When I was nine, I thought adult glamour was owning one of those really flat Italian racers, the kind that beat everything else in Top Trumps Supercars. In my early teens, having grown up significantly, I realised that sophistication was in fact one of those 1980s frothy cocktails, with a sparkler in it. Towards the end of my teens, I finally recognised a much more mature, achievable and immeasurably less stupid goal than a flaming drink or a motor with no legroom: the business lunch.

I imagined myself filling the windows of my leatherette-bound Filofax with pencilled arrangements for deliciously gossipy meals, out of which marvellous plans would bubble organically. This, it seemed to me, was the very essence of being a grown-up. Over a sparkling aperitif I would be sounded out about some new shiny-floored TV project, and I would lean in across the table, so as to project my best “I’m very interested” face. During the starters I would bag a commission for a magazine cover story. As they cleared away the remains of my lamb rump with borlotti beans my companion and I would plot our route to career greatness.

I never have attempted to fold my ludicrous body into a supercar, and my lust for a cocktail spewing magnesium-white sparks cooled. But in my early 20s someone did finally say the magic words to me. They said “let’s do lunch” and then we did it. I did lunch like this a whole bunch of times. Here is what I learned: business lunches are awful. It’s lunch with the joy sucked out of it. It’s a brooding, agitated psychodrama in three courses. It’s a sinkhole in your day.

You think you know what you’re there to talk about, but invariably your companion doesn’t seem to want to discuss it. Meanwhile, you scan the menu with growing anxiety. You can’t have the overly sauced pasta dish because you’re bound to disgrace yourself by going the full Jackson Pollock across your shirt. You can’t have the spare ribs because eating with your hands is a no-no, which means going in with a knife and fork, and that’s ludicrous. And, oh God, the dessert list. What can you order without your colleague from HR thinking you’ve got greed issues?

If you try to get the business chat out of the way early, you risk discovering that the reason you’re there is so inconsequential, it’s done within three minutes. And then you’re stuck eating out with someone with a charisma bypass. Or worse: you discover the thing they wanted to discuss is a real downer. And you still have lunch to finish. And if the chat comes at the end, well then, everything beforehand has been ruined by the moist fever dream of anticipation.

Clearly, I should give thanks for the long tail of lockdown and the continued need to work from home because it has killed the business lunch. Stone dead. However, I can’t, because, as with so much else, it’s just another punch to the restaurant sector’s guts. They seriously need the trade. Therefore, the business lunch needs reforming. Here’s what I propose. First, you must no longer go to lunch with colleagues you don’t really know or like. Second, as you’ll now be eating with a real friend, you must discuss the work issue before you meet up, and not at all while eating. Third, as a result, the word “business” must be removed from the title. Now it becomes just lunch, a proper one with an extra bottle of wine, a dessert that demands a lie down afterwards and disapproving looks from other tables. It is your economic duty to do this. Also, it’s fun. And right now, we all need a bit of that.