"Shaken not stirred." How pleased Ian Fleming must have been at completing his depiction of James Bond by the simple device of describing how he liked his dry martini to be prepared.
It is preferences in small things that give us colour and a choice of champagne glass, like the
favourite mix of a drink, tells you almost as much about a man, or a woman for that matter, as does a psychometric test.
In the 1960s, the smart thing was to drink champagne from a wide flat glass or "saucer", a shape reputedly inspired by the breasts of Marie Antoinette and used to great effect in that greatest of all television series, The Avengers.
Would Diana Rigg have so stirred the affections of the red blooded Anglo-Saxon male if her lovely eyes had not looked out of the TV screen across the top of a broad shallow glass of champagne? I very much doubt it.
But then, of course, it all went wrong. The wine buffs and the know-it-alls, a large number of them from Islington I am afraid, descended tut-tutting on this remnant of elegance and, with a machine like ditty of, "it loses the bouquet" or "the bubbles will burst too soon" clattering out of their overtoothed mouths, swept away our saucers and insisted we use flutes. "Really darling, it's what the connoisseurs all use, didn't you know?" and all the nasty nosy patronising rest of it. Would no one ever come to overthrow these oppressors?
