A correspondent has challenged my chagrin over the handing out of name cards at receptions, accusing me of “dripping in the old world of snobbery”, a world I “desperately want to be identified and associated with”. Apparently, networkers have the right and should positively be encouraged to get to know people whom they do not know.

What an idiotic charge. First, as someone born and brought up under British colonial rule and bunged into an English boarding school at 13 not speaking any English, I was more at the receiving end of snobbery rather than a practitioner of it.

Second, has the commentator no consideration for those at a reception who find it tiresome to be waylaid by strangers trying to tell them business and other ideas? Maybe at tedious conferences or academic forums, but hardly on social occasions when everyone should have the right to enjoy themselves without being accosted by pushy networkers desperate to tell you what they are doing and how they could be helped. It is also sheer na?veté to expect any result with the unilateral offer of cards, or even the exchange of cards. Relationships are not ignited that way. If you really want the proper attention of someone else, you can only get it by making yourself interesting enough for that person to take an interest in you. Merely palming off your name card is almost an insult to the concept of being interesting.