There’s tasteful pleasure, which is an adult speciality: pruning the roses may be a source for some; listening to Radio 4 for others. And then, of course, there’s full-throttle fun. It requires a higher level of commitment (I vaguely remember); a tasteless lack of restraint, for example; a hint of danger, maybe even a promise of anarchy… Children know this instinctively, the lucky things. Adults, on the other hand, seem to want to forget. And the older, more educated, older and tasteful we are, the more forgetful we become.

So there I was, not long ago, restrained and forgetful, as befits my age and education, in search of some unthreatening pleasure. I waddled off to a smart event at the Bafta theatre in Piccadilly: Alfred Dunhill Bafta — A Life in Pictures, it was called. Which name hardly slips off the pen. But so sought-after were the tickets to this evening of restrained and unthreatening pleasure, that I had to promise to name it in full, just to secure a seat.

Said event took the form of listening to the Radio 4 broadcaster and former head girl Francine Stock posing nicely annunciated questions to the American film director Quentin Tarantino. I don’t imagine he needs an introduction, but — just in case — he’s the genius who made Pulp Fiction, among other films. Love them or hate them (I vacillate — I didn’t make it past the credits of Jackie Brown before falling asleep), Tarantino’s films are renowned, above all, for their spectacular, gory and totally unrepentant violence.

Francine, meanwhile, is a regular broadcaster on what may well be the World’s Most Tasteful talk-radio station, a lady novelist and a critic, and an honorary fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. And the founder patron of the Hay-on-Wye Festival of British Cinema. They shared the stage, these two aliens; the fat-thighed American blood’n’guts monger, and the nice English lady with qualifications. The whole thing was out of kilter from the start.

Francine sounded nervous — as well a tasteful girl might. She was wearing patent-leather pumps, a flattering frock in beige and black, and matt-black tights. She sat, behind her tasteful glass of water, quite close to Quentin but not uncomfortably so, with her inquisitive face intelligently tilted, and her pretty legs prettily crossed. “There’s a lot of violence in your films,” she observed politely. “Is it because you never want people to forget the human capacity for harming each other?”

“No,” said Quentin Tarantino.

He has a monster ego, of course, and a motor-mouth, and he’s a bit fat-thighed for my aesthetic ideal, but he’s humorous, and bold and full of passion. Anyway, he laughed. “I think you’re getting too heavy,” he said.

A strained, good-natured smile from Francine — cognisant, I’m sure, of what a faux pas it is, in tasteful circles, ever to get too heavy about anything.

“I film violence because it’s so good,” he continued “It’s just fantastic to record. It’s perfect! Violence… is the reason Edison invented the camera!”

Francine’s smile looked ready to snap.

Tarantino didn’t appear to notice. He kept shooting off on motor-mouth tangents, and before Francine could redirect to more tasteful pastures, he was jabbering exuberantly, joyously, about driving across the desert with a naked woman strapped to the bonnet of a car… Maybe it was from a scene in a film. Or maybe not. Either way, he was laughing merrily, full of enthusiasm. Had he forgotten that he was talking to a nice English lady with an honorary fellowship from Oxford? Or didn’t he care?

“…Naked…” he was gabbling. “HA HA HA!”

“Ha ha… ” echoed Francine, weakly, legs neatly crossed. Poor Francine. She’s clever, successful, elegant — and pretty. There’s no doubt she brings a lot to the table. All sorts of tables. Nicely laid.

Oh, that was a cheap shot. In any case, good taste has a place far beyond the dinner parties of Oxford and north London, doesn’t it? Peter Jones, for example, would be lost without it. And so would Radio 4. Ditto coffee mornings and bridge clubs, tearooms and National Trust shops nationwide. But where there’s blood still pumping — a heart still beating — and there’s somebody unwilling to simper along, it tends, as I think poor Francine found, to be worse than useless: a shield to cower beneath. Nothing more. What possible purpose did anyone think it would serve against the might of an untamed soul like Tarantino’s?

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