I sometimes wonder whether common sense has actually slunk off and died. Last week the brilliant, clever, wise Irma Kurtz, who has been Cosmopolitan magazine’s agony aunt for 41 years, went on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour to discuss her forthcoming autobiography.

Kurtz is also a radio veteran — I remember listening to her on Capital Radio as a teenager, agog at the complexities of adults’ psychosexual lives. Her great strengths, aside from the respect that she gave to callers, were her intelligence and thoughtfulness.

Kurtz, on Woman’s Hour, said a perfectly thoughtful thing. Rape, she said, was dreadful. Rape was never the victim’s “fault”, obviously. Rape is a terrible, hideous crime and no woman is to “blame” for being raped.

The presenter, Jane Garvey, then