One of the Basic Points I tried to teach my Embassy teams as I ascended through the FCO ranks was, "Never mind all that policy stuff, which will tend to be OK enough. Your job is to get it 200% right on the day!"

The best-planned visit or event can become a wash-out for lack of attention to basic or even any detail.

An epic example was a joint visit by the then French and German Foreign Ministers to Sarajevo back in 1997 or thereabouts.

This visit was billed as a key EU moment in post-conflict Bosnia, a resounding call from Europe to the war-weary Bosnians to settle their differences and walk together purposefully down the European high road.

The major set-piece event during the visit was a gala reception in a Sarajevo hotel with several hundred prominent Bosnians.

There we all gathered chattering noisily, waiting for the guests of honour.

Eventually they arrived and the moment came for the various speeches to start.

Someone must have spent loving hours drafting them. But no-one from the French/German Embassies or BH protocol appeared to have given any thought at all to how the speeches actually would be delivered, with interpreting, in that particular big room, full of guests who did not mainly speak French/German, at that time, on that evening.

The sound system was bad. The Visitors were positioned in not the best part of the room. No podium for extra height and ‘presence’. Interpreters slowed everything down. No trumpet or gong was sounded to attract the audience’s attention and establish quiet when the speeches started.

Thus it was that as the speeches droned on, more and more Bosnians present simply tuned out and carried on chatting among themselves.

An unseemly competition started. Which was louder? The mass of Bosnian guests, or the VIP speakers?

When the German Foreign Minister got going, a mini-crisis was reached. He could not be heard at all other than by shouting.

Which he did. To little avail.

The louder he went, the more the massed Bosnians themselves talked loudly, almost as if (perish the thought) they spontaneously thought it would be a good Balkan joke to drown him out.

So we connoisseurs of the Diplomatic Grotesque witnessed a fascinating moment.

A leading European politician from a country which had given generously to the post-war reconstruction effort was left bawling at a large crowd of senior Bosnians that they should be grateful to Europe, and respond accordingly.

And they did respond. They just ignored him.

A text-book study in incompetence by the organisers.

And a metaphor for EU policy in the Balkans?

We pay. They don’t listen…