Harry Potter and the Third Man.

If there’s one thing that divides Potterheads (apart from whether JK Rowling is now engaged in the process of ruining the whole saga) it’s the question of who Hermione was best suited to marrying. She chose Ron, and Ron has his supporters among the faithful. They’re known as the Romione clan. Others see this as a travesty and claim that Harry was the only worthy beneficiary of Hermione’s favour. They’re the Harmony clan. Well, I think Ron was the better choice between the two, but I also have an alternative theory.

I’ve already said that Ron is the character with whom I most identify in Harry Potter. His emotional side lives on the surface. He gets scared when the going gets tough because he has the imagination to understand what horrors might lie in store. He’s given to the odd phobia here and there, especially when the spiders turn up. He’s reluctant to take physical risks, but is an unfailingly dependable ally when the occasion demands it. He gets jealous and petulant when some other guy seems to be moving in on his girl. I would have reacted just as he did when Hermione was canoodling with the Bulgarian bloke at the ball, and I would have turned nasty and gone it alone when the post-injury fever convinced my imagination that H and H were getting close in the tent. I would have returned, too, and used pretty much the same tactic to covertly apologise and attempt reconciliation.

I get Ron; he’s real to me. But there’s one big difference: he eats like a slob and I don’t believe the demure Hermione could have tolerated that for nineteen months, let alone nineteen years.

I was brought up to be properly English in the matter of eating. I eat quietly and at a modest pace. I don’t snatch at food like a caveman who doesn’t know when the next meal will turn up. I open my mouth only just wide enough to receive the next mouthful because I know people don’t want to see the state of its masticated predecessor, and I keep my mouth tightly shut when mastication is underway. If I’m eating in company I lay my knife and fork on the plate at the required twenty past eight position so as to give my undivided attention to the person with whom I’m in conversation. In short, my table manners are impeccable. That much can’t be said of Ron.

As for Harry’s eating habits, ask yourself the question: ‘How many times do you ever see Harry Potter eat anything?’ Being undeniably the Chosen One, I assume he's composed of such rarefied matter that he doesn’t need to eat, and the one great fault at the end of the story is that he married anybody at all. Surely he should have been taken up to the heavens in a wingèd chariot like the Prophet… Whichever-one-it-was, there to be received by God Almighty and the Archangel Dumbledore.

So what’s the upshot of all this? Simply that there’s a third candidate and a superior one at that: Me. I have all Ron’s credentials plus the advantage of good table manners, and I really don’t see that there’s any contest. So let’s hear it for the Jefione party and settle the argument once and for all.

Or maybe she doesn't approve...