Yesterday I was invited to dine with the Prime Minister. Again. I was skiing at Treble Cone when my mobile went off and, suspecting it to be work-related - I really shouldn't be you telling this - I ignored it. (Hey, what's the point of having a messaging service if you don't use it...?)

Of course it didn't actually come from Helen herself but one of her flunkies. A very polite gentleman by the name of Oliver Saunders from Business Ceremonials. The PM will be hosting a dinner for Lord Faulkner on the 16th of September and would like my wife and I to join her.

This is not the first time I've had invitations in mistake of my more famous namesake. I was on the Aussie High Commission's mailing list for a while, was once phoned by a Lambton Quay shoe shop after the other GP left a package behind, and one year Creative New Zealand mailed me his Author's Fund cheque. I sent it back explaining their mistake and sugggesting the knighthood might have gone to the wrong address too. The letter back, with my own much more feeble cheque, said yes, they rather thought it might.

The cock-ups are the result of there being two G. Palmers in the same Wellington suburb, so I would like to publicly offer Sir Geoffrey the opportunity to change his name. (It does seem reasonable the he get first dibs, what with being a kinight and all.)

The phone message resulted in great hilarity amongst my skiing companions and we've come up with three possible options;

1: Phone Oliver Saunders back, decline the invitation and explain his mistake.

2. Accept the invitation, raffle off the opportunity to pretend to be my wife on Trade Me, make a publicity killing, a fistfull of dollars and maybe even get some top-knotch nosh into the bargain.

3. Call Oliver back, make abusive comments about the PM, tell him how sick I am of her bugging me and that how I wish she'd just [fill in your own expletives here], then leak the story to the media about what the a former PM said about the current one.

Blog readers are humbly invited to submit their own suggestions. But be quick, I can't keep Helen waiting.