In the autumn of 2022, my husband, daughter and I were driving north up the M5 motorway to fetch a puppy. We were listening to the actor Richard E Grant being interviewed on a podcast about his dream meal. When he was asked whether he’d prefer poppadoms or bread, he replied: “Bread . . . I suffer from misophonia, so the sound of a poppadom being crunched near you literally brings the red mist of rage . . . I wish I didn’t suffer from this, but I do. So the sound of a poppadom is unacceptable.”
Grant went on to describe how he sits near the front of the cinema, on his own with a box of popcorn, so nobody else has to hear him eating it, “because if anybody else is doing it, I feel murderous”.
I paused the podcast. “That’s me,” I said. “That’s what I feel.”