He argued for it in the unlovely language in which counselling agencies tend to express themselves in public. We pick up the pieces of couples who were prepared to set about ending their marriage in a reasonably adult way, but the law intervened and created divisions between them. And all this is in the face of research which agrees that the best environment for children is one that is free of conflict.”French has also argued for the legalisation of re-marriage in church, another issue not likely to endear him to the right. There’s a gut reflex: we’ve got to pin the bastard because he walked out on her But probably something led to that happening.

And in any event, what do you achieve by trying to pin the bastard?”Three-quarters of divorces use the fault grounds because it’s the quickest way. So one of the partners finds themselves on the receiving end of a catalogue of their misdemeanours, drawn up by a solicitor and often unsubstantiated, containing things that the partners have never said to each other. It is a source of pride for French that the issue Relate campaigned on – abolition of fault-based “quickie” divorces, in which one partner sues the other – was recently endorsed in the Lord Chancellor’s white paper on divorce.”We’ve got deeply ingrained habits about divorce being an adversarial business. Neither did Mr French’s continual campaigning to amend the divorce law, which, early on, met resistance from a certain John Redwood, then a little-known Secretary of State for Wales. In 1992, he complained that television commercials “hoodwinked” people into accepting the traditional suburban family. In a speech he gave at the time in which he said: “The public is now more willing to accept that families of various shapes can and do function well – some with one parent, some with two.” The Archdeacon of York jumped on him for this, declaring it “very irresponsible for a man in his position”.The publication of The Relate Guide to Sex in Loving Relationships didn’t exactly go down a storm with rightwingers. French made it clear that gay couples were free to consult Relate (although when I asked him if any do, he says, in practice, they don’t).

He believes her support communicates important messages about Relate, “that marriages are not only sweetness and light … that there are other possibilities than carrying on living your life in a loveless marriage.” Her presence, French estimates, generates pounds 150,000 a year for the organisation.With the Princess on board, French set about the risky business of broadening Relate’s range The adjustments were extensive. It stopped speaking exclusively of “marriages” and took up the phrase “established relationships”. “She’s been hugely courageous in saying, ‘I’m going to go on with this’,”Mr French says. What clearer indication could there be that marriage was going through a bad patch than the fact that the nation’s emblematic family was falling apart?The Princess has stayed in place.

This was greeted in some quarters as a massive and hilarious backfire. Mr French regarded it as the opposite – an unfortunate but appropriate underscoring of his organisation’s purpose in a tumultuous age. He had no notion that shortly afterwards she would become a potential client. Not that the public noise he created has always come about deliberately. Eighteen months into his tenure, he convinced the Princess of Wales that she should become Relate’s patron. “Nobody understood the concept of profile,” French says, “or of getting good press coverage or funds from donors.