We found that, despite the manufacturers’ claims, all the products tested cleaned dishes to exactly the same standard. Just when you think all dishwasher detergents are the same, along comes an advert showing that one fades your crockery, while another is packaged so excessively that it’s too bulky to carry home. Fairy, suggests a current television ad, is the only one to get Joanna’s exquisite china squeaky-clean without damaging it as rival powders might. As is typical in the promotion of products with little or nothing to choose between them, celebrity and knocking the opposition are all. I didn’t think the bill of pounds 69.75 for two without the tip was too bad, all things considered !.

If Joanna Lumley is to be believed, getting your dishes to sparkle – even with a robotic machine to do the work for you – isn’t as simple as picking the first dishwasher detergent off the supermarket shelf. Then she tasted it, made a very loud “Eugh!” noise, and started laying into the quality of the sponge fingers that had been used to make the casing. Camomile and peppermint tea arrived in futuristic glass globe-shaped teapots containing miniature percolators.There is talk of “refurbishing” The Caviar House at the end of August, but even in its current incarnation it’s certainly worth a visit. I was picking through my three kinds of fish, quite enjoying the varieties of texture and the pesto sauce, but after tasting a bit she wrote it off as “clumsy”.I persevered, ordering a pear Charlotte with coulis of cassis and pear sorbet and she was initially impressed by the sorbet being shaped to look like little pears. My wife decided turbot should be poached, not roasted, as it made it too dry, she couldn’t understand why anyone should go to the trouble of making parsley puree, she suspected the mushrooms might be tinned.

We both thought her raw fish a bit undistinguished, my own restaurant-reviewer’s note on the back of an envelope being “cloudy”.The main course came in for a certain amount of flak. My duck salad arrived, very nice and pink, with a rocket leaves laid out in artistic fashion all round it and various-coloured lettuces underneath, and her tartare of fish, topped with caviare and accompanied by two little baps, was similarly decorated. It is for if you want a private party or something separate, otherwise we don’t use it.”We were then brought an appetiser, two very thin and delicious slices of carpaccio of tuna, decorated with a zigzag pattern in melted cheese. My wife tore herself away from Tatler, said she could have done without them and wanted to know why did they have to have such enormous plates. I also ordered half a bottle of Pouilly Fume at pounds 10.50. We then sat back to wait for a few moments and finding me more than usually boring, my wife leant over to a nearby table offering the day’s newspapers and magazines and immersed herself in the current issue of Tatler. I grilled the waitress, who could have been French-speaking Swiss, asking her who owned the restaurant.