Joan Alone
Freelance journalist Joan McFadden came to see me today. She recently presented The Blusher's Guide to Sex and we met to talk about a follow-up series. What other topics required a "blusher's guide"? God, perhaps?
Joan has a great knack of asking the kind of questions that the rest of us might shy away from for fear of being punched in the mouth. Somehow her natural curiosity seems to unlock all kinds of psychological doors. People tell her all sorts of things. You spend five minutes in her company and then realise you've revealed your childhood fears, your adult anxieties and your PIN number for the bank.
So we got to wondering if religion would be a suitable topic for her next series. Many of us seem afraid to ask questions about other people's beliefs in case we cause offence. Yet the time has never been better for us to learn more.
Joan also suggested that obesity was another issue worth tackling. She felt that not enough of us take responsibilty for our own poor diets or those of our children. She came out with this theory over lunch, just after she'd demolished three scoops of ice cream and I was trying to sneak a huge chunk of tablet from her side plate without her noticing.
I was going to argue with her suggestion, but that's a difficult thing to do when your mouth is full.
