men who created Peter Pan, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, Raffles and Sherlock Holmes broke bread together, I have found every social gathering I go to a terrible disappointment. I’m there thinking, ‘I know you’re the prime minister and that’s marvellous, of course, but you haven’t created one of the great mythic characters of world literature, have you?’ Everyone is a letdown. What am I to do?
A. Is there any evidence that the celebrated gathering was actually a jolly occasion? Or even a stimulating one? Wilde may have created Dorian Gray and Lady Bracknell but he always claimed to have put his real genius into his life rather than into this work — and that, of course, was what made him such a wonderful dinner companion. But what of the others? There is no guarantee that the creator of Harry Potter or Super Mario would be more fun than your own old friends. But why not put your delusion to rest by inviting J.K. Rowling, Ian Rankin, etc, to a dinner party and see for yourself if they talk about anything more interesting than London property prices?
From Robert Harris
Recently my friend and I finished our weekly lunch in a Wiltshire pub and popped into the gents. G went in first and stood at one of the two urinals while I followed and elected to use the cubicle. I then heard a third man enter and stand next to G, who was staring straight ahead. Assuming the man who had just come in was me, G suddenly asked: ‘Are you doing anything this weekend?’ Once the situation had been explained, the man calmed down, but G now refuses to have lunch at the pub in case he runs into him. How can I persuade him to change his mind?
A. Insist, in the short term, on paying whenever you patronise this pub. Your friend will quickly come to re-conflate the experience of lunching there with pleasure rather than paranoia.
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