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It’s a rather sad job advert. ‘A highly motivated and energetic individual is required to provide direct support services to students of St Andrews University who have experienced rape and sexual assault.’

Sad, because there are enough incidents, enough trauma, enough shattered young people to warrant a three-and-half-day-a-week position on campus.

St Andrews is to be commended for looking after the victims of sexual assault, of course, but alongside picking up the pieces of ‘rape culture’, universities — and parents, teachers and wider society — need to do more to prevent these crimes in the first place.

‘Consent classes’ are a growing trend. St Andrews holds them, and now it’s been confirmed schoolchildren are to get them, too, learning about respect for boundaries and ‘no means no’.

Clare Forges claims when alcohol is involved, communication is often blurred and rules about consent go out of the window (file image)

All well and good, but in reality whatever young people learn in class about respect, consent and sexual etiquette, good intentions are often swept aside in a tide of beer, wine and Aperol spritz.

Too many of us avoid discussing alcohol and its role in sexual assault because we get into the nasty business of victim-blaming; shifting some of the responsibility for an attack on to the woman or man who drank a lot and therefore put themselves in danger.

Let’s be clear, the person responsible for a rape or sexual assault is the one perpetrating it, no matter what the victim was wearing, drinking or saying. But let’s also be honest that when drink is involved, communication is often blurred and rules about consent go out of the window.

I write not as a pious abstainer who has never been drunk beyond reason, but as someone who used to drink a fair bit and whose one brush with assault was directly related to the consumption of hard liquor.

Let us call him TDH: Tall, dark and handsome. I met him on a trip to the U.S. and urged ‘be in touch if you’re ever in London!’ He duly was, and we had a nice evening in the bars of central London: A couple of pints, margaritas, pinot grigio with a dash of lemonade etc. I realised during the first drink that I didn’t fancy him, but put my best foot forward, consuming ten more units in a show of English hospitality which means ending the evening completely sozzled.

So sozzled that when he asked to walk me home I let him; when he asked to use the loo I let him; when he asked to kip on the sofa because his hotel was too far away I shrugged my shoulders. It was only when I was in bed and the door creaked open that an alarm went off in my head in the manner of a code red at a nuclear reactor.

Suddenly he was in the bed, hands everywhere. TDH became TDO: The drunken octopus. I remember thinking: ‘This is how it happens. And you let him in!’ I threw off the octopus, telling him I needed a glass of water. I knew I had seconds before the tentacles were at me again. So I grabbed my keys and, clad only in pyjamas, went into the icy night.

Clare Forges (pictured) wishes that she had not got so drunk that she allowed a near stranger into her flat 

Fortunately, I lived near a hotel. Though it was midnight I rapped on the door and explained to the night manager that there was a man in my bedroom who seemed likely to attack me. He kindly let me see the night out in the hotel’s library. In the morning, stepping gingerly back into my flat, I opened the bedroom door to find the octopus sprawled on my bed, passed out. He had no idea I’d left, and was rather perplexed at his surroundings. In the cold and sober light of day, TDO was TDH again, apologetic for crashing and wondering whether he could get me a bacon sandwich in reparation for his bad manners. I declined.

From an older, wiser vantage point I wish I had not got so drunk that I allowed a near stranger into my flat. I see it as a lucky escape. In truth it wasn’t unusual for me to get blitzed then. Getting drunk a couple of nights a week in my twenties was pretty standard.

I was part of a culture that thinks it fine for young men and women to drink until they can’t stand. Much of this is good fun, but it is also the context in which rape culture is rife on campuses. Consent classes and sexual assault counselling aren’t enough. To get to grips with rape culture we need to confront drink culture, too.

The feminist in me rails against the notion that women must watch their intake lest some predator take advantage. But a more sensible approach to booze would also benefit men who might find themselves accused of an assault they can barely remember. Perhaps the most shocking thing about my near-miss was the polite fellow I met in the morning, unrecognisable from the octopus the night before.

When my children go to university I won’t just give them the consent talk, but warn that drinking blurs boundaries. For my son and daughters, it’s better to play it safe — and never be drunk and alone with a near stranger of the opposite sex.

I'm still longing for baby no.4

Clare said she sympathises with Jools Oliver, who is yearning for another child. Pictured: Jools with all five of her children and husband Jamie 

Despite being 46 and a mother of five already, Jools Oliver says she is yearning for another focaccia in the oven. I sympathise.

Though I have had three babies in three years, the idea of a fourth nags.

Given that I have not slept seven hours straight since 2018 and look older than Methuselah, it is a kind of madness. Not least because after three C-sections, I’ve been told by doctors that it could be life-threatening to attempt another.

But still I pine.

Did Jack want to score online

It seems England football heart-throb Jack Grealish has a profile on the celebrity dating app Raya — despite having a girlfriend. This doesn’t surprise me.

Before I settled down I used dating apps. A lot of men on them were clearly attached — not trying to meet women in real life but to get an ego boost from online chat, sending the odd message to keep women interested.

There’s a word for it: Bread-crumbing. In fact there is a range of terms to describe the nightmarish world of dating apps: Tuning (being vague about your feelings), fading (losing interest), ghosting (disappearing after contact), mosting (love-bombing followed by ghosting).

These apps need a (digital) toasting.

When virtue signalling backfires 

Former model Lily Cole burnished her woke credentials last week with an Instagram picture of herself in a burka (pictured)

Former model Lily Cole burnished her woke credentials last week with an Instagram picture of herself in a burka alongside an appeal to ‘embrace diversity’. This wasn’t just spectacularly insensitive timing given women in Afghanistan were dreading the approach of the Taliban and diktats to wear just such garments. It is wrong at any time to frame the burka as just another clothing choice.

It is a garment associated with oppression, with societies that treat women as chattels. Where women have a true choice, they tend to want the sun on their faces. Do an internet search for ‘Afghan women 1970s’ to see a poignant picture of women in that country, half a century ago, in skirts above the knee, heads uncovered, smiling as they walk down the street. That — not a burka-clad Lily Cole — is what freedom looks like.

• With foreign holidays blighted by Covid, more of us have opted for the ‘delights’ of Britain’s seaside. I missed the staycation gene that makes people excited to be in the drizzle in Dorset. As for the inevitable self-catering, I’m sorry, but a week in which you still have to traipse around Tesco is an insult to the word ‘holiday’.