I wonder if I will have any friends left after writing this piece. I certainly hope not. Not the type I am referring to at least. But truth be said that I have been meaning to write this for ages, so anyone who has been very recently invited to our house need not feel particularly targeted, well at least not any more so than anyone else.

Truth of the matter be however, that many people are cheapskates, even to the extent of not even caring to be openly seen as such.

Those who know me well know that I anything but snobbish or pretentious, and this firmly includes matters concerning wine. I do know just a tiny little bit about wines, and I am not being overly modest I promise. As I always like to say on the topic, I really only know just the basics, but these I know well. However my knowledge on wines greatly pales in comparison even with many people I myself know personally.

What I certainly know about wine is that you must be an ignoramus to drink cheap plonk yourself, and an even bigger one to offer such a bottle of the nasty stuff to your friends when invited to their house.

I am not some hoity-toity conceited prick, who only drinks the very best. On the contrary, much of what I drink is plain old simple inexpensive wine, but this doesn’t necessarily have to be the very cheapest. I rarely allow myself the enormous pleasure of drinking very expensive wines, but this neither means that I am on some sort of death-wish to source the very cheapest and vilest plonk on the planet.

There are other gifts and tokens of appreciation you may offer to your gracious hosts when being invited. These may include flowers, in which case I doubt that you would nick them off the closest grave at your local cemetery, on your way to your friends’ house. Or pull out a couple on nondescript wild flowers which would be as wilted as your willie, when you will be ashamedly pressing that doubtful doorbell.

And if you intend taking chocolates, yet another standard gift, I doubt that you will be turning up with a mini Mars bar, being the very cheapest confectionary item you have been able to source.

So why on earth do so many people insist on offering the worse, most disgusting and cheapest wines around? Do they really think that their hosts never go to supermarkets to see these same wines marked at €3.00? Cannot they imagine that if, like me, their host happens to know even the tiniest bit about wines, even if they have brought this wine from abroad, or if for whatever reason it is not commonly available, its rough cost, and more importantly its overall quality, will still be more than obvious?

I can tell a crap wine from when our guests are still parking their car down the road, with it still being wrapped up in several bags and firmly wedged in the boot, under their shopping bags and car tool kit.

I am very tempted to say that it would be better not to take anything at all, rather than a cheap nasty wine – but I won’t. No, I won’t, because that is about the vilest and most dreadful thing you could ever do. I have been invited to exactly 12,650,432 meals and parties at friends’ houses, and yes I just counted them all right now! And not once, really never ever, have I turned up with empty hands. And ‘never’ only has one distinct meaning. In the same way that I have never turned up stark naked (unless it wasn’t incidental…) and never forgot to put on my clothes before turning up at a friend’s house, I have never ever forgotten to bear a gift upon arrival.

Admittedly, unlike clothing, there have been several times I have left home without a gift, but guess what, there are shops on the way. And don’t come say that it’s a Sunday and everything was closed, unless you like a heavy door slammed straight into your face. Virtually everything is open now, Sundays included. And if we did forget and were running very late, then I would deposit my wife, whose fault it very probably was in the first place, at our friends’ house, as a temporary token of sorts, while I would desperately go find something in the vicinity. Anything, wine, spirits, cakes, can of baked beans, in which case I only buy Heinz which is the best, but I will NOT arrive empty-handed. If on the other hand you are alone and are in this terrible plight, just take that small rectangular thing which you are probably holding in your hands right now to read this, and you make a call or send a message telling your hosts why you are further delayed. If it is a matter of buying them a gift I am sure that they won’t mind.

But never ever turn up with nothing in hand, you look like a dimwitted imbecile who has never been invited out before and who has less finesse and social skills than a floating turd bobbing aimlessly in a shitpool. Oh and this applies to everyone and in every occasion, if you think that you have been elevated to such social stature that bearing gifts is actually beneath you, then you simply look like a much larger turd in an infinitely more putrid shitpool.

So back to the wine. The vast array of wine available today at ridiculously inexpensive prices, leaves absolutely no excuse for anyone to turn up with a bottle of el cheapo. Crap wines are purchased at €2, €3 and possibly €4. If only you ‘invest’ the astronomical additional sum of say €3 you will actually elevate yourself from disgusting cheapskate or at best total dunce in matters of wine, to normal human being who graciously brought us a gift which does not mock us in our face.

Yes, that is all it takes – €3! Mark my words. And for those wiseguys who might say that a wine’s quality is not reflected by its price, I really have no intention of going into that intricate argument right here and now. This may apply to say a certain €50 bottle of wine which might be superior to another particular €60 bottle of wine. But I can guarantee that the chances of a €2.50 bottle of wine being better than a €6 bottle are very very slim.

I understand that unfortunately there are many who are still very slowly developing their wine appreciation skills and drowning themselves constantly in the cheapest wines available is not doing them any favours. Many are really under the false impression that these dirt cheap wines are much better than the dirt they truly are. I am not saying that a couple are not perhaps just about palatable enough to pass as your third or forth drunken bottle at a ten hour long party, but then again so would mild vinegar with a fancy label.

We never tend to scout around for the very worst and cheapest food. On the contrary, we by far prefer quality food even if this will cost a little bit more. There is absolutely no difference between wine and food. They both go into your mouth, are savoured on their way down, before they settle in there to give you joy and satisfaction or heartburn, indigestion, headaches and diarrhea.

So learn to truly appreciate wine. There is much more to it than simply getting drunk. Fortunately they all do that, no matter their quality and actually the good stuff is often the most potent and has the highest alcoholic content. But the flavours, the aromas, the taste, the overall pleasure and more so the aftereffects, are very very different. So if you are still at the abysmal level of drinking cooking wine, you really need to start evolving into a civilised human being.

Stop drinking crap wine! If you wear the tattiest clothes, drive the worst car, live in the dirtiest dump and only frequent the cheapest workers bars if and when you go out, then this would be perhaps acceptable. Tramps are unfortunately not the best advised and the most worldly individuals. If on the other hand you are slightly more elevated than this, then you really need to stop the terrible habit of insisting on the worst and cheapest wines around. For those are what the tramps should drink….

There is always a bright side to everything in life. Ours is that all this has greatly improved our cooking, as many of the wines we get offered end up in the pot, although admittedly some don’t even qualify for that. NOT joking! And again having some basic human pride, we wouldn’t dream of recycling plonk by passing it on to someone else as our gift to their party. We haven’t stooped to that level yet and very much never intend to either. Plonk is plonk and recycling it makes you an even bigger plonker.

When we are invited, I don’t exactly get out the calculator or take notes of the exact wines I take, but roughly this is how I function. First of all there is the smart dinner type of occasion, in which case you really do not have to take wine, as often other gifts are much more appropriate. Yes most people are stuck on wine while any other personalised gift would often be so much nicer. Also flowers, yes flowers! make an excellent gift, as they do the world over and are so often forgotten. And don’t turn up with a bloody potted plant, no, cut fresh flowers is what I am talking about. And if some idiot says that they are a waste as they will soon die, I can only say that I hope you die a little bit before them!

So back to the wine. Let us say that wine it is to a small,smart seated dinner type function. Then I would probably go for a nice red, probably priced in the region of €10. Everyone can afford €10 and with that price today you can get a very nice wine. With more informal events a €6 or €7 wine would still be very acceptable and would still not break the bank. And at the very other end of the spectrum, say at a large beach party which will last for hours on end, I would take three or four bottles of €5 wine for the two of us that is, although often I end up taking a box of six. You can find palatable cheap and cheerful wine at €5, but very rarely at less. And if there are two of us scoffing it down all afternoon and evening, taking just one or two bottles along is also an insult to the organisers. If you find that taking so many bottles is beyond your budget, then drink beer, or water, or nothing at all, or leave early, but do have the decency of not drinking up everybody else’s stock of booze.

It is funny how so many don’t mind being seen and labelled as cheap and tightfisted and mean and devoid of class, simply to save €2 or €3. They must either largely underestimate their hosts’ basic observational skills, or they have transformed themselves into such miserable, stingy bastards that they really don’t realise their own obviously wretched state.

I have purposely focused on wine here, however there are so many other equally disgusting behaviours which also merit a quick mention. I have seen some take either food or beverage items as their offering and contribution to a meal, only to ask for the leftovers back, to return with them back home. These troglodytes often come up with the dumbest and most obviously lying pile of untrue crap as an excuse, in the form of “oh it’s just that I hate waste”. Well then you must really hate yourself, you poor excuse for a wasted human being! Unless the hosts themselves are shoving it back in your face and explicitly telling you that yes, you are being treated as a trashcan, and the stuff is being given back to you rather than throwing it away, then don’t act like a trashcan yourself!

The only worst vermin on earth are those who actually ask to take home a takeaway of sorts, of stuff which they didn’t even bring themselves. Yes they too exist! Can you imagine being told that they won’t have their dessert at your place, so could you please wrap it up to go, as this would save them preparing food at home!

I, who am known for my more than dubious behaviour, who would do literally anything for a laugh, who really and truly have no sense of shyness or embarrassment, just cringe to think that some people do these things not for a giant laugh, but in the most serious of manners.

In the end I really and honestly don’t care how much people spend, that is not the real question. If they can somehow bring along something enjoyable which cost them absolutely nothing, or which they managed to purchase for 10 cents, then that is perfectly fine with me. I am using price as this is most definitely the best and most efficient indicator of quality in this particular case. I don’t want people to spend, I just don’t want to receive crap gifts which are totally useless and unsavoury and which I would never dream of purchasing myself.

A gift is something the person receiving should enjoy. If you are really that hard up that even those couple of extra Euros will hurt you, then there are still countless options. You could find a nice gift from your personal belongings. You can go fetch a peeble from the beech and paint a heart on it. You can write a little poem on the back of a card. You can print out a personalised photograph and put in the cheapest of frames. Use a bit of imagination and show your friends some love and respect.

But that horrible wine you shove down your throat every evening – you can keep that thanks. I already spend more in antacid pills than you spend on wine. And very soon we will be publishing a 500 page book called Cooking with Wine!

I wonder if I have any friends left….