Mary Killen

Q. I work at a magazine and am occasionally (and perhaps with increasing frequency) sent articles that strike me as having been written by AI, or at least with significant help from AI. They are often almost too polished and are fluent but lack much personality. What is the best way to determine whether this might be the case without offending the author if it is not? There is software that says it can spot the hand of AI, but I’m not sure it is very effective. – L.C.P., London SW1 A. University students may soon have to write essays under human supervision. By the same token, you might tell suspect writers that they must in future look you in the eye as they read their submission aloud over Zoom, with an AI detection filter in place. They will soon learn to use their own brain.

Q. Around this time of year a friend, who somehow gets hold of tickets through an agency, usually asks me last minute to Wimbledon. The trouble is that when she asks me it’s hard to gather whether or not she has managed to secure good seats because she doesn’t offer up this information. One year was perfection as we had shaded middle-tier seats, but last year we had an obstructed (pillar) view and I would rather have watched at home. I am sure there are those among her friends who would love to be there in any kind of seat so how, without sounding ungrateful or spoilt, can I ascertain what’s on offer before accepting? – H.S., London SW6 A. First familiarise yourself with the court layouts and seat numbers. Then, if she invites, say: ‘What an incredible coincidence.

Q. Mary, can you rule on an aspect of private jet etiquette? I have been invited to a house party in the west of Ireland –however my host has cautioned against my asking for a lift in the private jet of a couple on the guest list as he says it will ‘look like sponging’. It seems absurd for them not to give me a lift, given that we would be going from the same county at the same time. And presumably we have been invited to the same house party because we are likely to get on. I hardly know this couple, but they are Suffolk neighbours and I know their land address. How can I bring about an invitation to travel with them? – H.K., Woodbridge, Suffolk A. Unless you can engineer running into them and they offer, without your prompting, you should not lobby them.

Q. I have been working in a large restaurant alongside a very attractive, although shy, girl. I live near the restaurant and she has come back for drinks on a few occasions. She seems to enjoy my company but I have been too feeble to take things further. I fear that if she does not find me attractive, I could ruin our friendship by making a move. What should I do? – Name withheld, London W6 A. Step one: buy a Feverscan thermometer. This liquid crystal strip is held on to one person’s forehead by another, thus requiring a degree of physical intimacy. Step two: ask the girl to your flat along with another colleague. When they arrive, act slow-witted and say you are feeling odd.

Q. When I left university I set up a WhatsApp group with several male friends to cover our interest in flat racing and to share tips and articles on trainers etc. Since then two group members have married and asked me to add their wives, which I felt obliged to do. Sorry to say this but the wives have dumbed down the whole group with their annoying comments. I suspect another member will soon be asking me to add his partner. I want to put a message on saying the vibe has changed and let’s revert to the original members, but how can I do it tactfully? – Name and address withheld A. No need to say anything. Simply start another WhatsApp group, adding only the original members and just start posting.

Q. I was lunching at a writers’ club in Lexington Street. It is a small but agreeable space. At one of the eight tables was seated a woman shrieking sporadically with loud, hyena-like laughter. This passive-aggressive behaviour was ruining the normally congenial atmosphere. The only member of staff present was a young pop-up waitress who did not feel mandated to act. As one of the oldest members I should have said something, but what? – P.R., London W1 A. To advise on this issue, I turned to supreme restaurateur Jeremy King. ‘Rather than the woman being passive-aggressive, I normally find this behaviour is borne out of narcissistic insecurity and attention-seeking,’ observes King, whose latest achievement is the revamped Simpson’s in the Strand.

Q. My husband worked in an office for 25 years and now works from home. As well as the interaction with colleagues, he clearly misses hearing the sound of his own voice. I sympathise, but during the day I obviously need to tell him various things, and almost as soon as I begin to speak he starts interrupting with fatuous prompts such as ‘And then what did he say?’ or ‘And did you tell him you were wondering when he was going to ring up?’ When he keeps interrupting, I lose the thread of my message. How can I keep things pleasant? – S.R., London W12 A. Next time you have some facts which need to be conveyed, open a file on your computer and type out what you would say were you not to be interrupted.

Q. My husband has been appointed to a post in Wales and we as a family have moved here for the foreseeable future. My daughter, who is 15, is very happy at her day school but there is a pervasive culture of ‘tweakments’ there and I am worried the pressure to begin having Botox, fillers etc will be too strong for her to resist when it kicks in. We cannot afford to send her away to school. Help! How we can prevent her from ruining her lovely young looks? – S.C., Cardiff A. Simply buy a copy of your local newspaper and put a Post-It note onto every page featuring a story about a local woman. You can then draw to your husband’s attention (with your daughter in the room) the fact that every single one of these local women looks identical, i.e.

Q. I’m an artist and work from home painting people’s pets from photographs. While working I take a lot of FaceTime calls from friends, with my phone on a stand. My problem is that my husband is in the racing world, and when they glimpse him in the background they want to ask him for tips. How can I say ‘Sorry he is too busy’ without sounding rude? – Name withheld, Newmarket A. FaceTime offers ‘Portrait mode’ which blurs the background while keeping you in focus. Tap the screen, then the effects option, then ‘Enable portrait’. While this will not fully hide background objects, it makes details harder to see.

Q. I went to a party last weekend and my father asked me to go and introduce myself if I saw a certain woman there. When I saw her I knew from my father’s description (unusual facial features) she was the person and I went to say hello. Embarrassingly she said something like: ‘You are clever, how did you know it was me?’ How should I have handled this? – S.H., Ludlow, Salop A. Had she already been in a conversational cluster, you might have replied: ‘My father told me you would be easy to find because you would be the person with most people wanting to talk to you.’ Were she alone you could have asserted: ‘My father said you would be easy to find as you would be the person here with the most charisma.’ Q.

Q. Like many women of a certain age, I’m ‘on the pen’. I’ve lost about 20lb on Mounjaro, which I judge to be enough. However, the friend who urged me and many others to try it has lost more than 60lb. Not only does she have the dreaded Mounjaro face – deeply lined – but she wears short, sleeveless dresses that reveal arms and legs that are, bluntly, not those of a 20-year-old. Mary, I have always felt that tight garments are both unflattering and vulgar. I am also anxious because this well-meaning friend has become a subject of private mockery for turning herself from a voluptuous size 18 beauty to a haggard size 10. How can I tactfully suggest that she needsa bit more flesh? – C.P., London NW1 A.

Q. I have the sort of job that means I am regularly recruiting new young talent. Now when I go to parties I am besieged by friends, and friends of friends, looking for jobs for their graduate offspring. I am sympathetic but currently have no vacancies. How, without employing an equerry, can I discourage these approaches? – Name and address withheld A. Stay out of the mêlée of the party and instead stand unobtrusively near the entrance door with your back facing guests coming in. You can then call to people to whom you wish to speak as they pass you and filter favoured others as they are leaving. With any luck the jobseekers will only spy you as they leave, and will not wish to lose the Uber which is waiting for them by holding themselves up to have a chat with you. Q.

Q. I went to stay in the new house of a close, but not very close, friend. She put me in a charming room, but it was above a really noisy boiler that kept randomly firing up throughout the night. In the morning, when the husband asked me in front of the breakfast table if I had slept well, I told him about the boiler. I could tell from everyone’s faces that he and the other guests thought I had been rude to mention it. But if I had not said something, the next guest put in that room would be up all night just like me. What else could I have done, Mary? – Name and address withheld A. You could have used the following method. Asked if you slept well, you could have gushed: ‘Like a top. Such a comfortable room!

Q. I have a meeting scheduled with a possible business associate who asked me to buy a certain book on financial management and read it beforehand. He made a voice call last week to check whether I had got the book and, because I was actually near a bookshop, I lied and said yes. I headed for the bookshop but then got distracted. I have now forgotten both the name of the author and the title. We have no crossover friends. Help, Mary! – Name and address withheld A. You can mitigate your inadequacy by buying a copy of Simple But Not Easy by Richard Oldfield, the supreme book on investment. Read this thoroughly and absorb. Immediately on entering the meeting bamboozle your potential associate by splurging out your key ‘takeaways’ from it.

Q. We have recently moved out of London and have met charming, married lesbians who are living locally. They are coming to supper next weekend for the first time. Also present will be two heterosexual couples, who will be staying with us. One of these lesbian ladies is quite clearly the ‘stud’ and my wife and I are at a loss to know how to do the places at table, i.e., should we put the stud on my right or on my wife’s right? – J.O., Snape, Suffolk A. On this first occasion it would be slightly heavy-handed to let on that you have spotted who is the stud, etc. Instead just work out who would most enjoy sitting next to each other and do the seating plan accordingly. Q. We have a lovely housekeeper who’s looked after us for years and is super-efficient.

Q. A new neighbour (a weekender from London) asked me if I’d be prepared to pass on the contact details of my daily, which I was happy to do as I know she needs the money. That was about six months ago, and now the daily is asking if I could give her a pay rise because she’s not getting ‘the going rate’. She has never before complained about her salary. I suspect this new neighbour is overpaying. I don’t want to lose my daily, because she has been with us for years and, although she is rather hopeless, which is why we have never raised her salary, our dogs love her, but I don’t want to upgrade her pay to an unrealistic rate. What should I do? – S.H., Towcester A. Urban incomers are famous for upsetting the apple cart by overpaying rural workers.

Q. I have just got off a nine-hour overnight flight from Miami to Heathrow. I was in premium economy in the middle of the plane, an Airbus A330, sitting in the left aisle seat of a middle row of three. Beside me was another man and on his right, also in an aisle seat, was his wife. He made several trips to the loo during the night, and each time he chose to climb over and wake me up rather than disturbing his wife and using the other aisle. I just didn’t have the nerve to start something up with him about it, but now I wish I had. How could I have dealt with it? – R.H., London SW3 A. You might have switched to woke mode and told a member of the crew that this fellow passenger had rubbed against you inappropriately and you feel violated.

Q. Our daughter is very keen on a young man from her office whom she has brought home to stay with us several times since Christmas. We can see his charm but one problem has come to light, which is that the trainers he wears leave the most awful and visible tread marks all over the carpets in our house. We don’t want to start a new rule of everyone having to take their shoes off once they come into the house because I know that is bad form. But how can we tactfully get him out of these chunky sports shoes which are making our carpets look like ploughed fields? – Name and address withheld A. Buy your husband a cheap pair of trainers with similar tractor tyre-style soles. Leave them in a prominent position.

Q. I run a busy company with a workforce of 150, where I need to have short, to-the-point discussions with staff. In order to move along quickly, I set my mobile timer to ring on repeat every seven minutes. This means I have the perfect excuse for cutting short an overrunning conversation. But I cannot use this in a social setting, where I am aware it’s not OK to keep looking at one’s watch or have an alarm ring on a mobile. What should I do instead? — L.H., London SW1 A. It is, however, OK to look at a ring watch. They are available for as little as £11 and onlookers confuse them for blingy or bad-taste jewellery and do not realise that you are checking the time. Q. At the age of 65 I am surprised to find myself seeing someone.

Q. My grandson has just failed his driving test for the fifth time and yet I know, from his chauffeuring me everywhere, that he is an excellent driver. He is strikingly handsome and tall and I am convinced this prejudices the examiners against him. What would you recommend, Mary? — E.G., Alton, Hants A. Your grandson should aim towards growing enough hair for a mullet in time for his next driving test. This disfiguring haircut means that compassion should supplant any potential chippiness on the part of the next examiner and he will sail through with flying colours. Q. A neighbour and friend, who has been widowed before her time, is exhibiting some odd habits now she is living on her own.