'Didn't you use cheese and basil?' She looked meaningfully at the hostess, who nodded quickly. 'Then, of course, the chicken and asparagus.' The dinner party continued smoothly and the hostess's secret remained safe. 'This kind of thing happens all the time,' says Ms Rickards, who cooks lunches in the City as well as making small dinners for the 40-60 age group. 'You just have to laugh.'The number of women hiring private cooks for dinner parties has risen over the past 15 years, she says. And so has the number of hostesses who try to give the impression that they have cooked for their dinners parties themselves.'Women in their thirties, who cannot cook, do not wish to be shown up in front of their female friends,' she says. 'They feel the need to give the impression of industry in the home, especially if they are not working. Those who do work, on the other hand, tend not to care.'It is precisely because of such foibles that caterers these days have to be far more than just good cooks They need to have humour and patience - in huge quantities. For, just as every hostess has a tale to tell about 'those simply disastrous caterers I hired', so all caterers have their own about an impossible hostess.'Every day is filled with drama,' says Jane Lloyd-Owen, who runs By Word of Mouth, a company based in Wandsworth, London.

'Last week a client rang up two hours before a lunch for 270 people, and said that suddenly she had 40 more people coming. We had to find 40 more portions of everything in no time at all - but that's just par for the course.'Temperamental clients are an accepted obstacle. In the middle of one grand dinner, an elderly man refused to eat Ms Lloyd-Owen's food and insisted that someone fetch him a McDonald's 'We did it.' She actually laughs. 'It's all part of the theatre of the day.'If the client is not the problem, the venue probably will be. The marketing director of one of England's more famous old London caterers, who asked not to be named, explained how his company once had to cook the soup and vegetables for a dinner on the back of a lorry.'We took the only parking space available,' he said, 'until, that is, the owner of the building turned up and needed it.