AN INTIMACY COORDINATOR’S 9 ON-SET ESSENTIALS

NIPPLE DAISIES — to cover an actor’s areola, ensuring only side breast is visible HIBUE/SHIBUE — strapless thongs, in a range of skin tones, that stick to the pelvis and prevents genitalia from touching MERKINS — a pubic wig, often used in period dramas or to provide additional covering FLESH-COLOURED UNDERWEAR — these can be long enough to cover the thighs and, with the right colour, match remain invisible SMALL CUSHIONS STUFFED WITH LAMBSWOOL — to create a barrier between the actors’ genitalia during sex scenes MINTS — to freshen breath for kissing scenes, especially after one actor has taken a cigarette break GLYCERINE AND WATER SPRAY — to create the illusion of beads of sweat during/after vigorous sex scenes HEAT PADS — used under robes to keep actors warm between takes ALOE VERA GEL — soothes skin chafed or irritated by modesty garments

MY NAME is the most normcore one imaginable. But when I married a man with a dashing surname, I still didn’t consider conflating my identity with his.

I know it’s simpler at passport control if you all have the same name, but I was born in the 1960s. Exchanging my father’s surname for my husband’s at the altar just struck me as a little… old-fashioned. It still does.

And a man taking his wife’s name seems performatively ‘modern’ and not unproblematic, either.

Wouldn’t it be simpler and less stressful if we all kept the names we were born with?

I’m happy my children have my husband Ivo’s surname, Dawnay, but I’ve never been accused of kidnapping them at customs just because my passport remains in my ‘maiden’ name and theirs is different.

I can basically divide my friends into those who kept their birth names — Cosmopolitan would call them ‘career women’ — and those who contentedly took their husbands’ names, particularly if they were an improvement on their own. (I completely get Diary Of An MP’s Wife author Sasha nee Nott becoming the swisher Sasha Swire.)

I tried to explain to my husband that Kate Winslet’s third husband, formerly Ned Rocknroll, had changed his name again to reflect the new, improving, if not improved, times we live in.

‘Oh, has he decided to call himself Ned Easy Listening then?’ he queried. When I said that no, he had become the more inclusive Edward Wolf Winslet Abel Smith, to match his son Bear Blaze Winslet’s name, I was met with an uneasy silence. Ivo has a fine name and a bloodline he can trace back to the Norman Conquest. He’d never have considered adding my name or subtracting his. Far from it. When the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was approved in the U.S. last week, he said: ‘I hope it protects the public from at least two Johnsons.’

OK, when my children were at school I went by Mrs Dawnay to help teachers. Ditto when I had babies in hospital. But for all other purposes I retain the name I inherited from my father, as my children inherited their names from my husband.

I admit it’s not a perfect way of doing things. It’s still patriarchal. But it works and is preferable to endless double-barrelling. (If someone with a double-barrelled name marries another, their children will end up with four surnames like MP Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax!)

‘Your place or mine?’ is hard enough. ‘Your name or mine?’ is a step too far for me.

Why must couples merge their identities?