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5 stars: Spit or swallow? 4 stars: Lead, they will swallow. 3 stars: Swallow gesture. 2 stars: Swallow dive. 1 star: Swallowing in self-pity

Apparently, one in five affairs starts in the workplace. Which makes you wonder about gravediggers and deep-sea fishermen: “Olaf, you great halibut of a man, put my plaice on the slab and fillet.” Do doctors pull sickies? Any office you walk into, two out of 10 of them are going to be up each other. Which is, frankly, hard to imagine in most hardware stores, but perfectly believable in most bookshops. There are certain places where I assume everyone has everyone, and there are those where nobody’s getting any. MPs plainly hump each other like labradors on ecstasy, whereas the House of Lords rarely fingers the ermine. I’m certain that all call centres are gallivanting, open-plan orgies. I could swear that the last time Shani-Lee called me from Vodafone to ask if I was happy with my service, she was on all fours getting her 3G-spot charged up, downloaded and broadbanded. I just know that traffic wardens are all parking in each other’s residents’ bays. Actors famously can’t stop rehearsing their parts, however small. But I suspect that ballet dancers fail to see the pointe. And for all their promise and pert, pulchritudinous provocation, models hardly ever smudge the maquillage. They think love is best squandered in handbags. Accountants do it, actuaries don’t. Butchers do, bakers don’t, and candlestick makers burn it at both ends. Plumbers plumb, carpenters join, brickies lay. Scaffolders whistle for it, IT wonks control, command and escape. Van drivers deliver, cabbies ask for something smaller. Vacuum-cleaner salesmen suck, waiters spoon, panto dames are behind you. Mimes do it up against invisible walls, tailors fit nicely, publishers make advances.

This is the time for office romances. The magic month of parties and licence, and anonymous Santa. The release of all that open-plan yearning over the partitions, the fruition of the flirtatious e-mails and shared YouTube snippets. Love in the office is always covert: illicit not because it’s so often adulterous, but because it’s a sticky act of sedition. All organisations are hierarchical, function on the exercise and delegation of power. Office power is strictly allocated and regulated. Sex undermines the hierarchy. It’s like attaching jump leads to the boss’s scrotum and siphoning his mojo. I know that’s a weird and possibly inappropriate image, but you get the drift. Take the army. Generals can mount attacks on each other’s rears with gay abandon, until their pips squeak, but a lieutenant who wants to share her foxhole with a corporal is going to be a civilian again before you can shout “fix love bayonets”. Cupid in the mess or the office is an anarchist and a pacifist; every arrow an act of sweet chaos.

Something like 100 new restaurants have opened in London in the past three months. If the essence of catering, like comedy, is timing, then, boy, did they ever step into an empty lift shaft. You all have my heartfelt and seasonal best wishes: I hope it works out. But, chances are, most of you will be looking at new career opportunities by next Christmas. If you want my advice — and if you’ve read this far you probably do — if it’s not working now, get out fast. The only thing worse than failure is protracted failure. If it’s dead, don’t wait a year to bury it.

I suspect we’re going to see even more brave new hospitality. In the depression of the 1970s, catering was the most common small business. People made redundant took their payoffs and rented a moribund high-street shop to sell hotpot, souvlaki or fairy cakes. So while everything else contracted, catering put on weight. And this is where a lot of office romances end up. Kevin from marketing and Bernice from accounts are found applying organic Tipp-Ex to the double-entry spreadsheet in the stairwell, and it is suggested that their futures at Hook, Line & Sinker are diminished. So they take the three months in lieu and plunge it into a simple, cosy, sort-of-English place with a bit of a twist. And cocktails. She can cook a bit; he’s got masses of bonhomie; and they know loads of people who say there’s just simply nowhere to eat. How difficult can catering be? Spaniards do it; even Turks do it. So, with a glowing pelvic harmony, like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, they put on Le Trombone du Porc in the barn, and, from Easter to Thanksgiving, they go from being at each other’s groins to at each other’s throats, till they never want to see another apron, sea bass or each other ever again, and walk away with a million in debt.

Whatever you’re thinking of doing to see out the remake of the 1930s — or, as we know it now, the Raisins of Wrath — whatever you do, don’t go into the kitchen. If you want to feed yourself, don’t try to feed strangers.

One new opening that I would make a short-odds bet on riding the years of Volk and Brot and dripping is the new Sheekey’s oyster bar. It’s found its spot in what used to be a specialist motoring bookshop. (Was that ever a bad choice for a 21st-century recession.) They’ve knocked through from Sheekey’s proper on St Martin’s Court, a walk-through between Charing Cross Road and St Martin’s Lane, surrounded by theatres. Sheekey’s has become the best and most histrionically popular of the after-curtain dining rooms. The new oyster bar has the comforting look (comfort is the look) of having always been here. It’s part midtown Manhattan and part Left Bank Paris. It echoes the decoration of the restaurant next door, with serried ranks of black-and-white thespians. In Sheekey’s, they’ve all had the final curtain call; here, they’re not dead, just resting, and the photos are taken by Alison Jackson, who is an office romance all on her own.

As it says on the door, this is an oyster bar. Four is about the most people who can sit comfortably and share a conversation.

I love eating at bars; you can be solitary, without being no-mates, dumped or a greedy bastard. Bars are good for girls on their own; when you look up, the only eye you catch is the barman’s. The Blonde and I took Ralph, a Botswanan friend, who’s a new age Allan Quartermain, and Pippa Small, the ethical and tasteful jeweller. The menu is, as promised, fish, but everything is served tapas-sized, and you can eat with your fingers, or a single hand.

As this is the season for natives, we had a couple of dozen brilliant West Merseans, plump and salty, with that insistent, fugitive, ozone, iodine and seaweed flavour. Pippa turns out to be so ethical and tasteful she’s a vegetarian, and was looking at a yummy dinner of steamed spinach and green salad, until the barman produced a vegetarian menu that was as good as I’ve seen in London. The vegan chick peas were, it pains me to say, delicious, and everyone should have them as a side order.

Most things are made behind the bar, with a hygienic alacrity.

As ever, I ordered more than was polite or necessary; the ichthyophagous rest of us particularly liked the smoked-haddock rarebit, cockle and mussel meunière, a surprisingly edible gravadlax, some crispy, steaming goujons, and a cockney prawn curry.

Most dishes were under a tenner; there’s an £8.75 lunch special, and I can’t fault it. This is a fine addition to Richard Caring’s lucky-charm food chain. And a perfect place for a discreet office romance. (You can tell so much about a girl by the way she eats oysters. I once took a date for a demi-doz. Coquettishly, she said she could only swallow them if she were blindfold, with her hands tied behind her back and obscenities being whispered in her ear in a Russian accent. The waiter said we didn’t need to leave a tip.)

Michael Gambon came in and stood under his portrait, grinning. He’s doing something Pinterish with David Walliams around the corner. Theatricals. What a caution.

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