I don’t just do the best, as in the Savoy Hotel and, indeed, the Ivy where I dined a couple of days earlier after the first night of Covent Garden’s Tristan und Isolde featuring the amazing Nina Stemme. My enthusiasm is also for the best value, in which area it is hard to outclass the JD Wetherspoon pub chain.

A number of my friends raise a quizzical eyebrow (or in some cases their voices) over my enthusiasm for this cheap and cheerful outfit. But I remain unrepentant. Their many pubs are very professionally run, offering decent food (provided you’re careful with your menu choices) and very cheap drinks.

Two days before Christmas, in search of novelty, Rosemarie and I took a bus ride over to Witney for ‘steak night’ at the Company of Weavers. This pub was fashioned from a former cinema at a cost of £1.3m. I called it “an ornament to the town” when it opened two years ago, and this remains my view.

For £16.99, the cost of a steak in many places, we enjoyed two of them, juicy sirloins with, as they say, ‘all the trimmings’. Also included in the price was a bottle of very gluggable Hardy’s shiraz. Superb value.

We preceded the meal with gin and tonics, double Broker’s — an excellent newish brand — with a premium Fentiman’s mixer. They were £3.70 each. Wetherspoon’s has recently expanded its range of gins (great for an enthusiast like me) and now includes, among others, Portobello Road, Tanqueray and Hendrick’s.

Naturally, in view of the time of year, the place was rammed — young and old (like us) mingling together in well-lubricated amity.

Was this what the local MP David Cameron might call ‘the big society’? More please in 2015.