It is hard to know who to love, or who to stay with. It is clear that the government or the BBC or someone in authority should help. In the absence of this, a simple rule of thumb is to ask everyone six questions and then decide whether you love them or not.

Some painters have all the luck. They invent or stumble across a style or a signature gesture early in their careers and then spend their lives refining it and playing with it. They make their best paintings when they struggle most to avoid self-parody and attempt to surprise themselves. There is something almost brazen, for example, about the apparent sameness of Miro’s surreal squiggles, Francis Bacon’s figures, Cy Twombly’s hieroglyphics and Sean Scully’s squares. We must have been right the first time, they seem to be telling us.

One of the great moments when the distinguished history of British snobbery met the limited world of British design was when Alan Clarke declared of Michael Heseltine that he was the sort of person who had bought his own furniture. Clarke, we presume, had inherited his stuff. For us mere mortals, however, there would be something creepy about living with furniture from our parents’ houses. Where did it all go – their old beds with head-boards, their chunky sideboards and patterned settees? It belongs with dandruff and guilt about sex and three television channels and EPs.