But can you imagine having lunch, multiple times, with someone you barely know? Would you extend an open invitation to your house, in a chatty email referring to an apparently metaphorical harem, to someone you’d only met in a group setting “such as a charity tennis event”, which is what Richard Branson maintains? I don’t know how happy I’d be, sitting in my dressing gown with someone who I barely knew, as Peter Mandelson did; I guess, if I’d recently travelled on their private plane, that might have been an opportunity to deepen the acquaintanceship.