On the day the Caroline Flack story broke in December, I sat around a pub table listening to a group of male friends discuss the issue of domestic violence by women. As someone passed around a picture of petite Flack besides the 6ft 4in tennis coach boyfriend whom the former Love Island host has been charged with assaulting, my friends unanimously declared the alleged incident “embarrassing.” Which struck me as an odd way to describe any event that left a man in need of medical attention.

Then something still more surprising happened: one by one, these men began admitting to their own experiences at the hands of women. And although each played it down – it was only “a slap”, “a shove” and “a Coke can thrown at my head” – I left that pub stunned by the following real life statistic: three out of four men I knew had suffered some form, however mild, of female abuse.

New data published by the Sunday Telegraph, revealing that domestic violence by women has trebled in the past decade, confirmed how commonplace this is becoming. According to figures this paper obtained, female perpetrators now account for 28 per cent of domestic violence cases, compared with 19 per cent in 2009, with 92,409 attacks reported in 2018. Add to that, the fact that the vast majority of domestic violence by women still goes unreported, and we’ve got a problem that can no longer be ignored.