The British have developed an elaborate yet widely understood code that allows the terrible truth to be hinted at without giving gratuitous offence. “That looks very comfortable,” applied to any item of clothing, means it would be rejected by most tramps as inconsistent with their dignity.

“You're clearly enjoying yourself!”, offered as a compliment at any social occasion, usually means: “I bet you buy your Resolve by the kilogram” or “I wouldn't approach any naked flames too closely in the next 72 hours”.

In similar vein, saying to your interlocutor at any party, “will you excuse me, I must just visit the loo (or toilet/facilities/wash my hands etc...)” is often a way of saying “will you excuse me, I cannot stand continuing this conversation any more and I must just leave your company before I, like a captive viewer of Big Brother Live, expire from pure boredom”.

The problem, however, with the toilet gambit, as I have come to think of it, is that, while it allows for relatively trouble-free escape from genuine bores (whose insensitivity to others is such that they can't imagine anyone wanting to leave their company unless in mortal danger of internal rupture), it risks irreparably endangering social relations with the overwhelming majority of genuinely charming people.

Because I find that I now need, genuinely, and out of pressing physical urgency, to visit the loo several times an hour during any social engagement. I usually arrive late, having maintained my concentration while driving by imbibing barrels of Diet Coke. Because I dare not drink alcohol on any day that I'm driving I knock back Appletise, squash, and more Diet Coke with all the gusto of a particularly ill-bred warthog finding a waterhole after a month in the Kalahari. Sometimes professional obligations mean that I have to speak at the event and, while that is always a pleasure for any egomaniac, the nervousness it engenders leads to a dryness of mouth that requires more sluicing to counteract.

The net result is that I need, at roughly 15-minute intervals in any social event, to relieve the pressure. But because asking to be excused mid-conversation for a brief trip to the loo is, understandably, interpreted as telling your interlocutor that they are about as interesting as a Charter 88 seminar on lessons from Slovakia's experiment with AV-plus addressed by Geoff Hoon and Norman Baker, a Turner Prize video installation or a lecture on medieval ship caulking.

And since, while I am capable of many sins, I cannot bring myself to be so unbearably rude, I dare not ask to be excused. And so I am learning to wait. Like a cross between a camel and a Sotheby's porcelain expert I have both to develop extra water retention capacity and take refuge in dreams of china bowls.

Is there a way that I can be released from this bind? Of signalling at a party that asking to be excused is a physical necessity, not an act of social evasion?

Enoch Powell used to argue that politicians should operate permanently on a full bladder to maintain alertness. But, as in so many ways, I am not made of the same mettle as old Enoch...

Which jacket required?

Still on the subject of social embarrassment - is there such a thing as an ideal jacket? What do you wear when a suit is too stuffy but there's a better than evens chance the vicar and your boss might be there, so it might not be possible to get away with a pair of old tennis shorts, a Homer Simpson Beer Hat and an “I Love the Pope, the Pope Smokes Dope” T-shirt.

A blazer? What about no brass after six? Tweed? In July? Linen? How do you counteract the curling around the seat and general wrinkling that makes it appear as if the wearer has just taken a shower while dressed in crepe paper. Out of sloth and uncertainty I have sought refuge in corduroy. Imagining I look a little like the Dustin Hoffman of The Graduate I suspect I look more like a DFS sofa on special offer.

I would, however, appreciate some guidance on the issue - I know that Robert Crampton would suggest a reefer of the kind worn by Baltic barge captains, and Matthew Parris would argue that economy is all, and anything vaguely navy from Asda is fine. But my main aim is neither to cultivate an air of masculine romance nor to be ostentatiously austere, but just to be incongruous. What's the answer?

Dark knight

While I may be uncertain about my bladder, my social skills and my dress sense, I am sure of one thing. The Queen reads The Times.

How else to explain Her Majesty's wonderful decision at the weekend to mark her birthday by knighting Christopher Lee? For years we have been campaigning restlessly in The Times for this honour and now the Queen has acted, Sir Christopher can relax in style. With his arms crossed over his chest. In the soil of his native earth.

Michael Gove is the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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