Should you clink when you drink? Toasting is a tricky art

I’ve just read an amusing story about the late Queen Mother. If she invited you to dinner, you had to play along with her ritual of toasts. First, she’d say the name of somebody she liked, raise her glass above her head and the table would have to follow suit. But woe betide her enemies, because the Queen Mother would then lower her glass under the table and say the name of somebody she didn’t like (Wallis Simpson? Cherie Blair?), and everybody would have to echo this, too. Apparently this game could drag on for a whole course to hoots of laughter. I’d be worried that my partridge a l’orange was getting cold, but I’m awfully greedy.

This is why my glass is always empty at weddings when it comes to the toast. Within a few minutes of the “ting, ting ting!” to gather everyone, I’ve swallowed the contents, which is terrifically bad manners, but if they will make you stand for an hour listening to which A-levels the bride got then what else is one to do?

Individual toasting customs such as those of the late Queen Mother and certain military regiments are often pretty strange. Do you stand up, sit down, or do it with one leg on a chair? My friend Clare says that her family faithfully raise their glasses to her father’s old Latin teacher, Goldie, for absolutely no reason she can remember. The small grandchildren are now encouraged to do this with their water glasses, which makes her dad double up with laughter. Perhaps your family will gather this Christmas and toast a much-missed spaniel.

Such larks go back a long way. The Romans were fond of a party where each guest had to drink as many glasses of wine as there were letters in his mistress’s name; not so bad if you were seeing a Julia, less good if she was Agrippina and you had an early start at the aqueduct.

The Georgians were positively fixated with the habit. The Prince Regent snapped off wine glass stems to

The Merry Wives of Windsor,