What I’d give for a transcript of Lily Pebble’s and Anna Newton’s latest At Home With podcast. They came to my house in Somerset along with (my wife from a different life) Caroline Hirons and things got slightly out of hand. Not only did I somehow invent the term “smoky bullshit” whilst talking about Instagram, we managed to steer the talk around to gynaecological issues and the practicalities of having sex in the bath.
I write that as though I’m surprised, but none of this is a surprise to me. Every time the four of us get together we end up hurtling down a one-way conversational track to hell, turning the air blue and venting until we feel as though we’ve had a near-religious soul-cleansing experience.
And I always feel slightly uneasy after I’ve had my voice recorded. When it’s actually happening, when I’m “in the moment”, everything I say feels real and raw and completely right to me. But then the microphone clicks off and the equipment gets packed up and I start to get the cold sweats. Why did I say that thing about the woman next door" She’ll know immediately I was talking about her! Why did I swear" Why do I have to overshare about bodily functions" 
It’s a problem, this over-sharing, over-talking thing. I haven’t always been that way – I think it started when I had Angelica and didn’t get out of the house much. I discovered that when I was sudde...