Various correspondents to The Oxford Times appear to take it as a personal insult that I once claimed never to have heard of the actor James Corden. Perhaps they think I am having a go at them for their downmarket Gavin & Stacey taste. Perhaps they are right.

‘Ken’ Marsland, of Kidlington, last week combined criticism of my Corden-blindness with a swipe at me, delivered in ill-scanned verse, for complaining — in what he saw as Alan Partridge style — that a restaurant’s finger bowl contained cold water.

Presented with such a bowl, the appalling Partridge (above) would be more likely to try to drink from it than clean his fingers in it. But cleaning was the purpose for which Rosemarie required it, after peeling oil-drenched prawns at the Blue Boar in Witney. It is widely recognised that hot water is better than cold for removing grease.

I realise that, historically, cold water was placed in finger bowls. This was because historical etiquette demanded that no use be made of them. “Do not take a bath in your finger bowl,” advised the New York Times in 1909. “Dipping the tips of your fingers in the water or rubbing them over the scented leaf [lemon verbena, perhaps] should be all that is needed for a dainty eater.”

These days it’s to hell with daintiness and finger bowls are made for using. The Wiktionary definition reads: “A small bowl of warm water placed at each seat at a fancy dinner for the guests to rinse their fingers with between courses.”

I note that joint use is still taboo, as it was in 1909 when the NYT decreed: “One bowl shared by two persons is absolutely unpermissible.”

Speaking of another potential infringement of good taste, my eyebrows raised at an Internet sentence that my Google of ‘finger bowl’ produced: “Pool the sperm from several males in ice-cold, full-strength Hank’s saline . . . in the finger bowl.”

This was all about “breeding zebrafish”.

Phew!