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She does, though, have another sideline, one that doesn’t earn any money or further her portfolio career: celebrity matchmaking. This is something of an occupational hazard with her contacts book. Kate Moss (“I wouldn’t say she was a friend; I see her on the circuit”) and “Gianni” — “I used to go to the shows when he was alive” — drop naturally into conversation. She laughs a low, throaty laugh about her setup triumphs, but then looks worried. “I think if I’m a fixer, then that’s a fault. And I know that I do that. Trying to fix people is not a great thing, because people are unfixable.”

Still, she acknowledges that her meddling has its benefits. “Like the famous occasion with Guy and Madonna — did I think that they were a good match? Well, I thought they absolutely were.” Was it planned? She won’t say yes, exactly, but ... “I thought they would be good for each other. I thought they would spark off each other in a way that they have — because I knew them both separately. Of course, I had no idea that they would be so sparkling. That they would marry and give me such a beautiful godson. But I’m happy that they have and that they’re so great together.”

She has been with Sting since 1981, and they married in August 1992. Despite all the tantric-sex nonsense (the one subject that is off limits), Styler is the first person to admit that having a soul mate is hard work. “People think, ‘Ooh, yes, I’ve got my soul mate — I can relax and have a glass of wine. I’ve done it.’ But marriages are work and that work has to happen every day. Otherwise, one of you can go into a different lane and leave the other behind.” She goes into Oprah mode. “Even if you’re a thousand miles away, you need to have a conversation every day. ‘How are you?’ has become ‘How- are-you-I-don’t-f***ing-care-because-I-haven’t-got-time-to-hear-you-anyway.’ So it’s important to me that my ‘How are you?’, when it ’s said to my mate, is meant.”

Styler obviously thinks about things a lot. The one thing she hasn’t considered is what it will be like to be back on telly, in people’s sitting rooms. At the moment, she can go shopping wherever she likes without being recognised. Although, she laughs: “Sting says that in any shop we ever go into, everybody knows exactly who I am. I went into a shop with him once and they put the closed sign up straightaway. It was like, hey, Trudie’s here — kerching!”

It seems that the one thing she really does not want is a higher profile, but isn’t television asking for that? “You’re scaring me,” she says, looking shocked. “I haven’t even thought about the outcome. I don’t know. You know, I see that I’m in the papers quite a lot, because I’m Sting’s wife and I do a lot of things. Will there be more of it? I don’t know. I’ll just be a face on TV. Will it be more exposure? I don’t know.”

For a chance to prove that acting should never have given up on her, she must think it’s worth the risk.

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