The typical tasks of a restaurant reviewer may not be sufficiently challenging for Marina O’Loughlin, food critic of the London free paper Metro. To keep her mind agile during disastrously dull dinners, O’Loughlin imagines herself a quick-witted panellist on a BBC Radio 4 comedy programme, responding with aplomb to any verbal knot the host tosses her way. Ask her to discreetly drop the name of a Swiss surrealist into the middle of a restaurant review and O’Loughlin’s mind clicks as surely and silently as the shutter on a Leica M6:

Three storeys of gorgeousness from United Designers: Torode’s trademark chunky, butch aesthetic (see Smiths of Smithfield) married to fluid lines, ravishing furniture – wing-shaped Cherner chairs, stork-legged tables and lamps that look like Méret Oppenheim…

You can practically hear the members of the live BBC audience falling over themselves with nods of recognition. It hardly matters that most haven’t a clue who the artist and muse Meret Oppenheim was. We’ve all seen women who look like lamps and lamps which look like women. I happen to have one in my bedroom.

Which brings us to tonight’s quiz for all those listening at home: At left is Erotique Voilée (“Veiled Erotic”), a classic surrealist image taken by American photographer Man Ray in 1933. Rather than ask you if the subject of the portrait is a lighting fixture or an Oppenheim, the more pertinent question is: How do you work the oddly placed knob?

Meret Oppenheim is one of the featured artists in Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism, an exhibition on view through the 10th of January at the Manchester Art Gallery.