I have to carry a note to remind me not to swear

I’ve been interviewed a few times on radio. The first time was when I was the editor of a women’s magazine in Scotland. I was quite relaxed about it all, had chatted with the presenter, knew what was going on and was ready. Then she told me to put on my headphones, and we started.

The headphones, though – yikes. They deliver straight into your ear and it freaked me out entirely.

I lost the plot and squirmed through the experience in a hot sweat.

Learning from that lesson, when I was on Julian Clegg’s show a couple of weeks ago on Radio Solent, I refused the headphones and found it a much more respectable experience.

Now I consider myself a dab hand – ha, almost – although I do have to carry a note in front of me with the immortal reminder ‘don’t swear’ written across it in capitals.

I’ve recently noticed how sweary I can be when under stress, or when with other people, or when by myself.

In fact, it’s safe to say, my vocabulary is

spattered with offensive words.

Often I see articles online about how intelligent sweary people are which makes me feel better for about three minutes until I realise I’ve been sucked in by blooming click-bait.

But somehow I can’t stop myself ladling expletives into general chit-chat. And most the time I can get away with it by apologising profusely. So I was hugely grateful to get through a second interview with the lovely Stephanie Newenhouse on Radio Solent’s Early Late Show.

We were doing a live broadcast excerpt of one of my plays, Five Beaches. It was a fantastic experience. The BBC team in Southampton are so welcoming. If ever you wanted to see great customer service, the BBC is the place.

But what I hadn’t remembered, in the heat of it all, is that there is swearing in the play’s extract. There’s a ‘bastard’ and a few mentions of Jesus. And while those may be my words from the play, I take heart that they’re sourced from verbatim accounts of D-Day veterans who experienced the beaches.

So please forgive me if you heard, but for once it wasn’t actually me.