Whether you know her best as an author, journalist or podcast host, you’ll undoubtedly know that Dolly Alderton has made a name for herself as the font of all knowledge on bad dates, friendships, relationships, breakups and growing up as a millennial. And on love, above all else.

It makes sense, then, that she wound up talking about her favourite topic when she sat down with DJ Nick Grimshaw and Michelin-star chef Angela Hartnett for the latest episode of their dinner party podcast, Dish.

“In the winter lockdown, I’d walk to Steve Hatt [Fishmongers] on a Saturday – this is when I was living in Camden,” she recalled at one point. “And I’d get some fish and then walk home and have fish for Saturday night dinner.

“I think it was – because I was so starved of company and romance – sort of my highlight of the week, going and having a little bit of a flirt over the fish with one of the fishmongers. He would always ask me whether I was cooking for my boyfriend, which obviously I loved. And then we’d get to the classic, like, ‘Oh, I can’t believe a girl like you is single.’”

Alderton added: “It was just like the absolute most cheesy, basic flirting. I think it was the only flirting I did all of lockdown. I must go back to that guy, actually. I wonder if there’s any chemistry, like, out of lockdown.”

Later in the episode, the Everything I Know About Love author broached that all-important dating milestone: cooking for your new significant other and the pressures that come with it.

“I cooked for him [a boyfriend] on our second date,” she said. “I baked gnocchi. I literally was just like, ‘What, this? It’s just my gnocchi!’ You know that thing you do at the beginning of the relationship where I was like, ‘I wonder if he thought I cooked wearing a white silk kimono dress, in a pair of heels with, like, blow-dried hair?’

“[Instead, I had] prepped it at two o’clock that afternoon.”

Of course, following the release of the BBC adaptation of her much-loved book earlier this year, it seemed inevitable that the conversation would soon turn to Alderton’s iconic tome.

“I was 28 when I wrote it,” she recalled. “Well, you know, something about the difference between being 28 and 34 just feels like different countries to me. I was just so open in a way that just makes me shudder now. At first, it felt cathartic and it felt exciting and it felt amazing to feel connected to lots of different people, and then it felt scary and I felt self-conscious.”

Noting that she worried she might become a one-hit literary wonder, Alderton added: “After [a success] like that, you worry that that might be your biggest hit or whatever. You worry that you don’t have anything to offer other than just turning yourself inside out, and then you get to this amazing point too that I, thankfully, managed to get to quite quickly, which is: that may well have been [the] biggest thing I ever do and that’s amazing. Like, how amazing that I got to do that at 28. And as long as I can make my peace with that, I’m actually pleased that I did get there because I think some…

“Well, I’ve seen so many writers and creatives and artists be in competition with themselves their whole life, and I wouldn’t be able to do that. And I couldn’t write a book like that again; I couldn’t put myself through it.”

Explaining that she found it incredibly weird watching Everything I Know About Love the TV show – largely because it was inspired directly by her own life and relationships past – Alderton continued: “There’s a scene where Maggie tells this awful musician, like 2012 east London musician man, that she loves him and he laughs in her face, which happened to me verbatim.

“That was a strange day [to watch that]. [And] it was weird, when the climax of the series is the two best friends, it’s basically one of them saying, ‘I don’t want to be friends anymore.’ Those were the sort of things that me and [my best friend] Farly said to each other years and years ago, so again, that was like, a difficult day.”

Alderton added: “The musician actually recognised himself. He’s really funny. He’s friends with lots of my friends and we are still sometimes vaguely in touch and he messaged me and said, the worst moment in his life was when his dad picked him up from the station and he was listening in his car to the audiobook [version of my book].”

Reflecting further on the differences between life in her 20s and life in her 30s, Alderton finished the conversation by saying: “I remember reading [that Caitlin Moran had said]: ‘You shouldn’t take anything anyone says seriously until they’re 30.’

“I remember being in my 20s being, like, no, that’s not true; I would be so happy for every opinion that I say at the pub at three in the morning to be committed and carved in stone. And now I’m like, I don’t think anyone should be held to account for things they say before they’re 30!”

Dish, hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett is available on all podcast providers now.

Main image: Getty

All other images: Courtesy of publisher/Joanna Bongard