President Clinton and Paula Jones partied together on Saturday night but they never actually met. There were 2,600 other people in the International Ballroom of the Hilton so you could only meet so many of the other guests.
The President sat at the top table with the Vice-President, Al Gore, and made jokes about the media while Paula sat at table 242 with the former Watergate conspirator, Gordon Liddy, and signed autographs. She had been booed and cheered by waiting crowds when she arrived for the annual White House Correspondents dinner, as the guest of Insight magazine, accompanied by her husband Stephen and her media adviser, the redoubtable Susan Carpenter-McMillan.
Monica Lewinsky had turned down several invitations to attend, as had her lawyer, William Ginsburg. "It would be tasteless for us to attend," Mr Ginsburg said.
A lot of people thought it was tasteless of Paula Jones to attend. The last time she was in the same room as President Clinton was on January 17th when he was deposed for six hours in the Washington office of his lawyer, William Bennett, about her allegation that he exposed himself to her and asked for oral sex back in May 1991 in a Little Rock hotel.
At Saturday's dinner, Mr Clinton was accompanied by his wife Hillary. Mrs Clinton had earlier in the day been questioned for nearly five hours at the White House by the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, about her involvement in the murky Whitewater affair. She barely had time to get into her black-and-silver gown and head for the Hilton.
The Clintons prudently avoided the pre-dinner receptions thrown by various media organisations and which spilled out on to the outdoor terrace but Paula Jones and entourage plunged into the masses of tuxedos and sequinned gowns.
Ms Jones, in the course of a 30-second interview, told The Irish Times that her mother had Irish blood. She was wearing a close-fitting brocaded blue dress and looked very well.
Ms Carpenter-McMillan, who hugged this correspondent when she heard he was from The Irish Times, said her husband was Irish, went to Ireland frequently, and is involved in fund-raising for peace there.
The Irish ambassador, Sean O hUiginn and his wife, Bernadette, shared a table with the Hollywood star, Sharon Stone, and her new journalist husband, Phil Bronstein, as well as the TV political commentator, Chris Matthews, and his TV presenter wife, Kathleen. Other Hollywood stars at the dinner included Michael Douglas, Warren Beatty, and Richard Dreyfuss.
At political level, most members of the Clinton Cabinet were there, including the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who was able to hob-nob with one of her predecessors, Henry Kissinger.
On the Republican side, Senator John Warner, a former husband of Elizabeth Taylor, chatted with the new British ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer. The senator was accompanied as usual by Barbara Walters, legendary TV interviewer.
This is the occasion at which the President gets his chance to lampoon his media critics and he enjoyed it. "This is the night I get to poke fun at you. That is my definition of `executive privilege'," he joked, referring to the controversy over whether his senior staff can testify before the grand jury about their conversations with him touching on Monica Lewinsky.
The President said he hadn't followed the news since the Pope's visit to Cuba, the time the Lewinsky story broke last January. "What have you been writing about since then? I hardly have any time to read the news anymore. Mostly I just skim the retractions."
He made no reference to the presence of Paula Jones, who had her back to him at her table on an upper tier of the huge ballroom. She refused to stand for the toast to the President. But he emphasised "all" when he said he was happy to see all the people in the room.
The comedian, Ray Romano, who followed the President, made one joke about Paula Jones which flopped. Referring to her well-publicised car, he said, "The person who owns the Mercedes with Arkansas plates has left their lights on." Most people looked puzzled.
The President finished by paying tribute to the long-serving White House UPI correspondent, Helen Thomas, who gets the privilege of asking the first question at press conferences. "But there is another tradition," the President reminded us. "I don't have to answer it."