Italian dinner-parties tend to be staid affairs. The food is always abundant and good, the company is quiet and well-mannered, and after perhaps one or two glasses of wine, the guests are liable to go home shortly after ten. And not singly either; they tend to go en masse, leaving you staring at an empty table and wondering what you've done or said that caused the mass exodus. In fact it's partly caused by the Italian mania for rising early in the morning to be in work at seven o'clock, but it's also in part because there is no concept of craic as we know it. In a country where wine is both cheap and abundant this restraint comes as a bit of a surprise.

The contrast between this kind of careful, courteous and contained behaviour and what happens in other countries is best displayed when compared with dinner parties in Ireland. Recently I was surveying in a tired and emotional state a table upon which stood many more empty wine bottles than there were diners, and as dawn's pink fingers pushed lightly through the curtains a triumphant voice behind me exclaimed "Hey, look everyone, I just found half a bottle of pineapple liqueur in the kitchen!"

By the lateness of the hour and the volume of alcohol consumed, this probably rates as an example of a Great Night. Maybe my experience isn't universal, but there does seem to be a rule in Ireland that no one goes home while there's still a full bottle of wine somewhere in the house. But what of the person who stays sober? I've been told by those who have done it that by late night or early morning you might as well be sitting with extra-terrestrials for all the sense you're going to make of the conversation. For the abstemious, even the jokes become incomprehensible.

But perhaps what defines the difference between Italy and here is the behaviour. It takes practice and sang-froid to look your hostess calmly and steadily in the eye after you've both noticed that you've been using the butter-dish as an ashtray. Come to think of it, it's getting so that you need sang-froid to smoke at all, let alone between courses. What constitutes bad behaviour in Italy would probably go unnoticed in Ireland. I've seen Italian hostesses go into a kind of traumatic catatonia when a drop or two of red wine was spilled on their table cloth. I can't imagine anyone Ireland batting an eye-lid. I keep a tub of salt for nothing else other than pouring over spilt red wine. Actually pouring white wine onto spilt red works rather well, but it's always struck me as wasting even more wine, so I just stick with the salt.

Wild and eccentric behaviour around dinner tables is no avis rara Ireland. What of my friend who let off a rocket in our dining room, its trajectory taking it through a glass lamp-shade? Sang-froid? It's anti-freeze you need. I was at a great dinner party one 6th of January which culminated in the shooting of the Christmas tree with twelve-bore shotguns until just a stump remained. No, not inside; we took it into the garden for the ceremony. After the final salvo Nick, one of the three shooters, asked 'Where's my tie?' The tattered remains were on the stump. Great party.

The niceties of dinner giving and getting are different too. In Italy your guests are unlikely to arrive with a bottle or two of wine, they're more likely to come bearing cream cakes or flowers. Come to think of it, it makes sense. As the host you're bound to have enough wine for the meagre thirsts of your guests, but it's possible you don't have enough after dinner cakes or enough flowers decorating the table. In Ireland every extra bottle of wine is a welcome addition, but here, as in all things, there are strategies to consider. Suppose you know your host is in the habit of serving supermarket own brand 'Red Wine' and 'White Wine' and you like something that's actually drinkable, then your best tactic is to bring a decent bottle but don't leave it on the hall table, bring it to the dining table in the hope that a) your host will open it and that b) you might get a glass of it. As the host, of course, your best tactic is the opposite. Try to ensure that any decent wine that arrives stays firmly in your hands for enjoying later and make sure there's always an open bottle of the cheap plonk on the table so there's no need to open the good stuff.

If, in the other hand, you as host love good wine and your guests don't know a good wine from a hole in the ground, you can always try putting decanters on the table. The one nearest you will contain the Cheval Blanc '89, while the others will contain a fruity little Merlot from Bulgaria. I know a man who got away with this for years. Another useful ploy, and one that to my shame I've used in the past, is to keep the empty bottles of great wines that other people have been good enough to give you and refill them with a lesser wine at a later date. Tacky, I know, but it looks great on the table.

Southern Italy shares with Ireland a contempt for punctuality. There, as here, eight to half eight is the appointed hour for dinner, which means that by nine most people will have arrived. Maybe it's my English schooling, but in my house I'll sit down at the table at half-past nine at the latest and let whoever hasn't arrived yet be the only ones to eat over-cooked food when they play catch-up. Or maybe that's just Italian respect for good food - in the galaxy of pleasures we rank it higher than anything; with the possible exception of great sex.