There comes a time, for every game master when it isn’t that the group you have in are desperately rude or drunk or unpleasant, but there is something about them, something about them that you just don’t like. Now it could be said, and probably quite rightly so, that this is the host’s problem, and why work in a performing role like this if you don’t like people eh? Man up and get on with it!

But I confess, and it may be me not you, that there are times when a group walks through the door, and maybe they’re a bit quiet and maybe they just ask one of those dickhead questions that you can’t believe they just asked (Oh, OK, I can’t remember one off hand, maybe I will by the end of this piece) or maybe it’s just that you don’t like their attitude.

They might be a bit imperious in their manner for example. And of course they’ve come late - just five minutes maybe, but they are late and they haven’t even bothered to acknowledge it let alone apologise.

“Righty-ho!” I might say, summoning up all my reserves of fake bonhomie to make it go with a swing, “ time to go in!” And a smartly dressed woman (SDW) or man, (it could be a man, but you can tell can’t you that I have someone very specific in my mind and that the venom is mounting) says “No we can’t go in until Rosemary is here”. “But" I say, smiling, smiling, smiling, “we’re a little late already, and time is...” At this point the SDW blanks me, ignores me, says “I’m sure she’ll be here soon."

Then of course she does arrive a few minutes later - not quite late enough for me have insisted they begin, but late enough to rattle my cage and stir up the sawdust. In they go and I let them flounder. Now that’s not fair you say, you should treat everyone the same, besides which they’re customers! Customers eh, who’d have ‘em.

Oh yeah, and what’s that the SDW said, just before they go in - “Since we’re starting 15 mins late I presume you can add that on?” See? - dickhead questions!