Then Granville says that, as it happens, he is ‘auto-Semitic’, in that he is trying to make himself more Jewish than he really is, as his Jewishness comes through his mother’s father, not his mother’s mother. ‘My father, also called Granville, made his money in gravel. You wouldn’t necessarily guess it, I know.’ Granville gazes around the luxuriously appointed, flower-filled, Nicky-Haslam-ed space, which has recently been rehung at the cost of £40,000, I should imagine, with ornate Suzy Hoodless floral wallpaper of poppies and hummingbirds and butterflies with a generous repeat on a chalky-white background. Huge floral displays sit on mantelpieces and round tables covered with fringed cloths, and picture lights gently illuminate the Cobbs’ collection of paintings by the St Ives school.

I am gazing faithfully at Granville like a smitten puppy, a gaze I perfected in the salons of Notting Hill while trying to secure lucrative columns off important newspaper editors.

‘So, in fact, while I’m third-generation Lithuanian Jew, I’m only second-generation Coutts.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ I ask, ‘is that why both you and your father are called Granville? As a sort of pun on gravel?’

Ralph puts his head in his hands and makes a slight moaning sound.

‘No,’ says Granville. ‘But don’t worry in the slightest, Mimi. It’s a question that my old man was often asked, especially by his grandchildren.’

Luckily, the others then burst in, as if they had all been pressed together against the door listening in a pack, which I pray they haven’t.

The Revd Simon Wyldbore-Smith, the Pikes, Henry and Biddy, Ned and Lulu Bryanston, and the Cobb daughter, Serena, all sleek and bronzed and slimline, whose date appears to be Jesse Marlon Bryanston, son and heir to Ned, both of them very similar looking, with thick dark hair, even features, long, upper-class legs, nonchalant mien of the entitled, that sort of thing. I notice that Ralph said Jesse Marlin rather than Marlon, as if he’s a sort of fish, but there wasn’t a moment to take him aside and, anyway, I was still cross about how he reacted when I asked Granville about gravel – so unsupportive.

‘What would you all like to drink?’ Cath cries. ‘Something soft, I think,’ says Henry. ‘Red wine?’ I hear Biddy announcing proudly to Lulu that Jiggy’s having Frisky’s puppies. ‘But aren’t they mother and son?’ Lulu asks faintly. ‘Yes!’ roars Biddy. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

Last to arrive is a young goldeny couple whose names I never caught, he = aspiring Tory MP/partner in City law firm, she = utterly adorable pregnant young bride with that glow… not to mention dowry of many millions.