So what attracted you to that powerful man?

Somewhere towards the end of the 1980s I was suddenly promoted three grades upwards in my job at the BBC; a bit like going from the middle of the old fourth division to the top of the Championship. Yay. The immediate consequences were more money, more power and almost endless opportunities for sexual intercourse. Women who had hitherto been averagely amiable work colleagues became much friendlier — and in a very different way. It was as if I’d been transformed overnight from Marty Feldman into Orlando Bloom. What a delightful period of my life that was.

I was happily reminded of it when the actor Martin Clunes stepped into the current sexual harassment debate, perhaps unwisely, suggesting that actresses flirted with producers in a most unseemly manner, which he likened to prostitution. Perhaps he is right, although I don’t think so. I think a less contentious reading would be that women are hard-wired to be attracted to powerful men.