Dear Mary | 12 October 2017

Q. A well-known television mogul,whom I had met only once, came to dinner at my house. I was on good culinary form and though I say it myself, the food and wine were exceptional. For various reasons it turned into an almost bespoke dinner for the mogul, in that the other guests were all people he had been desperate to meet, and so one way or another he became the guest of honour. He even struck some sort of deal with one of them. In any case we had a great evening and he thanked me profusely as he left. The next day I opened the door to find someone with an unimpressive bunch of flowers together with a card from the mogul. They looked like the sort of flowers in cellophane that one might pick up at a petrol station. Out of politeness, I wrote him an effusive card, which I realise in retrospect was the wrong thing to have done.