Would Freud have appreciated the similarity? Probably, as he sucked sweet jam, and sticky cream from his big thick psycho-analyst's fingers, sitting in an overstuffed armchair in the picture window of a Viennese patisserie some time before the global emasculation that was the first world war, he would have reflected how closely human sexuality resembled a Victoria sponge.

In just the same way as when the knife presses against the moist top layer and without it quite yielding the cream oozes out in unpredictable ways, so sex emerges, unexpected and threatening to stain, even in times as supposedly safe and well-behaved as afternoon tea.

I could tell you of times - inappropriate times, and in places - places that would make you blush, and with people - so often the most surprising of people, where, with whom, and when the cake has bulged and the filling bubbled over and we have been obliged to carry on, with gummy plates and reddened cheeks, pretending as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened, while in our minds we desperately search our pockets for tissues which which to wipe clean our metaphorically glutinous and gluey fingers.

Once such incident happened just yesterday, an excruciating 'more tea, Vicar?' moment I have to confess, with me playing the role of the clergyman, suddenly hot under the collar, and her the flush-cheeked newly-wed. I am too much the gentleman to name names or divulge details, but suffice to say after a peculiar and strangely slow motion exchange of niceties in a Starbucks coffee lounge on Euston station, the two of us - perfect strangers until that moment - found ourselves together, in each other's mind's eye at least if not exactly in the sight of all those latte quaffers around us, in an oddly intimate state of emotional deshabillé just as our train was about to pull out. Say no more - that's cake for you.