WHAT has 16 legs, potential for disaster and an infinite capacity for conversation? A dinner for eight. Can be great, can be a catastrophe.

We're a hospitable people and many of us enjoy conducting the experiment of taking friends, acquaintances and strangers, inserting a suitable catalyst (drink, food, music ...) and, laboratory conditions permitting, watching it become something beautiful, a new life form the party with fizz.

This sort of frenetic engineering takes planning and generosity in equal measures, say experienced party givers. Those who give the most renowned parties are not necessarily those with the biggest staff, or the biggest wallets. It's heart that counts.

Norma Smurfit is one of Ireland's best known hostesses: She has the capacity for big parties - a room in her home can seat 90 - and the concentration for details. "I'm the sort of person who likes organising things. I do most of the work myself, humping around the chairs and laying the tables," she says in Consuelo O'Connor's new book, Irish Hosts and Hostesses: The Art of Irish Hospitality. "If I do it myself I know it's properly done. The only thing that suffers is my nails."

Others who turn up in O'Connor's book include: Patrick Connolly SC; former Garda Commissioner Patrick Culligan; Ib Jorgensen; John and Mary O'Conor; Jim Reynolds and Stephen Pearce.

If you don't have a banqueting hall, apparently it's perfectly okay to serve dinner in the kitchen these days. Marian Finucane, who once had a grand house and gave "very splendid dinners" for up to 18 people, describes all that now as "a phase one goes through". Her new house doesn't even have a dining room and she sticks to dinners for eight.

But what makes it swing? Desmond Guinness knows. "Background music in the form of old friends, is essential if the new blood is to shine," he says. In his guests, he looks for "beauty in the females and wit in the males" so if you haven't been invited to Leixlip Castle lately, now you know why.

Some hosts simply pick their guests with care, plan the seating carefully and wait to see what happens. Others take a more active approach. Feargal Quinn, for example, whips out their chairs without even waiting for signs of boredom. "After the first course, hands are clapped and Denise [Mrs Quinn] will stand up and say `I want all the ladies to move to another table'," he says. "And after the next course I will get up and say `I want all the men to move tables'. Invariably, we will have a game to force people to talk and chat. This game could be as basic as a table quiz."

At least at Mr Quinn's parties, you won't get stuck between a recovering recluse and a patronising priest basher for longer than it takes to clear your plate. At Desmond Guinness's parties, meanwhile, they'll be expected to entertain themselves. "Bores simply love one another," he said. You can safely put them sitting beside one another.

Carmencita Hederman, former Lord Mayor of Dublin, won't have guests back if they don't shape up. "If people don't make a contribution, I would tend to strike them off my list, at least for small dinners," she says.

AND what to serve? If like Lord Rosse, you serve a lot of venison because your deer need to be culled, then fine. You can take another tip from him and avoid having your butler serve the drinks he serves his friends himself because otherwise they might as well be in a hotel.

If your circumstances are more modest and you are, indeed, serving in the kitchen, for heaven's sake don't go catching up on the housework when you should be carousing. Philomena Delaney. Calor Gas Housewife of the Year, recalls with horror a dinner party where her hostess "actually proceeded to wash all of the dishes and her husband dried them. She even Brilloed the cooker! I was fascinated. I just couldn't believe it. I mean, she could have done all that the next day."

The consensus seems to be don't try too hard with the food. "So many people are dieting nowadays they don't pay any attention to the food," says Minerva Mason from Jacksonville in the US, who holds a huge party at Ballynahinch Castle, Co Galway, every year. In selecting her guests, she favours "my friends; people who are interesting to talk to and people who will listen - not people who are going to monopolise the conversation the whole time".