Back in the day people met their future spouses and many a partner at work.

Flirting on the factory floor, lingering by the photocopier and coupling up after car sharing was commonplace.

In large organisations, stepping into work was like mingling in a giant dating site, potential at every turn.

Romances just happened and no one cared. Couples were regularly caught canoodling in the stationery cupboard or returning from lunch flushed and flustered.

It was how it was.

After the initial flurry of workplace tittle-tattle when news broke about a budding relationship, no one batted an eye lid at colleagues dating, developing to marriages, with collections for wedding presents going around as another pair tied the knot.

Even split ups went on in a work environment and productivity didn’t suffer.

I’d love to see the statistics of the number of romantic relationships, and children, started in the Norwich Union – now Aviva – and the number of multi-generational families who have worked there. 

If the company had taken the tack that oil and gas BP did last week, banning inter-staff relationships, the marriage and birthrate in Norwich would have plummeted over the decades. What would the landscape look like now?

It was one of the region’s biggest employers, and also its unofficial marriage agencies.

Working 40 hours a week with people, relationships are bound to spark and develop.

Norwich Union back in the day – modern day Aviva might still be – was a hive of romance.

So what happened and when to make employers ban colleague relationships and demand anyone who having one – or had one in the last three years – fess up or face disciplinary action or dismissal?

BP this week demanded by email that every one of its 90,000 strong workforce divulges any sniff of romance and colleague cosiness or risk the sack.

In the upper echelons, senior executives have been given three months to confess to any intimate relationships that have occurred at work in the last three years.

Awks – and very weird that a company wants to delve into staff’s private lives in the deep and distant past and demand detail. Who would want to work for a company that allows no privacy?

And what does BP and other anti-relationship businesses believe constitutes a relationship?

Do they mean sexual? Friendships can be as close and, perhaps what authority fears, conspiratorial, as a romantic sexual relationship. Are we not supposed to make friends at work?

And what about different members of the same family being employed at the same place? Is that to be a work no-no too?

In workplaces, there needs to be trust. Refusing to treat employees like adults does nothing for building trust. If a relationship poses a conflict of interest, that is an issue, but a blanket relationship ban with demands of full reveals is another.

It breeds secrecy in a suspicious culture. People will sneak around anyway. That does nothing for team spirit and productivity, and just builds resentful employees.

BP has form in the shenanigans of its former boss Bernard Looney, who quit because of office affairs amid claims he wasn’t fully truthful with the board about his own inter-office affairs.

His misdemeanour has come at a hefty cost to others as the firm resorts to the sledgehammer to crack a nut model, which is more likely to produce a sterile, soulless and cold environment than a go-ahead workforce.

There appears to be no reason given for the exposure. An explanation of fears of distraction at work, conflict of interest, friction or favouritism might have gone down better.

The rules also explicitly ban anyone from “directly or indirectly managing” anyone with whom they have been in a close relationship, as well as family members.

This is kind of understandable. Who would want to be managed by their partner or daughter anyway?

It’s an extremely strange and sinister step that other companies will hopefully avoid.

Changing movie tastes

Steamy sex scenes used to titillate and would be crowd-pullers for films.

Now, sex has little appeal to squeaky clean audiences who prefer a gripping story line over gratuitous romping. Thank goodness.

While sex scenes have been phased out, scenes involving drinking, drugs, violence or foul language remain higher though, so we’re not that wholesome.

The 250 highest grossing films featured 40 per cent less sexual content last year compared to the year 2000.

Younger viewers, the Generation Zs, don’t want to see graphic sex scenes, which they view as old-fashioned stereotypes that objectify women.

They want subtle sex or none at all. I bet actors are mightily relieved. Although the ‘intimacy coaches’ must be hard up for work.

Open discussions about consent, the #MeToo movement, and audience distaste has changed the whole attitude to sex on screen.

Almost half the films released last year featured no sexual content, while 24 years ago it was less than a fifth, according to the analysis first published in The Economist.

Thriller and action films has seen a 70 per cent drop in the last 20 years.

I can’t wait to see what they do with the next Bond film, if it ever happens. He’ll not know what to do with himself without the seduction and what comes next…