Your Problems Solved | 4 September 2004

Dear Mary…

Q. Last week I arrived to stay with some English friends near St Remy and was shown to a most delightful and certainly ‘best’ spare bedroom — with glorious views over the Camargue and beyond. You can imagine my astonishment when, on climbing into my luxurious bed later that night and folding the essential but always romantic mosquito net around the bed, a pair of extra-large men’s boxer shorts dropped on top of me. (I, incidentally, am a single woman and was travelling alone.) The pants had clearly been left behind by the guest immediately before me and had got muddled up in the mosquito net. My dilemma is twofold. I know the owner of the underpants to be a flamboyant picture dealer who has offices near mine in Jermyn Street. He and his wife are a madly social and well-connected couple and I have been keen to get to know them better. Would my discreetly returning the underpants (which have now been washed and pressed by my own housekeeper) either to him or to his wife be the best approach — perhaps followed by an invitation to them both to dine with me?
N.J.B., London SW1

A. If your aim is to become better friends with the couple in question then it would be a mistake to return the underpants discreetly. You would need to make a flamboyant gesture in order to register on the consciousnesses of this oversubscribed couple to have any hope of social access to them. May I suggest you make a primary overture by requesting the dealer to allow you to enter the underpants as an item for sale in a forthcoming auction? The Tusk evening at Christie’s on Monday 20 September, for example, would be ideal, as other objects of curiosity from the art world will also be for sale on that night to benefit this elephant charity, and the cult status of the pants’ owner would ensure heavy bidding.