I spent a year in shock after my marriage collapsed. Then I realised how much pleasure I could wring out of life

As part of her training to be a counsellor, Jill Le Jeune gave a presentation about sex. Her group had worked with people who had experienced trauma, low mood, suicidal ideation. “And everyone was very comfortable around these difficult subjects,” she says. But talking about sex made them squirm. “I thought: actually, I’d rather talk about sex than suicide.” She decided to specialise in the subject and, at the age of 60, started to practise as a sex therapist.

But why? “There was a curiosity,” she says, sitting in her office in Clapham, south-west London.