Growing up, it was made very clear to us that if you RSVPed in the positive to a party, you were absolutely honour-bound to turn up. It was the height of rudeness to chuck. How things have changed. These days, people don’t even bother RSVPing: it’s too difficult. Some are even too lazy to click a thumbs-up on a WhatsApp. More charitably, perhaps they have all suffered collective memory loss, or don’t understand the French.

I know what you do when you get an email invitation, or when somebody texts you with the date and time of a party. You think ‘how nice’, and then do absolutely nothing about it until the week before. Only then do you look at your diary and think: oh, but I’ve got to unpack those boxes of knick-knacks that night; or, I’ve got to take my pet lizard to the vet, and that’s the only time I’ve got before Christmas; or, it might be mildly drizzling on the night; and so forth, and so forth.

Let me spell it out for you: there is a reason why an RSVP exists. ‘Répondez s’il vous plaît’ is simply a polite way of saying please bloody well answer, yes or no, because otherwise I won’t know how many people are coming, and will order too........

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