I often spend my evenings indulging in either profound discussions or amusing flights of fancy with my house boy Angelo, as he presses and hangs my dinner jacket or fixes a gin pahit.
It does not always end well.
Last Tuesday, things got heated when I argued Goethe's Heinrich Faust was based on the real life of itinerant German Renaissance alchemist Johann Georg Faust.
Angelo would not have a bar of that: he insisted the character was based on the works of Austrian Jesuit priest and theologian Jacob Bidermann, and would not budge.
Then he claimed Goethe's treatises on botany were amateur, and described his plays as ''frigid''.
I was furious.
Of course not all evenings end in the sort of frosty silence that most certainly ensued that day.
One of our favourite games is to develop an imagined situation involving one of our favourite authors.
Just this weekend, for instance, I asked Angelo what he thought W. Somerset Maugham's favourite British comedy panel show would be, if, of course, the world's finest short story writer were alive today.
Angelo said it would probably be QI, what with Stephen Fry being the host and Alan Davies' involvement.
But I said ''no''.
If W. Somerset Maugham were still alive, I said to Angelo, his favourite British comedy panel show would be Would I Lie to You?, the very amusing British comedy panel show.
The original version of Would I Lie to You? runs on a Friday at 9.40pm on TV3.
It is presented by the very amusing Rob Brydon, whose ability with impersonations was so very well exploited in the Michael Winterbottom film The Trip, with fellow actor, comedian and impressionist Steve Coogan.
W. Somerset Maugham would have loved The Trip.
I'm not sure he would have got Steve Coogan, though.
Brydon is joined on Would I Lie to You? by comedian Lee Mack, and David Mitchell from sketch comedy That Mitchell and Webb Look.
I'm not sure where W. Somerset Maugham would have stood in relation to sketch comedies.
They are not discussed in any of his tales of the lives of District Officers wearing topees,
ducks and white shoes, sweating away their terms in tropical outposts of the Federated Malay States as the British Empire crumbled around them.
But he would, as I said, like the original and best version of Would I Lie to You?, where players reveal unusual facts and embarrassing personal tales for the evaluation of the opposing team, which must decide whether they are true or untrue stories.
He would have liked last Friday's version, which featured the fabulous Richard E. Grant.
If he were alive he would probably watch it next week.
You should, too.
- Chalres Loughrey
