I keep reading about the "dinner party circuit"Whats it all about?

[GabbyLoggon]

Please dont say its just a dinner which is also a party.

I want the inside story...successes and disasters ...Is it a CLASS phrase?

Someone said it was a phrase created by young professionals....

Not Sloane Rangers? (does anyone on Mumsnet remember them.) It was all the rage . They said YA for yes. Then they seemed to fade away.

We all do eventually.

There's a circuit? lol They've been watching Come Dine With Me

mmsmum....we had a story which took off about Come Dine With Me...Apparently someone was on TV who
had some sord of "record" (And I dont mean Tom Jones
"Its Not Unusual)

On cooking I go back to Fanny Craddock. A legendary old bird who kept her hubby in order.

I like Come Dine With Me because they have some right characters on sometimes. I don't cook though, never learned how, I had a dinner party people over recently and got a cooked chicken from the supermarket lol

Nothing wrong with cooked chicken,mm. I think the dinner party thing was a creation of womens magazines. I have been to a few. Some work and some dont. Its a bit like weddings. The booze effects people differently.

"I go to dinner at people's houses and have them back to mine but I prefer to call it 'going around to someone's house to eat' rather than a dinner party which sounds so pretentious and '70's."

This.

Dinner party circuit still happens. It's more about networking, matchmaking and social climbing than the casual 'Spag Bol and Plonk' kind of do most of us end up at. Some very bored women society hostesses go to great lengths with their guest lists.

If you have to ask what it is then you aren't successful connected up your own arse "important" enough to be invited.
Me, I much prefer the spag bol and wine affairs. I'd rather have my eyeballs bleached than go to something like that... unless there happened to be a publisher there ;)

jagas You seem to be super sensible. Got it all
in proportion.

radiohelen. Please dont have your eyeballs bleached.

SOCIAL CLIMBING was mentioned. That should be an event at the Olympics. (Must contact Seb Coe.)

Joking apart. I want one of those precious dinner
party people to come on and tell us about it...

Even invite me and I will write about it in a jokey no-names way.
Is dress optional? well, I suspect I would have to wear something.

I have a few friends who do this. The difference between a dinner party and having friends round for tea, is that at a dinner party you deliberately invite people who don't know each other and hope they all get on.

This is not about networking or social climbing. Its about introducing some of your friends to other friends and hoping they all have a great night.

God no the dinner party circuit is truly old hat
as is the dreaded kitchen supper with obligitary snort of "ooo lets be naughty snort of coke in the loo"

Tends to be catered now if properly social climbing/networking. and due to the recession its crap champagne as well.

Dinner party circuit sounds a bit like dinner party treadmill to me!

Jajas - when you put 'this' under a post, it is an interweb shorthand for 'I agree with this'. So she wasn't being rude!

'Dinner party circuit sounds a bit like dinner party treadmill to me' How very very true.

There is a hardcore of it where we are. An occasional invitation, but because I rarely reciprocate, it never really takes off for us

I've never worked out how to say 'no thanks' either without causing grave offense.

'Dinner party' morphs into 'bbq' during the summer months.

Margot from teh good life = dinner party circuit?

Having not very enjoyable dinner parties with the "right" people in order to impress and social climb and get a promotion for "hubby"? All a bit 70s? Sure it still goes on though.

As a former Sloane who gave and went to lots of dinner parties in the early 80's I think I can safely say that the dinner party circuit now translates to the same people, now middle aged, who have second homes in Cornwall - usually near Padstow, St Mawes, Fowey, etc.. who meet up again in the school holidays, esp. first three weeks of July, before the state school families descend. .

Anyone remember Julie's in Notting Hill, the Admiral Codrington and No. 19 Mossop Street?

Loads of mums and dads at DS's school have each other round for dinner every weekend. Every weekend!

I'd rather bleach my eyeballs!

My weekends are much too short and precious to share with loads of pretentious bores (which sadly about 90% are) - for example last Burns Night - Mr Pompous-Smyth said to me " I had to buy a new dinner jacket to wear tonight, my last one made me look like the "help""

The "help" FGS.

Anyone would think he was Prince Charles.

So, I dont "do" the dinner party circuit, prefering to spend my spare time eating delicious food with DH, while enjoying the odd bottle or two of wine.

My parents + my friends parents never had dinner parties - just didnt have the space or money. One of the girls i knew who went to uni straight from school started mixing in higher social circles and ditched us all as she had decided that at 21 she was
'too old' for clubbing + wanted to go to dinner parties instead.
Now ten years on we'll all invite each other for pizza and drinks, or a BBQ, but more often it's a restaurant followed by a bar / club.
The thought of cooking a proper meal for 'guests' would be v scary for me, and far too formal.

diabolo
I like the kind of impromptu thing where you are with a few people you realy like, and then they just come back to you place, and you make the kind of meal you would have had anyway except lots more wine. Would run ten miles from anything resembling a 'dinner party circuit'.

Dinner party circuit is always the snotty entertaining posse one is not a part of at any given time.

Jajas you have clearly been round to mine for dinner. I will spit in your Boeuf Bourgingonne if you continue to insult me on MN like this. Hostess trolleys are the new knife boxes.