The Wall Street Journal actually had a lengthy article on how to answer that question when asked. That prompted a series of Letters in the WSJ‘s Letters section. The article and responding letters tended in the right direction, but not completely so, IMNSHO.

The correct initial response is simply to ignore the question altogether and get on into the conversation. If pressed, the correct response then becomes to state clearly that the questioner and I do not know each other well enough to be on a first name basis, and from that, we don’t know each other well enough for his question to be anything other than a rude imposition of a level of familiarity that doesn’t exist. Then I close my response with, “Mr Hines works just fine.”