The Edinburgh Festival and the Proms cranking into life, a summer of blockbuster films, big opera productions still running in London, countless exhibitions round the country ... even I, paid to “keep up”, find myself bamboozled by the hype and the reviews. The ultimate nightmare, of course, is arriving at a party where everyone else is raving about the one show that you didn't see. What do you do? Utter a lame “I'm afraid I've had a great deal of ironing to do recently”? Or boldly bluff it out and risk saying something so ludicrous that your brazen front is exposed for the limp fig-leaf that it is?

Well, there is a third way. While ostensibly joining in the talk about whatever arty epic is currently stirring the chattering classes, you subtly hijack the conversation into an area that you can happily natter about. But how? Here are Morrison's Six Golden Tips of Blathering. And believe me, if they hadn't worked on handfuls of editors over the years, I wouldn't still be here.

1 All pieces of art can be reduced to one fascinating fact. Wagner's Ring? Hitler loved it - that says it all! Basic Instinct? Yes, she had shaved. Moby-Dick? Fishing can be fun! Hamlet? Dithering can kill. Apocalypse Now? The only movie that takes longer to view than the original book takes to read! And so on. Rather than wasting time on the whole caboodle, just memorise the vital fact.

2 Quote a review in a dauntingly highbrow journal that few people actually read. It doesn't matter whether the review exists or not, of course, since nobody will be in a position to challenge you. For instance: “Having seen what that Harvard professor of clinical psychology had to say about Sex and the City in The New York Review of Books, I'm surprised you're giving such a deeply misogynist document the time of day.”

3 Become an expert on cultural trends. As in: “No I haven't seen Robert Lepage's Hollywoody rehash of The Rake's Progress. But it sounds like it's just another rehash of what Warhol was doing more incisively in the Sixties.” Or: “Aren't you fed up with all these plays about lesbian lovers in 17th-century Denmark?”

4 Cover your ignorance by an entertaining display of ideological scruples. “No, I haven't seen the new Bond film - and considering everything that's happening in Paraguay right now, I have no intention of going.” People will be so dazzled by this display of insider knowledge and moral certitude that they won't dare ask what on earth the link is between the new Bond film and Paraguay.

5 Create a diversion by producing an extraordinary snippet of trivial knowledge. Such as: “I can never go to the London Coliseum without remembering that it's the only theatre in the world where a horse died after falling into the orchestra pit.” People invariably looked stunned when I produce this gem at parties.

6 Nobody can see more than 1 per cent of all the art produced in Britain every week. So just select something so obscure that nobody else has heard of it - and wax lyrical. Just like this column does, most weeks.

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