Sir David Tang, entrepreneur and founder of ICorrect, offers advice on questions about property, interiors – and modern manners for globetrotters

Once a year we visit London on my birthday. This year my husband George suggested I buy an expensive gown as we were to attend a very special evening charity event and I was to sit next to the astronaut Buzz Aldrin. I burst into tears. Now, every night when the moon is visible, I lie fixated, petrified. What will my first question be? You have been everywhere except the moon, so please help me.

I missed my one chance of sitting next to Buzz Aldrin, whose mother’s maiden name was Moon. It was at one of those large luncheons at which Bill Clinton was speaking and I had boasted to a friend that he could come as a guest of mine, believing that it was going to be a buffet. So when I discovered that everyone was placed, the only way I could keep my promise was to cheat and take away one of my adjacent place cards on which I saw the name “Buzz Aldrin”. I simply asked my friend to sit down in his place with the conviction that Buzz would almost certainly be placed elsewhere. I even thought I could have been doing Buzz a favour as he would, in not finding his place, be put next to Clinton instead of a mere mortal such as myself. That was exactly what happened, so I did Buzz a favour!