Sandra, if that’s her name, rings a faint bell but not enough to jangle the recollection belfry. I might have bumped into her once at some cocktail party, or across the counter of a Tawburn music shop. I try to imagine her as she must have been a dozen years ago, before marriage to Marketing polished her social skills and multiple childbirth broadened her bottom to Rubensesque dimensions. I strive to picture her as the giggly, up-for-it sec who, half pissed and half for a laugh, stumbled with a smart-suited salesman in similar condition up the Royal Tawburn stairs and on to a creaking bed, bumpety-bump and sound asleep. And then once more, piston-smooth and with cobwebbed eyes, in the curtained light of morning-after. Then shower together, blow-dry, dash of lipstick, must dash, no time for coffee, see you later, not a chance.

‘Sandra has kindly agreed to serve as rapporteur to the jury,’ declares Olly. ‘She used to do the books for Mr Burrows’ band, so she’s familiar with musical terms, and all that. If there’s anything you need, Mr Chairman, just ask Sandi and she’ll be happy to oblige.’

Gratefully, I search Sandra’s garrulous green eyes for something obliging but find only the blank smile of a civic spouse. ‘I’m sure we won’t make excessive physical demands on Mrs Adams,’ I venture, seeking a flicker of ironic response to my dusty joke. Nothing, not a shadow on her verdant iris.

That could mean one of four things. Either she doesn’t recognise me. Or she doesn’t want to. Or she is biding her time for a private word. Or it wasn’t her at all – and, if it wasn’t, I wonder what the real girl looks like, and what was her name? I shall have to rely on luck and wit to get me through the evening without making a prat of myself.

All vanities aside, I could forgive an old flame of a decade ago for not recognising me. Although still trim, I have lost most of my wavy hair, three back teeth and that brisk patina of benign middle-agelessness that passes for anything from thirty-five to sixty. Never much of an Apollo, I used to possess a lightness of spirit that, allied to an attentive ear, proved attractive enough to women to make me feel sexually desirable, albeit relatively inactive beyond (or even within) the marriage bed. What I now resemble is a man on the brink of his pension, dried out and beyond revival. The glow has gone from my skin, the spark from my eyes, to such a degree that my devoted secretary, Erna Winter, now retired, recently walked right past me on Regent Street without her customary greeting – ‘Good morning, Mr Simmonds, and did you have a good concert last night?’ As memory wanes, how I miss the omniscient Miss Winter.