Maggie got up and began wheeling an ancient TV set and VHS cassette player out from behind her.

‘Bloody hell,’ Jason whispered to me, ‘they’re almost as old as her! I better give her a hand.’ He jumped up, suddenly seeming brighter, more engaged. Maybe Maggie’s scolding had shown him he needed to up his game. ‘Here, let me help,’ he insisted, and manoeuvred the TV into place in front of us all.

‘It might look like a museum piece,’ Maggie acknowledged, wiping a little sweat from her brow. ‘But I’m reliably informed it works. Modern technology isn’t everything, you know.’

After a few minutes of awkward clicking and nothing happening she finally managed to turn the system on and prevent the VHS tape from being repeatedly ejected by the machine.

Suddenly we were all confronted by a close-up of a vagina, covered in a lot of very fuzzy black pubic hair. There was a great deal of moisture around it, and the top of a baby’s head poking out.

When I say a lot of very fuzzy hair, I mean a staggering amount of curly black pubes forming a large fluffy afro atop the woman’s private parts. I had never seen a vagina look so well dressed. There was a halo of light around the edges of the fuzz as bright hospital lights shone down on this most intimate of moments.

My immediate reaction was to laugh hysterically, and I let out a bellowing guffaw, which Maggie pretended not to hear.

‘I’m sorry!’ I squealed, covering my mouth with my hand. ‘It was just a surprise!’ As I sank back into my chair feeling like a naughty schoolgirl, desperately trying to contain my full-scale laughter, I wished Lucy was there, because she would certainly be doing the same.

Jason was also trying not to laugh. He nudged me with his elbow, but I didn’t dare look at him, for fear I would explode.

I looked to my left to see if anyone else found this amusing. Helen’s cheeks had turned red with embarrassment, and Ian was tittering slightly. To his right, Will and Christian were shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Next to them, Susie and Lin didn’t seem too fazed.

I tried to stop my shoulders from shaking uncontrollably, eyes watering as I desperately stifled my giggles. The longer the image stayed paused on screen, despite Maggie pressing a series of buttons, the worse my hysterics seemed to get.

‘Tsk, some naughty person forgot to rewind it to the beginning, and now it seems to be stuck,’ Maggie said, stony-faced.

When Jason put a hand on my leg to try to calm me, it only made it worse and I waved him off. I couldn’t wait to tell Tara about this. And Lucy.

Finally, after she had pulled out the plug from the wall and restarted both the TV and video recorder, the film finally rewound. We were all at least now prepared for the vintage birth moment featuring a lovely couple called Janet (she with the large bush) and Peter, who bore an impressive handlebar moustache and brown flares. It was all very late Seventies.