MIRANDA. In effect I’m asking you to think about the moment when you realised that the girl you were in love with was not perfect. What the physical detail was that prompted that moment.

SAM. There wasn’t. There wasn’t a moment.

MIRANDA. For example. Have you noticed that one of my breasts is significantly larger than the other?

SAM. No.

MIRANDA. Don’t kiss my arse.

SAM. I’m not.

MIRANDA. Sorry, but if you kiss my arse I don’t want you in this office. I’m sharing my physical flaw with you in the spirit of trust, of understanding. I know it sounds a bit bloody Greenham Common but that’s what I’ve brought to this publication, as editor. The idea that any dream, any desire, any anxiety is valid, and chances are there’s a woman out there who shares those dreams. Those desires. Those anxieties. And they should be able to read about those dreams, desires and anxieties in a magazine. Electra is that magazine.

SAM. Miranda. Can I just?

MIRANDA. For example, sometimes I’ll come in and Yolanthe will be there, at her desk, and I’ll just fire at her, straight away, I’ll just throw a thought at her, like ‘I’m worried about ovarian cancer,’ or ‘I’m really scared I’m boring in bed.’ Or whatever, and she’ll catch that thought and run with it and three hours later, I’ve got a thousand words of insightful, gently humorous copy on my desk, and I publish that copy, and do you know what happens? We get letters. We get emails. From women. From the women who read our magazine and they say ‘Thank you. Thank you, Electra. I thought I was alone and then I read an article in your magazine and I realised that I wasn’t.’

SAM. All the letters at Doghouse were written by us.

MIRANDA. Yes well, that’ll be part of your job here too. But sometimes, we get actual letters, genuine letters from the genuine public who are genuinely affected by what they read in our pages.

SAM. How many?

MIRANDA. Well, it’s a dying form of communication, the letter, so. That’s something we’re working on too. Social media, making it easier for real women to connect with us on their terms. Because we want to give them what they want. If they don’t like something, we can change it. We can be anything they want us to be.

But that starts with the honesty between us, here in this office. So what I’m doing, is I’m asking you to be honest, I’m asking you to share something personal with me, not for the sake of it, not because I’m especially interested, or because I’m a creepy old cow!

She laughs.