Laura Weir: From late-night trips to Sainsbury’s to stag-do shenanigans — Find my Friends has made stalkers of us all

It was a laid-back dinner party. I was overdressed, in knee-high boots and a tiny skirt. The other guests were much cooler, wearing long hemlines and hair shagged out rather than blow-dried. The boys were sexy too — no suits — and smoking was allowed inside.

It was so laid-back, in fact, that finger food was being served — it was basically the Seventies. Which is why I felt like I was hallucinating when one of the guests told me he was tracking all of his friends using his iPhone. It was yet another confirmation that the device we think is a phone is actually a portable outpost of MI6 that can make calls — and everyone is at it, apparently.

“Where’s Mags?” someone asked Malcolm (let’s call him Malcolm). “I don’t know,” he said. “She couldn’t make it. Let’s see where she is.” Errr, what?

He then got out his phone, logged into Find my Friends and located her within minutes. “I like to use it,” he said, “because if my friends are just trundling around Sainsbury’s on a Saturday night I know my life is far more interesting than theirs.”

Now I know I sound like a virgin who doesn’t realise how great sex is but hang on a minute. In that moment our conversation felt completely out of step with the anti-intrusion public discourse, let alone the liberal vibes of the party. It reminded me of when I was still into wearing fur, or when I was still buying tickets to see Blur instead of Oasis. Was I really that out of step with what was going on?

And then the madness descended. Because Malcolm had admitted that he tracked everyone he knew, everyone started opening up. Our quite razzy dinner party turned into round-table tech therapy. One guy said if his girlfriend ever stopped tracking him, that’s when he would know she didn’t fancy him anymore. Then she said she found tracking him comforting because there were so many ways to cheat nowadays, and that when he was on a stag do recently she tracked him into bed.

This girl is an absolute belter, pretty much one of the most gorgeous girls in London. Surely she must be joking? “Everyone’s doing it,” said the youngest female around the table, like it’s not a big deal.

There are times when tracking can be good — tracking your kids, I guess: when are they going to and from school? Or at a festival, when you lose your mates and the prospect of three days in a K-hole with people you don’t know becomes the new normal? It’s also useful, said another friend, when someone vulnerable falls off the wagon. He tracks a friend of his who is in and out of rehab and Find a Friend has saved his life and dignity a few times.

You, of course, have to agree to be tracked in the first place, and you can decide for how long someone tracks you, so at least there’s a degree of consent.

Malcolm was quite happy to let me track him “indefinitely” — he’s currently on Lower Clapton Road, in Sainsbury’s.

Booze-free is the new Botox — just look at Kate Moss glowing her way through New York Fashion Week. The super of all supers has allegedly quit the drink — not that she is on record as saying so because Ms Moss isn’t uncool enough to evangelise about being sober. Instead she just looks an absolute bomb.

After seeing pap shots of her celebrating her birthday in Paris, I sent a screengshot to my hairdresser, Melanie, at Josh Wood: “Make me look like this please? I need a pick-me-up,” I said. “That’s a lot of blonde,” she replied, before admitting that not since the days of Jennifer Aniston and “the Rachel” has a hairstyle been fan-girled so heavily. Legions of Londoners are taking pictures of the #newKate into salons. The inside track is that the brand of blonde is a creamy, buttery shade with golden lights and a lot of bleach.

“Kate is the epitome of cool, and we all want in,” says Mel. She’s not wrong. I’ve been in her orbit over the years at parties but I’ll never forget seeing her on set. She was filming a commercial in Farringdon and I caught sight of her through a window. The woman glowed golden. Maybe I should stop drinking too…

Here’s a thought, admittedly one from my friend Danny but I’m sharing it all the same. In light of female-led The Favourite being the biggest film of the year, why are we talking about Richard Madden being the next Bond and not Jodie Comer?

Now I’m not campaigning for a female Bond in the name of equality but don’t you think it’s strange that it hasn’t come up? In a post #MeToo world where Dr Who is a woman, it makes total sense that a female Bond might be next.

Not to mention that Comer’s character, Villanelle, in Killing Eve was much more complex, damaged and petrifying than Madden’s in the Bodyguard (which I loved, and I adore Madden), but how long before #00Jodie starts trending?