Yvette’s Fantasy Dinner Party: Tidjane Thiam, Samin Nosrat, Elizabeth Gilbert, Modupe Fadugba, Alain de Botton, and Amal Clooney.

During the global lockdown, The FT started a fantasy dinner party series. Here I am, 9 months after the lockdown in Lagos, and I find myself having a much quieter Christmas than I imagined. So, I decided to write my own fantasy dinner! I’m hosting guests that have fascinated me this year, and in a few cases, for many years.

No revolutionaries, that’s the only hard no I have as far as dinner guests are concerned. I find their company exhausting and conversation monolithic. I want people who are a little misunderstood.

My guests have all made the three-hour drive up from Rome to Conti di San Bonifacio, well, everyone except Tidjane, who I’ve only just met. The boutique winery resort is hidden between the Maremma hills and the plains of the Tuscan coastline. After the year Tidjane has had, I understand.

Alain is the first to arrive, still fiddling with his collar when I meet him on the graveled path. For someone who has so much to say about human anxieties, his own social anxiety surprises me, disarms me even.

Now to say hello, is it a kiss, two kisses, three kisses? Where are we?