"Mother of the groom ..." "Oh well," she said turning away, "just try not to clash with the mother of the bride."

     Wedding: now there's a word to conjure with. Whisper "wedding" to a maitre d'hotel, for instance, and that bottle of plonk, normally a fiver, magically doubles its price to a tenner. Wedding: two little syllables that give an ordinary posy the market value of solid gold. Delighted as I am by the imminence of this union, I myself never felt the need to marry anyone. Wedding: when I was young, I preferred a good funeral, where nobody wagged a finger at me and said: "You'll be next!"

     A decade or two ago I was returning to London from a chat show in Manchester, where I had been sharing airspace as a fellow-panellist with Auberon Waugh. The redoubtable chap himself was seated with a minder from his publisher in front of me on the train; he had not seen me enter and, to be honest, he probably did not expect to be overheard by one such as I--plebeian agony aunt--in his first-class compartment. So he spoke to his companion in a careless, carrying voice: "I find an unexpected peril of this chat show business is that one finds oneself truly liking the improbable person one has been summoned to chat with" ......You can read more.