A Night In With Emma Barnett

She’s helped dislodge a colleague’s stuck tampon by shouting directions from the back of a cab; shot up IVF drugs in Downing Street before interviewing the Prime Minister - after a period disease left her infertile - and has a period sex story to end all period sex stories.

Emma Barnett is done with periods, and all women have to endure, being unmentionable. Taboo. And has collated some of the funniest, grimmest and saddest stories, never told before, from women and men around the world, in a book many didn’t feel was serious or important enough. Why had she, a ‘serious current affairs journalist’ not written a proper book about a proper subject, many wanted to know. But au contraire. What’s more important than the bodily process to which we all owe our lives?

The new presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour pulls no punches and in her typically forthright style, invites you to celebrate the paperback publication of Period., a frank and very funny rallying cry for women and men.

If there’s one thing Emma loathes more than actually having her period, it’s not being able to talk about it openly without feeling like she’s just whipped out her tampon and offered it as an hors d’oeuvre. Especially as she spends a third of the month, every month, doubled over in pain due to her crippling endometriosis. But no bother, she just lowers her microphone, swigs some whisky and pills and broadcasts to the nation like a gangster rapper - leaning back.

After unknowingly becoming the first person in the UK to announce she was menstruating on live TV news, periods have literally followed Emma around – with women coming up to her on the street, bus and of course, in the loo, sharing their stories. Which Emma has bloody loved. Pun intended. Now she wants an evening with you to let it all hang out; to chat periods, pain and power. Plus - she can also tell you how tampons nearly toppled Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal in the 11th hour. No, really.