First impressions count. At our office we are careful to make sure that every visitor is made to feel extremely welcome: they are greeted at the door, shown to a meeting room and offered tea, coffee or a cold drink. The person meeting them will be smartly dressed. He or she will smile and offer to take their coat or bag, will show them to the bathroom if required and will generally make them feel special. Even our coffee is special, since my team have long insisted on having those plunger-type filter coffee pots (which I have never worked out how to use), so that they can make it fresh each time.

But even the best-laid plans can sometimes go awry. One day last week the electricity provider for central London discovered a fault and told us at 6pm that we were going to be without power for the rest of the evening while it was repaired. Although I was staying in the office that night (yes, I have a bedroom in the office, how sad is that?), I was going to be out all evening reviewing the papers for the BBC, accompanied by our office manager who was going to stay in the spare room (even sadder). I have to be accompanied by someone as the papers are always full of football stories, which I don’t understand at all. Once again, this proved a winning ploy as Thierry Henry had scored an own goal to help send France out of Euro 2008, and for some reason this event had made all the newspapers. Why?