Q. At a sumptuously catered private view, a well-known London art gallery director bounced up with very expressive congratulations about my latest book. My initial delight soon turned to numb shock when I realised she had confused me with Peter York, an older man. Of course I said nothing, but took the earliest opportunity to back away and rejoin the giggling, champagne-fuelled throng. What might I have said at the time? How can I most thoroughly avenge myself?
S.B., London SE11
A. I am surprised you (born 1951) wanted to punish the galleriste for confusing you with the style guru Peter York (born 1942). Peter York, né Wallis, has kept his Peter Pan looks and plumped complexion through a decades-long diet of consuming exclusively oily fish. This, friends agree, has skimmed at least 15 years off his visual age. On this basis, you have been mistaken for a man several years younger than you. I would therefore recommend that should this happen again, you do not seek revenge but simply accept the compliment and allow yourself to revel in the holiday from being yourself that this brief episode of mistaken identity affords you.
Q. I am 85. Until I was 60 my friends would say, ‘How are you?’ From 60 to 70 they said, ‘How are you keeping?’ After 70 they asked, ‘How are you keeping now?’ My mother, who lived to 97, would answer, ‘Much better, thank you, since I got a refrigerator.’ Please tell me a polite reply, especially to the now frequent farewell, ‘Take care!’
R.D., Hertfordshire
A. It is a regrettable feature of our health-and-safety-conscious times that the injunction to ‘Take care’ has replaced the more neutral and less anxiety-inducing vale of ‘Goodbye’. I can only suggest you answer the call to ‘Take care’ with the jaded riposte, ‘It’s much too late for that,’ much in the manner of Richard Beeston, once the Daily Telegraph’s man in Washington, who, when invited to ‘Have a nice day’, rejoined drily, ‘No, thank you. I have other plans.’
Q. When I try to find a copy of The Spectator at a news-stand or even within a newsagent’s store, I find I am always having to skim past the hardcore pornography before I can locate it. How can I make it clear to the friendly newsagent that I am not actually interested in pornography; it is only necessary for me to run my eyes past it while I am looking for my Spectator.
Name and address withheld
A. Now that so many of our favourite publications are racked adjacent to pornography, it is easier to walk straight up to the newsagent and ask him to find your Spectator for you.
If you have a problem, write to Dear Mary, c/o The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL
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