A Q&A with actress Allison Janney in today's Guardian has brought much-needed publicity to a horrifying phenomenon that affects us all: the back-handed compliment. When asked to share the worst thing that anyone's ever said to her, Janney remembered this exchange:

'I don't mean to insult you, but you look like Allison Janney.'

'Why would that be an insult?'

'You are so much prettier than her.'

It's hard to read it without wincing, because that kind of faux pas is so uncomfortably familiar. 

We've all fallen victim to the insult cunningly disguised as a compliment, and the worst ones are those that set off a chain of realisation – Oh my god, is this what everyone thinks about me?

Let us be clear: we're not just talking common or garden tactlessness, like the time a beauty journalist friend offered me a free product with the words, 'Hattie, you've got oily skin – do you want this?' (This was a bombshell. I'd been happily imagining my skin fell into the 'normal' category for years. Now I have an expensive addiction to mattifying powder.)

No, the backhanded compliment takes a certain extra skill and panache. It raises your hopes, then dashes them. It's well-meaning – or pretends to be – but inadvertently brutal. And, if my own experiences are typical, it usually comes from a boyfriend or an older family member.

Let's consider some examples. A friend was recently told by her mother-in-law, 'You look beautiful darling! I'm so glad you've gone blonde again. I didn't think the brown suited you – neither did your mum.' A double whammy of revelations, establishing that for the last year she'd apparently been walking round with unflattering hair – and even her own mother had been talking about it. Now that's how you expose a web of deceit with one casual sentence.

Last month at a family party, one of my parents' friends told me 'I love your dress! It's very Jane Austen.' Much as we all enjoy a literary fashion reference, Jane Austen was very much not the look I was going for. I'm not sure I will ever wear that dress again.

Then there was the friend whose boyfriend – in the 90s, i.e. many years before 'ombre' and 'dip dye' became words that we'd associate with fashionable hair – told her, 'I love the way the roots of your hair don't match the ends.' Cue an emergency appointment at the hairdressers.

And last but not least, let us remember the ex who once affectionately told me, 'You look beautiful,' then hastily amended it. 'Well – pretty.' 

If there's one thing I find attractive in a man, it's accuracy with adjectives.

So Janney, it happens to us all. Your appearance can't please all people, all of the time, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln. At least in your case, you can hit the offending person over the head with one of your four Emmys.