All of us know that feeling of rising panic at a dinner party when our host or hostess places before us some gastronomic creation of which they are inordinately proud but which has the immediate effect of making one want to rush upstairs and lock the bathroom door.

To leave your plate untouched is tantamount to saying, 'I think this dish stinks'; to eat it is to invite an even more ungracious demonstration of your disapproval, possibly all over the dinner table; to knock it on the floor is to risk an even larger replacement helping being placed before you.

Thank heavens for allergies which, perversely, compel people to forgo even the foods they love best. Take a deep breath and shovel in one mouthful of the disgusting dish and exclaim, 'This is absolutely deliciousl What is it?"

As your host or hostess is reeling off the ingredients ('chopped peppers with double cream, cheese sauce, grated almonds, minced veal, avocado with prawns . . .') halt them in mid-sentence and, in the wounded tone of someone who has just discovered they have been cheated out of a pools win, declare, 'Chopped almonds? Oh, no, I just dare not risk it. If I get within five yards of an almond I am covered head to foot by terrible blotches and weals. It's a most embarrassing and uncomfortable allergy.'

To cover yourself, just in case you have eaten almonds on several previous visits to your hosts without suffering the ill-effects you have so graphically described, you should add: 'The extraordinary thing is, I could eat as many almonds as I liked until six months ago.'

In a doctor's presence, this may not wash. In which case you must fall back on: 'I was forced to eat it as a child and as a result have never been able to face it since.'

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