If you’re one of the world’s great and good, that world must seem a very challenging place at the moment.

Not because South and North Korea are getting restless. Though they are. Or because global warming has delivered the second pre-Christmas UK freeze in a row. Though it may well be in the frame.

No, I’m afraid it’s far trickier than that. For who among us has not read of WikiLeaks and thought, there but for the grace of Julian Assange go I?

Diplomacy, it turns out, is the civil service’s word for gossip. Tittle-tattle.

All the time ministers of state and bosses of important banks are sitting on our behalf at ambassadorial dining tables, toying with organic foie gras or bottle-nose dolphin salad, they’re not discussing world peace or even tossing a coin for the World Cup. They’re not even placing bets on I’m a Celebrity.

They’re doing what most of us do very well as well. They’re having a bit of a bitch. And, let’s face it, what better way to let your hair down and make new friends fast?

In the dizzy world of diplomacy and politics, long-term relationships and firm friendships have to take a back seat. One month you’re the loyal supporter of the left, yet an election later there’s nothing that pleases you more than putting your weight behind the right.

So it goes without saying that you need to cement these new alliances pretty fast.

Most of the time you all stay at home and do your day job. So when you do get together, you need to do the playground equivalent of swapping conkers, and getting into gangs. And the strongest currency for that is your private, and not so humble, opinion.

The world is full of information. Absolutely jam-packed with it. There is so much data and news and duff stuff zooming around our planet that we can’t hope to sift through it all and find the nuggets of truth, or even all the scurrilous but amusing lies.

So if we hear something straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, that makes it all the more valuable. If someone who ought to know thinks that a minister lacks depth, we’re going to be all ears. But, as anyone who has sat round a dinner table with five other like-minded people and a limitless supply of red wine will know, that someone will be all red face if the transcript of that intimate conversation is read back in public to him or her next morning.

Imagine knowing that some time soon you’re going to have to meet that business tycoon or chancellor or prime minister, and smile wanly as you explain that your comments about his professional inadequacies or built-up heels or his penchant for attractive younger women has been taken soooo out of context.

The painful thing about this sort of tittle tattle is that it’s usually true. It may be slightly embellished, but even the target of the small talk can normally recognise himself or herself in the unflattering description.

Our family still draws in collective breath when anyone mentions the Christmas when Aunty Lily and Aunty Joyce came to stay. We were just finishing dinner, when my five-year-old cousin Peter started squinting at Aunty Lily.

“What are you looking at, you daft brush,” said his mother, my Aunty Joyce.

“I’m looking for Aunty Lily’s other face,” said Peter.

Everyone looked blank.

“Don’t be so silly,” said Aunty Joyce, looking a bit uncomfortable, I thought.

But Peter would not be silenced. “I’m not being silly,” he protested.

“You said that Aunty Lily is two-faced, but I can only see one. Where’s her other one?”

We’ve never had Christmas cards from any of them since.