14 MAY 2005, Page 64

Q. I am deeply distressed that my artist friend, Richard

Foster (whom I have known for nearly 50 years) and whose ancestor commanded the Charge of the Light Brigade, has seen fit to exclude me from a private view of his paintings at the Indar Pasricha Gallery in Connaught Street later this month. I understand that the event coincides with Richard’s 60th birthday, and this will be celebrated with a dinner in a posh Indian restaurant after the show. I would desperately like to be included in these festivities and wonder what I can possibly have done to cause me to be frozen out in this hurtful manner.

A.B., London W8 A. I have taken the liberty of consulting Richard Foster himself about your problem. If you are the publicity-mad, name-dropping A.B. he remembers from school, he says that you are yourself becoming rather well known as an artist

in your own right, and that Hello magazine even did a full-colour feature on a recent exhibition of your sensationalist but perhaps skill-free work, which was held in Fitzrovia. As a firm traditionalist and one of the so-called ‘pin-striped painters’, he regrets he cannot risk being upstaged by you on this very special and private occasion. He assures me, however, that you will be more than welcome to visit the Pasricha Gallery during ordinary opening hours.