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TRICKY VISITORS

SOMEONE I know once arrived bang on time at their friends’ home, to where they had been invited for a ‘relaxed weekend lunch’. As they reached up to ring the doorbell, they heard the man of the house bellowing up the stairs: ‘The selfish ****ers are here already!’ He was still pulling on a shirt as he opened the door, wreathed in smiles.

For most of us, entertaining is a bit stressful. The ideal guest will be sensitive to the fact you may not have achieved all you had intended in advance of their arrival.

So, spare a sympathetic thought for outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May, who this week will be entertaining U.S. President Donald Trump and his extended family entourage.

One of the things Mrs May had intended to get sorted before The Donald inevitably blew in was Brexit — and he doesn’t seem a man to let that pass unnoticed. Can you imagine a more awkward gathering? Trump, who seemingly signals his Scottish heritage by using Irn Bru as fake tan, Day-Gloing and glowering, and May having to endure it all as one last self-immolating act of patriotism for ‘the country I love’.

From Paris bearing off Helen of Troy, to the Cat In The Hat, and Pride And Prejudice’s unctuous Lady Catherine De Bourgh, literature is full of horrendously overbearing visitors.

In the Soviet satire The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, Satan and his henchman Behemoth, a huge, fast-talking cat, arrive in Moscow and wreak havoc among the city’s liberal elite.

In Sadie Jones’s engrossing recent novel The Snakes, young London couple Bea and Dan go to stay with her ‘recovering’ junkie brother Alex at his falling-down hotel in France.

Things feel like they could not get any worse — but then Bea and Alex’s bullying, damaging parents arrive.

Sometimes, at least, a put-upon host turns the tables. In Richmal Crompton’s Just William story William Makes A Night Of It, Mr Bennison, a patronising, middle-aged bore, comes to stay. William gets rid of him by waking up Mr Bennison through the night, flattering him that he is fascinated by his world knowledge. Worth a try, Theresa.