With the audience on tenterhooks, Barnett continued: “And at this point, she’s genuinely considering whether it’s worth going to jail for having sex on her period. So, [the police officer] drags her off the Subway, pulls out the homicidal scene that’s in her bag and says, ‘Do you want to explain?’.

“And she goes, ‘Mmm’. She then silently walks him back to Jeffrey’s apartment. Jeffrey opens the door in his towel and says, ‘Yeah, we had sex on her period’.

Pointing out the worrying underlying message of the otherwise hilarious story, Barnett continued: “He [Jeffrey] can say it! But she can’t. And she doesn’t go to jail.

“I just think that story, although it’s brilliant, and it’s funny and it’s horrendous, points to this thing – why can’t women, and sometimes men, deal with this very regular thing? It’s not like it happens just every five years.”

Emma Barnett’s period sex story is hilarious, but the subtext is worrying