Tidal disruption events occur when a star passes too close to a massive black hole and it is totally ripped apart by tidal forces .
It may also happen that the star is not close enough to the black hole to be totally disrupted and a less dramatic event might happen .
If the stellar orbit is bound and highly eccentric , just like some stars in the centre of our own Galaxy , repeated flares should occur .
When the star approaches the black hole tidal radius at periastron , matter might be stripped resulting in lower intensity outbursts recurring once every orbital period .
We report on Swift observations of a recent bright flare from the galaxy IC 3599 hosting a middle-weight black hole , where a possible tidal disruption event was observed in the early 1990s .
By light curve modelling and spectral fitting we can consistently account for the events as the non-disruptive tidal stripping of a star into a highly eccentric orbit .
The recurrence time is 9.5 yr. IC 3599 is also known to host a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus .
Tidal stripping from this star over several orbital passages might be able to spoon-feed also this activity .