The last verse of ‘September’ by Earth Wind and Fire was playing across the airwaves. Fiona Love slipped her headphones back over her ears and held up a finger to silence Olivia who’d kept up a nervous chatter ever since we’d arrived in the ‘Love in the Afternoon’ studio. Olivia looked at me and let out a tiny squeak and my insides bubbled with nerves.

It had all been a bit of a rush since arriving. We’d signed in at reception, visited the Ladies and been ushered up to the fourth floor with just enough time to spare for Nigel, the show’s producer, to dispatch an assistant to fetch champagne flutes in readiness to try the sparkling wine I’d brought.

Apparently, there had been no sign of Thomas Devine and he wasn’t answering his phone, so Nigel, tearing at his already sparse hair, had hastily come up with a Plan B. Now, instead of debating the merits or otherwise of English wines and family-run vineyards as planned, Olivia and I would have a nice chat with Fiona, taste some of our sparkling wines on air and take vetted questions from callers about all things wine-related. Plan B sounded heavenly.

As the song reached its last few bars, the door opened and Thomas Devine stalked in, his phone in one hand and a bottle of champagne dripping with condensation in the other. Dressed all in black and with a thin angular face, prominent nose and slicked-back black hair, he looked like a crow. He air-kissed Fiona, nodded at us and folded his tall frame into the furthest chair from where Olivia and I were sitting on unforgiving swivel chairs.

‘Phone away now, darling,’ Fiona said, batting her eyelashes at Thomas who sighed wearily and slipped it into his back pocket.

‘My mouth’s gone dry,’ Olivia rasped beside me.

‘I think I need another wee,’ I whispered back.

The studio was like a big goldfish bowl. One wall was almost entirely made of glass through which we could see a beaming Nigel, giving us the thumbs-up. The room itself was dominated by a huge curved white desk. Fiona sat behind it on a comfy-looking chair on wheels with various keypads and mixer panels arranged in a semicircle in front of her. I was already a bit in awe of her: she seemed eminently capable of keeping up with four different computer screens showing the programme’s social media channels, national news and the show’s playlist. She was a curvy Marilyn Monroe lookalike in red stilettos and red lipstick and if I could look half as sexy as she did when I reached her age, I’d be over the moon.