Last week a friend who is up for a big job asked me to do her a favour. She needed to prepare for an interview and wondered if I would mind asking her a few practice questions. She had chosen me, she said, because I'm scary and the person doing the actual interviews was rumoured to be very fierce indeed.

This was a peculiar way of getting a friend to do you a favour, I thought. In any case, if either of us is scary it isn't me, it is her.