Hotel Boyfriend works in the media.

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that before, but he does and occasionally he appears on the radio or television, discussing grave matters of great import with furrowed brow and grown-up Man Voice (this is not the voice he uses to sing to the cat, nor the cod-Oirish one in which he holds household conversations with me – “wettle ye be wentin fur yer denner?“).

Hotel Boyfriend also looks like Dr House. Not Hugh Laurie – but Dr House. This information is not vital to this story. I’m just boasting.

Anyway.

On this particular morning – a blinding, breezy summer day about three years ago – Hotel Boyfriend was due to give a radio interview over the telephone. Trouble is, he’d been up all night with food poisoning and now looked distinctly green and jellyish, and not like Dr House at all. He kept checking his watch and groaning, “T-minus BLEEEEUUURRRRGGGH”; the last word being directed (if he was very quick) into the depths of the toilet bowl.

Poor love.

He’d had no sleep, couldn’t even keep water down, and was running to the bathroom every five minutes.

Obviously this wasn’t something he wanted to do on air.

So off I popped to the chemist.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I am not at my most sparkling conversational best when discussing digestive issues, however the pharmacist was clearly relishing it, all wet lip-smacks and eye-pops behind the grimy pince-nez.

“Did you know,” he imparted joyously, “Imodium doesn’t stop faeces emission, it just thickens the consistency?”

Here he made a groping gesture with his hands that frightened me to my very core.

“‘Course,” he cautioned. “Take too much and you’ll have to put your finger up there and -”

Wildly I threw all my cash at him and fled with some anti-emetic tablets, which I administered to Hotel Boyfriend after tipping a pint of water into him and hustling him into bed.

“Will you wake me in time for the interview?” He asked from beneath the hot flannel.

“Yes,” I said.

“These tablets cause drowsiness,” he told me.

“I know.”

“I’m drowsy.”

“I know.”

“I can’t miss this interview.”

“Sweet. Heart,” I hissed. “I fucking know, all right?”

He pulled the flannel from his face and gazed at me with damp, doubtful eyes.

“It’s at eleven. Are you sure you’ll remember to wake me? You might be busy geeking, or something.”

“Oh for god’s sake,” I stomped over to the dresser and gesticulated towards the alarm clock. “Do you want me to set your clock?”

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

He went a bit pink.

“Mumble mumble mumble appreciate it right now,” he whispered, fiddling with the flannel.

“What?“

“I said,” he quailed. “That’s a lovely offer but I don’t think I’m in a position to appreciate it right now.”

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

I looked at him some more.

Then I said, “Ohh,” and clapped my hand to my forehead. “No. Sweetheart. I said ‘set your clock‘.”

“Ohh!” He replied. “Not -?”

“No.”

“Ah. Then yes please.”

And I did and he woke up in time for the interview, and he managed it without remote-vomming all over Radio 4 and, I can say in all honesty and without fear of retribution or accusations of frigidity, that I have not set his clock since.