The question that Dear Mary refuses to answer

Q. One of my best friends, who knows I don’t have a great social life at university, has a brother in a band which is touring and will have five nights of gigs at my university town. He is offering me a free ticket for any night that week and to hang with the band backstage. But I cannot bear this artist’s music or voice, and couldn’t sit through a concert, let alone socialise with him. My friend knows very well I won’t have anything else on. Is there a tactful way to extricate myself?
— Name and address withheld

A. Yes, but it would do you no favours were I to reveal it. People with great social lives have invariably earned them through undergoing precisely such ordeals as you outline and worse — sitting through performances of Cymbeline, for example, just to support bit-part actor friends. If it is not to be merely superficial, friendship, like parenting, involves duty and tedium as well as pure enjoyment.