"Yes, but not in the South", with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person. - Stephen Potter

How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly.

In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.

Talk of the "imperial decay" of your invalid port. "Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession."