Have you broken this posh dinner-party rule?

Now I’m not sure what happens where you reside but in London it’s still deemed polite to pick up a bottle of wine when you’re invited to dinner at someone’s house. Two if you’re a fast drinker. But there’s a certain moment when to do so becomes unwise and makes you look, well, cheap. I sadly remember the first time that I made this faux pas.

I had been invited to the home of a work contact. It was a crossover moment, an invitation that hinted that perhaps we could become actual friends. On the way to dinner, I purchased a bottle of champagne (very fancy pants, I know). Her address turned out to be a grand London house and, when I pressed the bell, a butler answered the door. I immediately saw a wince of anguish spread across his face as he glanced down and eyed my off-licence carrier bag. “Sir, may I take your coat – and your, er, shopping?” he intoned in a voice that made it very clear that my booze would be going no further than the hallway. And it didn’t.

Of course, thirtysomethings today probably don’t host dinner parties or, if they do, only imbibe kombucha for fear of missing out on a personal best at Barry’s in the morning. But I still carry the scars.

This week I was invited to dinner in Mallorca at the kind of epic house that’s named after the family who lives there (sadly I don’t think you could ever have the “Tuck House” as it would sound like I was running a roadside diner). Was this a moment, I wondered, to arrive empty-handed or bottled-up? In short, might the host be too grand for gifts? 

I messaged my friend Olaf – for whom the dinner was being thrown – and he assured me that a bottle would be an acceptable offering (though I did pop a copy of Monocle into the nice tote bag too just to improve my chances of success). I am pleased to say that the hostess was the epitome of barefoot chic. She left me feeling as though I was generosity personified. I don’t mind if the wine ends up in a sauce and I didn’t get butler rash.

We were talking about dinner parties at work this week and I told what I thought was a good story about a mid-week dinner at a friend’s flat, where someone arrived with Anjelica Huston in tow. The amusing part was that my friend, the host, charmingly had no clue who she was and thought that she was just a late-addition plus-one. Except the story sank like a miserable soufflé when I realised that my desk neighbour – a man who was barely out of diapers when this happened (ie, he was very young, not blighted by terrible adult incontinence) – had a bit of butler face going on. “Sorry, I haven’t a clue who you’re talking about,” he admitted. I scanned the rest of my audience and saw much googling in action. I really need to update my stories.

Another etiquette issue: how to respond when someone posts tragic news on Instagram. Now I like my feed to be filled with pictures of architecture and reels of puppies being rescued from rivers but, occasionally, I do spot posts announcing the sad death of a parent or that someone has been diagnosed with a disfiguring tropical disease. I always find myself drawn to the reactions that these posts inspire. Firstly, the number of people who just press “like”. Is that really a suitable response to the news that your friend’s family has been kidnapped in the Amazon? Then this week, under a post about the death of someone’s dad, I saw that someone had simply put a poop emoji. No doubt there’s some stonemason influencer making emoji headstones as I type. But who are these people and do they know who Anjelica Huston is?

If you really want to know how to be a good host – or guest – get yourself a copy of Konfekt: A Guide to Generous Hosting. It has all the answers.