At university, there was one cardinal rule we lived by (other than ‘cheese goes with everything’): never go out clubbing on a Saturday night. The idea of aggressively gyrating to Timbaland and downing Jägermeister with the 30-year-old locals who had put on their gladrags for a good old-fashioned knees-up (this is how we described them) was totally gross. They were just so… old.

“Guys, promise me when we’re 30 we won’t be as lame as everyone in Tiger Tiger on a Saturday night,” I obnoxiously pleaded to my housemates as we stayed in drinking white wine on offer at the Co-op and chain-smoking Mayfair Blues because we couldn’t afford Marlboro Lights. “Of course we won’t! By 30 we’ll be married, rich, successful and getting shitfaced at dinner parties while our babies are asleep,” they responded. Phew. What a relief that I had 10 years to ensure that my life went according to the plan we had so artfully constructed. If the agonising pace of my teenage years was anything to go by, I had all the time in the world to get my ducks in a row by 30.

Billie Bhatia: “I’m terrified about turning 30”