GIVING FOR A FREE MEAL

After Zucchero's superb show on Saturday, we got home, for reasons involving the taking of nourishment and the catching of a ferry, at the unearthly hour of three plus. As the designated driver, I hadn't ingested too much alcohol, so sleep was not immediately an option by then, so I downloaded the "other paper" (PressReader on iPad, you ought to try it) and had a browse.

I came across Ms Benoit's full-pager describing what seems to have been the social event of the epoch, Mr Maurice Mizzi's knees-up in Bidnija, and it seemed to be the sort of thing to glance through at virtually the crack of dawn.

It was what you would expect, but with a couple of Benoit's cracks thrown in to remind you that this is sometimes not a happy bunny, dispensing wit and bonhomie as she writes. Apparently, she was seated at a table which was next to a couple of good friends of mine, who she described as (she used his name, I won't, so as not to give her bitterness a wide audience) "X and his whatever", bemoaning the fact that she would have to breathe his air.

Ms Benoit knows that "X and his whatever" (what a cheap description of another human being, incidentally) are better at their jobs than many, including her, to say nothing of good looking (at least in "whatever's" case) and good company, and certainly better analysts and commentators than her, and she really let her envy show here. No doubt she'll do the same in my regard at some point in the future, which worries me not one jot, but sticking a snide remark into a fluffy column on a summer party is so typical of the woman.

She went on to whine, probably with some justification to be fair, about the length of the speeches and the plethora of statistics in the PM's one, which all sounded a bit ungrateful, albeit understandable. She made up by going on to thank Mr Mizzi gushingly for inviting her, apparently not realising that the commenting trade are invited to these things not for our scintillating wit and personality but because we're expected to do exactly what Benoit did, which is publicise them.

At least we were spared Benoit's erudite take on the Engerer saga, because I'm pretty sure she'd have done exactly the same as two of her colleagues in the Sunday Times, and blithely ignored the facts in order to parrot Labour's mantra about interference and revenge set-ups.

You'd think these people didn't have an analytical brain-cell between them, despite circumstantial evidence to the contrary.