Jay Rayner in Conversation at Shaftesbury Arts Centre, Shaftesbury, Dorset, courtesy of the Kitchen Table bookshop

Join Jay at the Shaftsbury Arts Centre, when they’ll be asking Jay Rayner the hard questions - from the problem with dinner parties and the route to a less painful Christmas lunch, through the lexicographical challenges facing a restaurant critic who wants to describe flavour without resorting to ‘mouth-watering’, ‘moist’ and ‘sumptuous’, to the burning question of whether, given the large number of wretchedly negative reviews he’s written, Jay might actually be a total scumbag.