When asked who she sees as “competition” in the writing world, Lynda confessed: “Everybody.” But when host Ryan Tubridy urged her to “give us a name”, she said: “My bete noire… Richard Osman. Now the reality is… I mean you can't watch any program on television without him looming in it and I immediately turn it off.

“I can't stand it because then people say ‘well how do you think his books shoot to number one?’ You know and a big movie made of his last book and you go, ‘if you're on TV every 10 minutes , your public will buy you’ and that is it. It is so important for writers like me to get on shows like yours, because it really does reach out to readers.”

She went as far as to pretend to vomit over the star, before adding: “No you're not allowed to be honest. You've got to be lovely to everybody.

“This is what is often very difficult. You can't actually be rude about anybody because then you'll be attacked or my publishers will tell me off. Everybody will tell me off – don't swear, don't do this, don't do that and you get a little bit paranoid.”

Ryan mused: “Because you're a woman who knows her mind who wants to speak her mind and say how you feel,” as Lynda told him: “I’d love to, but I’m not allowed to.”