Q. When hosting a dinner party, should one circulate the biographies/Wikipedia entries of your guests beforehand so that everyone arrives forearmed, as it were, and can therefore skip the small talk and the fishing around for information about one’s interlocutor? I am inviting eight to dinner, six of whom will have never met before, although I have chosen them carefully because they have good professional and social reasons to be interested in one another.
– R.R., London W6
A. Michael Portillo said the other day that, when he was on the Moral Maze panel on Radio 4, he needed to know what the topics were in advance in order to work out what he thought. In the same way it is useful for people to know who else will be at a dinner party. However, it is naff and New Yorky to provide potted bios or even a list. Better to release key data beforehand by ringing guests to say (for example): ‘By the way, X is also writing a history of the Punic Wars’ or ‘Y is also in the music business’. (Inversely, the worst solecism is, when invited to a dinner party, to ask who else will be there before saying yes or no.)
Q. While idly scrolling through Instagram, I stumbled on the page of a rather self-satisfied acquaintance and accidentally pressed the ‘follow’ tab. I’m concerned this individual now thinks I am interested in him. Is it OK to ‘unfollow’ an acquaintance immediately, or does etiquette require a period of time elapse before ‘killing’ them?
– N.W., London W6
A. It would be hostile to unfollow. Let him have the transient boost to his morale but use the ‘restrict’ function so his messages and comments will be hidden from you. Instagram won’t let him know you restricted him.
Q. My boyfriend and I are invited this summer to a week-long holiday hosted by two slightly impoverished sisters in a borrowed house. Mistakenly tagged on to the end of an email to us about travel arrangements is a to and fro between the sisters about whether they can ask the guests to contribute to the food bills. They conclude they can’t ask the richer guests since they are ‘too grand’ so they should try to get as much as they can out of my boyfriend and me by making us come on supermarket shops with them. They don’t know we’ve seen the exchange but we can’t afford to subsidise the others. What should we do? – Name and address withheld
A. Email them back offering to contribute to the food bills. Invite them to name a figure and you will ping it into their bank account before you arrive. Placed on the spot like this, they won’t dare overcharge.
Write to Dear Mary at dearmary@spectator.co.uk
Comments