The conversation at every good dinner party eventually turns to idle gossip. For one regular supper group, it's an agenda item. Four times a year, a small group of foundation chiefs and trustees meet for dinner – sometimes in Sydney, sometimes in Melbourne. An agenda is circulated beforehand, and always, right at the bottom, is the last item for discussion: gossip.

"I'm always worried about what I don't know," says Leonard Vary, the chief executive of the Sidney Myer Fund and The Myer Foundation.