You're listening to Love Stories with me, Dolly Alderton, a series in which I talked

to guests about their most defining relationships, the passion, heartbreak, longing, familiarity

and fondness that has formed who they are.

My guest this week is the writer, actor and doodler, Jesse Cave.

She's career trajectory has been as unique, individual and eclectic as the work she creates.

She started out enacting, playing lavender brown in the Harry Potter films, before appearing

in a number of theatre and TV productions, including Call of Midwife, Trollied and Glue.

She established a following online with comedy sketches, short films and her signature doodles.

The drawings, a collection of which were published in a book titled Love Sick, are a witty,

technical depiction of both modern and timeless neuroses, illustrated vignettes of jealousy,

codependency, social media addiction and insecurity.

But it is her truthful, tender, hilarious and often painful writing that has earned

her an army of devoted fans and critical acclaim in recent years.

In 2015, she wrote and performed in a one-woman show called I Loved Her, telling the story

of how one night stand with comedian Alfie Brown turned into a baby and her first serious

relationship.

Her latest show, Sunrise, is about their breakup, the year that followed and how she dealt

with being a co-parent, a single mother of two on the dating scene and learning to let

go of Alfie, who she was still very much in love with.

Yeah, so the show starts when it was about six months after we had moved out and Alfie

was living alone and I was living with two babies.

And I asked him if he slapped with anybody since we've broken up in the way that I was trying

...