How does one decently and aesthetically extricate fish bones accidentally eaten without upsetting the fellow diners?

Dr Sam Banik, Muswell Hill

Our aim must be to perform the operation as unobtrusively and swiftly as possible. At the same time, we do not want to choke or throw up. I should cover my face with napkin in my left hand and remove the bone(s) dextrously with my right thumb and forefinger. If this operation proves tricky, I should explain self-deprecatingly what I am up to, perhaps with a reassuring smile (laugh). This virtual surgical op should be easier for a doctor than me. It is more alarming for my fellow-diners to see me spluttering and choking without knowing what I doing. They might misapprehend that I am having a stroke. The moral is: eat fish with circumspection. Caveat deipnosophist.

What is the polite reply to somebody who asks you, in a caring way: “How ARE you?”

William Webster, Acton

The answer lugubrious: “A little worse, I expect.” The answer Woosterish: “Top-hole, What ho! What ho! What ho!” The answer clinical: “I have this stabbing pain in my forehead . . .” The question “How ARE you?” is not a formal request for information, or should not be. The polite reply to “How ARE you?” is the equally formal reply, “How-de-do?”, pronounced however you like it. This also neither expects nor welcomes a factual answer.

Somebody at the office is not at all friendly to me. How should I greet him in the morning?

A. H., Kingston upon Hull

The Iago greeting would be fulsome. The Hamlet greeting would be Words, Words, Words. The Macbeth greeting would be to unseam him from the navel to the chaps. The liberal greeting is to say “good morning” cheerfully, as warmly as you say “good day” to your other colleagues. We must not imagine dragons of unfriendliness in others, nor let them distract us from our cheerful plunge into the duties of the day.

I e-mailed two journalists. I invited one to a book launch. I offered the other some factual details relating to his recent book, which I praised. Neither bothered to reply. Should I rebuke them for their discourtesy, or simply accept that they will both have been too busy?

Alistair Cooke, London SW1

The latter will be easier for your equanimity. It is old-fashioned good manners to reply to all handwritten letters, even from strangers, unless they are written in green ink. But e-mails are far more prolific and promiscuous, because it takes little trouble to tap them. I would not hold it against any busy journo that he or she did not reply to an unsolicited e-mail that I had bunged them out of the blue. That would attach too much importance to such a transient communication.

How was it possible that Jonny Wilkinson and Lawrence Dallaglio ignored the outstreched hand of President Mbeki at the rugby World Cup medals ceremony?

Sandra Eloff, Exeter, England

I had not realised that they did so. I am sure that they did not ignore President Mbeki’s hand deliberately. If they did, it was rude and silly. And I do not think that Jonyo and Dallaglio are silly and rude. Let us make allowances for the heat of the moment, the tumult, the roar of the Vaseline and the grease of the crowd, and the flashbulbs of the snappers. To refuse to shake a hand extended in friendship is bad manners. We should do so only deliberately, to snub a thoroughly bad egg such as Robert Mugabe. And he inflicts his unwanted presence on cricketers rather than rugger buggers.

Email Philip Howard with your etiquette questions

etiket@thetimes.co.uk