How to Flirt at a Dinner Party Without Anyone Spilling Their Wine

Rule one of flirting at a dinner party is that the host's good tablecloth outranks your wit. Nothing ruins a charming moment faster than a red wine casualty and a stranger dabbing at linen with a napkin. Dinner party flirting is a close-quarters sport. You have a fixed seat, a captive audience and eleven people listening whether they admit it or not. So the game is subtlety, and the prize is the person across the table who has just laughed at your joke a second too long.

Start with the question that works on anyone: 'How do you know our host?' Everybody has a story, and a story gives you material. Listen for the detail they linger over, the slightly embarrassing one, and ask about that. Flirtation at a table is mostly attention, delivered with warmth. When you turn your whole body toward someone, even by ten degrees, and keep your eyes on them while they talk, you have said something no clever line could.

Use the props. A shared bread basket, a plate of olives, a bottle that needs passing: all small excuses for contact. Offer them with a look. 'You have to try this, and I will be offended if you do not like it.' Fingers brush, nobody is accountable. Keep your glass out of the swing zone, tuck your sleeve in, and gesture with your fork hand only when it is empty. Charm and clumsiness are different things, and only one of them leaves a stain.

Start with the question that works on anyone: 'How do you know our host?' Everybody has a story, and a story gives you material.

Play to the table as well as to your target. A joke that includes the people nearby makes you look generous, and generous is sexy. Then, when the conversation breaks into pockets, as it always does around the second course, lean in and lower your voice a fraction. A private comment inside a public room has a lovely charge. 'Don't look now, but the man by the window is losing a war with his napkin.' You have made a small secret, and you are the one holding it.

Know when to stop. The best dinner party flirtation ends before dessert, with a line that leaves a door ajar. 'I want to hear the rest of that story, and I suspect it needs a better chair.' Then go and talk to someone else for a while. Absence is underrated. When you drift back to the person with the knowing smile, they will have spent twenty minutes composing a better ending than you could ever have written.

If you want a practice round before the real invitation arrives, TheFriend has short romance dramas, such as Can Their Love Survive This?, where you can watch how glances and half-sentences carry a scene. I find that studying other people's tension, even invented tension, sharpens my own timing. And if anyone does spill wine, say 'Well, that settles who is the most interesting person here,' and hand them a cloth.