I don’t really care about Valentine’s Day. I’m not bothered about the commercial aspect of any of those occasions, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a total party girl. I love to celebrate.

Big G just got a new job. I just sold a million books.

Celebration time, come on!

But a celebration has to be genuine. And it has to be inclusive. I can’t think about Valentine’s without considering friends who are at home by themselves, with a takeaway for one. And there are so many people I don’t know who are alone or wondering if anyone will love them by next Valentine’s. I think the media hype might make them feel left out.

It’s the same with Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. I don’t have anyone to send a card to now. And I know my kids love me whether they make a gesture or not.

Celebrations can be incredible for some people and at the same time hurtful for others. I’m mindful of that. So I celebrate some of these events quietly, or not at all.

Both my kids had fabulous celebration for Valentine’s Day. They are lucky. They have great partners. They are lovely kids.

 I went for a walk in the woods on February 14^th with Big G, and I was thinking about Valentine’s Day, so I said, ‘OK, if you could have a romantic Valentine’s evening with anyone but not me, who would it be?’

Now Big G is a very simple man. He’s an engineer. He fixes things, finds solutions, designs stuff. Clang bang bump.

So he said, ‘Joanna Lumley.’

‘Why?’ I asked?

I know why. He was a teenager when she was Purdey in The Avengers. He was a young man when she was Patsy Stone. She’s funny, attractive, talented, she cares about animals. She’d be an interesting guest. I’d probably enjoy dinner with Jo Lumley, although not for the same reasons as Big G.

So we had a conversation that went:

Me: ‘Not Kate Bush?’

Him: ‘She’s a bit mad – I mean, musically. Eccentric, I mean.’

Me: ‘Marilyn Munroe? You can have dead people…’

That one went right by him. I said; ’Lemmy then?’

Him: ‘It’d be fun. But not romantic.’

That’s as much depth as I was going to get from that conversation.

And he didn’t ask me the same question back. Why would he? He didn’t want to know…

So I gave up and had the conversation with myself. And now I’m having it with you.

So, you have to invite someone. Anyone. For Valentine’s. Not your real partner. Whoever you invite will come. Make your decision.

Go on.

So this is my thinking.

It’s a one-off dinner. What an opportunity! Anything goes. Right, I’m up for that.

So, Valentines. That means I have to pick someone who’s handsome. Sexy. Male, because that’s how it is for me. If you know me, you’ll know that rules out all the usual stereotypes. There will be no Depps or Pitts or Elbas. I’m quite keen on musicians; I like the idea of a wild night with some tearaway bass player, but then I thought, many of them aren’t likely to have much conversation. If the dinner is one-to-one and they have a platform to talk about themselves, it won’t be for me. If a night of wild romance is on the agenda, then no-one wants a drug-blasted, whisky-soaked egomaniac for company. That rules out most of the candidates I’d had in mind. Otherwise the end result woud be messy.

I imagine there’d be none of the usual suspects for a rock star date. No Eddy Grant, Steven Tyler, Robert Plant, Ronnie Wood, Kurt Cobain, Bob Marley, Jared Leto. Definitely no Jagger.

This is all in my imagination, by the way. None of it’s real. I’m sure Ronnie woud be great fun after two bottles of Shiraz.

So, in my dreams, I’m looking for sparkling conversation. I mean, you’d need to have some chat with your Valentine during the dinner. Most people would agree, there’s no romance without at least a bit of meeting of minds.

This brings me to a problem. Most clever people I’d admire wouldn’t be my choice for hot dates. Intelligence is sexy. But as I rummaged through the list of men whose brains I admired, I was struggling a bit to find a good-looking Valentine. Jean Paul Sartre, Sophocles, Jerzy Grotowsky.

Albert Camus liked football and theatre – so do I – and he wrote some great novels. We might have something in common. But there’d be no chemistry. All the men whose writing I love, who might be fascinating, are gay or not my type romantically. I’d have dinner with Oscar Wilde and Gerard Manley Hopkins and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Shelley for 364 days a year. But not on Valentine’s.

I then thought of sportsmen. Of course. Lennox Lewis. David Haye. All that testosterone and fit bods and alpha male stuff. I could easily give you a list of handsome sportsmen, but most of them who play now are young enough to be my children, so that’s a complete no-no. And I’d need a conversation that would go beyond, ‘Did you see that goal? I swear it wasn’t offside. VAR got it wrong.’

So, let’s think politicians. What about that? Many of them are clever, some are older than me. They’d be interesting. I’d have plenty to talk about. But then the arguments would start before the aperitif was on the table. An evening with Trump or JRM would definitely end up with me tipping champagne over their heads.

No, I’d have to stand them up. I couldn’t even go.

So that’s exhausted politics, sport, writers, actors, musicians. Oh, for goodness sake, I say to myself, it’s only one Valentine’s night. One dinner. Pick someone. Anyone. You can eat and just go home.

Thinking outside the box, I’m getting desperate now. I’m inviting people to dinner who aren’t even real.

Atticus Finch. The Equaliser (the Denzel one,) Beowulf, Gandalf. Obi Wan Kenobi.

Virgil Tracy.

He’s a puppet for goodness sake.

Top Cat? No!

No wonder Big G had nothing to say on the Valentine’s conversation. His missus is barking.

Then the answer comes to me. The question is all wrong.

Who wants to have a romantic dinner with an imaginary person, someone whose photo we’ve seen, but the rest is a blank. There can’t be any chemistry. Therefore no date. Because it’s only in the imagination.

Aren’t real people much more interesting?

I think so. QED.