I'd really love to pay women compliments, but I daren't "How do you know?" she snapped. You've never met me. It was a fair comment, but I came back strongly. Because all women who say they are three stone overweight are nothing of the sort. She conceded the point with a laugh and the call ended amicably. Compliment-paying in Britain has become a minefield. We were never very good at it in the first place, preferring understatement to hyperbole. There is something in the national character that shrinks from extravagant praise, even when merited. In Latin countries, they have no such inhibitions. My partner and I were having lunch in Italy last year and, after two gut-busting courses, my partner was dithering over whether to have a dessert. "La signora does not have a calorie problem," said the waiter with a gracious bow. But he would never have got away with it in Soho. The zeitgeist is puritanical, taking half the fun out of flirtation. It is not just cheesy chat-up lines ("If I said you had a nice body, would you hold it against me?") that have had their day. Even compliments with no sexual connotation are becoming taboo. You can hardly congratulate a woman on her cooking, parenting skills, or work, without getting a suspicious look. The irony is that everyone - and perhaps women in particular, hard-wired not to blow their own trumpets - desperately needs the affirmation that compliments bring. Starved of praise, people shrivel. One of the biggest regrets of my life is not a clumsy compliment, but one I was too shy to pay. In 1990, I watched Judi Dench play Cleopatra in the most extraordinary stage performance I had seen. Half an hour later, I shared a lift with her. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. The point about a compliment, provided it is sincere, is that it makes the recipient feel special - a lesson I learnt this year, in the most deliciously unexpected circumstances getting off a cross-channel ferry at Dover. My partner is Australian, a fact not missed by the eagle-eyed passport officer. She inspected our documents and said to me: "You must be a very special man to get this lovely young lady to come to England to live with you." It was a double-barrelled compliment of such stunning virtuosity that we were both grinning two hours later. And if a lowly civil servant can pull off that sort of coup after hours sitting in a stuffy booth stamping passports, what is stopping the rest of us? Come on, chaps, tell that woman working at the next desk what a special person she is. Don't say anything you don't mean, but don't be mealy-mouthed either. Lay it on with a trowel. Don't stint on the epithets. And come on, girls, don't just pull a face and look embarrassed, appreciate the compliment. You never know when the next one will come.