Phoebe Waller-Bridge is good at endings.

See: Killing Eve. Villanelle, stabbed in the stomach by Eve in a moment of lover’s quarrel-cum-passion and left for dead in her sprawling Parisian apartment. Also see: Fleabag. Who could forget how the television series ended this year, with a roving fox, a stolen statue and a lingering kiss from a very hot priest?

Waller-Bridge’s ending for the original 2014 stage show upon which the television series was based is similarly good. Without spoiling it for anyone lucky enough to be catching it in theatres during its limited London run, the play ends not with a whimper but a loud, sweary bang.

But that ending, equal parts tragic and comic, was not exactly what Waller-Bridge first intended. In her new book Fleabag: The Special Edition by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Nick Hern, £10.99), we’re treated to the script from the original stage show as well as a printed conversation between Waller-Bridge and Fleabag director Vicky Jones. And in it we learn that Waller-Bridge envisaged a very different finale to the one we actually see on stage.

Fleabag: Phoebe Waller-Bridge says the show almost had a very different ending