‘Double ouzo, hold the Coke,’ Mum ordered at the Mkushi Country Club bar, during spanikopita night. ‘My daughter’s a lesbian.’ The Greek farmers blinked at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You bloody people invented it.’

Alexandra Fuller’s wild parents make good copy, as was clear in Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, her bestselling 2002 memoir about her chaotic, often tragic, childhood in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia).