TikTok influencers are spoiling the fun of throwing a dinner party

‘Give me a kitchen table half-tidied of homework rather than an exquisitely designed wildflower bouquet’: the true pleasures of a dinner party. Photograph: flyparade/Getty Images/iStockphoto

I have always held a deep suspicion for the concept of the “dinner party”. In theory, some pasta with your pals. In practice an awkward act of class establishment and adulting performed by terribly self-conscious children – all the meal planning and awkward chatter, and warm wine and pretending to be our parents. And increasingly, a whole economy.

The pretentious aspirations of the dinner party, while adding glamour to a meal, threaten to drain an evening of its soul