When Agony Aunts go wild.

So, you hate your husband, or your boyfriend has been unfaithful, and because, strangely enough you are an orphan with no friends living in a bubble on a deserted island, you turn to a newspaper agony aunt for advice. And what do you get?

“Cruising along the M4 at night, the moon low in the east like the end of a lit cigar, Ray La-Montagne’s breathy agony filling the car, I wonder idly if all the words from all the centuries’ sorrowful poems and songs of love, placed end to end, would reach to that indifferent, orange moon.

We’d just seen Treats at the Theatre Royal Bath, Billie Piper starring in Christopher Hampton’s bitter comedy about the eternal triangle, in which the good man is ditched for the bastard (as so often they are) and you know it must end in tears. More tears. “Life is long, my love is gone away from me,” moans Ray — and for sure he will be listened to by a million lost souls who know what it’s like.”