And it’s not like Erin and Cara and I aren’t friends, we see each other over Christmas and once a summer, and we fall into the same banter we always have. But I don’t want to be the friendship equivalent of a booty call, I want to know how their workday was and what their plans are for the weekend; I want to know what they’re watching on Netflix an

they target the lonely, and these are very likely to be people in later life who are divorced or widowed or who, having focused singlemindedly on their careers, have arrived at late middle age only to realise that life is about to pass them by.

They found that while the family component of the network remained stable (as one might expect), it was what they called the personal (that is, the support network) and friendship components that expanded and then declined with age.