Quite separately, two of your dinner guests have arrived on time - and this unfashionable gaffe has caused consternation. How can you keep them occupied while attending to the somewhat urgent task of cooking the dinner? You can't; they will just have to sit down at the table and engage each other in conversation without any guidance from you.

Wrong answer! Four minutes after they are seated, you notice a silence. Conversation has stopped. They have nothing in common and nothing to talk about. They are paralysed with shyness. The whole evening is on the path to ruin, and you have only yourself to blame!

If only you had provided them with something obvious to talk about, a visual conversation piece. Like the balancing wine bottle holder. It looks just like a straight slab of perspex with a hole near the top, but it is designed to balance a standard wine bottle perfectly and horizontally. It could have provided dozens of talking points, from "I suppose if the cork were removed the wine would pour out and it would topple over," to "Do you think it would work with a bottle of whiskey?"

The Balancing Wine Bottle Holder, around £10 (€12.70), is available at the Gadget Shop in Dublin and Belfast.