Over the past month, I have picked up 247 men. Fast work in just four weeks but I’ve been putting my back into it. During my sabbatical from the Financial Times, I have obsessively e-mailed strangers on an adultery website, thereby taking part in what I find is the hottest recessionary activity in town.

Among my new boyfriends are a formerly powerful hedge fund manager, scores of newly idle bankers, a few entrepreneurs, various company directors, a well-known musician, some corporate lawyers, a couple of barristers and a rather dishy builder.