In another column for KentOnline, Broadstairs writer and dominatrix Melissa Todd reveals how she took some American porn stars to a holy place...

Some colossally famous American porn stars came to stay with me this week. Dunno about you, but my first thought in these potentially unnerving social situations is to suggest a trip to Canterbury Cathedral.

We went for Evensong. “Oh wow, it’s like Hogwarts!” Sarah cried in delight. Not only was this her first Cathedral, it was her first Church of England service.

She’s Jewish. And she had many questions. Is this a mass? What is a mass? Why are they all in costume? Why do the men wear dresses? Why do they cross themselves? It was uncannily like spending the day with an outsize toddler. Annoyingly, I found I had very few sensible answers, beyond, well….just, because. That’s what we do. Even to a committed atheist like myself, whose sole brush with religion came from a vaguely C of E primary school, all this stuff just seems absolutely timeless, appropriate and beyond question: it was intriguing to watch through fresh eyes. She liked the theatre of Evensong, and the fact they got in free. Afterwards I managed to stop her filming a quick scene in the cloisters. Like I say, I’m an atheist, but a weirdly superstitious one.

“What’s a cloister? Is that like an oyster?”

“It’s a place where you go to contemplate.”

“What do you contemplate?”

“Your mortality.”

“Oh.” And seconds later, “just a minute long scene for Onlyfans, though?”

“NO!”

We strolled about the town after (“What’s a punt?”) before settling down for dinner - Tacos Locos, that Mexican place with such excellent restorative cocktails. Didn’t I think it odd to go to Church then drink cocktails? No, that’s very much the British way. “‘Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.’ Ecclesiastes”, said Mr Todd, who proper loves all this stuff, while I scribbled notes on Sarah’s confused foreigner persona, which, I was starting to suspect, she rather enjoys inhabiting. She is married to a British chap, and yet: “What’s aubergine? What’s courgette? What’s mange tout?”, which she pronounced to rhyme with ‘flange lout’, while I thanked the God I don’t believe in that I wasn’t driving and ordered another cocktail.

They loved Botany Bay, Margate old town, the old Kent market, and our massive Primark. The next night, to showcase the best of Kent, we drove up to Chatham. Mr Todd and I were performing in Greetings from Mudfog, a celebration of all things Dickensian at the Brook Theatre. He’d written us a 20-minute play in which I played Miss Havisham, him, Bill Sikes. Performing on stage makes me hysterical with fear, so I hid sweating behind a curtain and galloped through my lines for two panicky hours while Mr Todd tried to explain Pimm’s to our guests at a local hostelry. Afterwards, we could relax and watch the rest of the show, which was truly sensational. There was a lot of poetry. I like poetry. Our guests seemed to enjoy it too. They travel a good deal in their line of work, and yet no one else ever thinks to take them to poetry events or church services. Thoughtless and bizarre.

Sarah’s husband being British, they have to keep sending pictures of themselves together to immigration so he can continue to live and work in the US. For the rest of their lives. At every monument and pretty place they wanted a quick snap to prove they were a thing - Dickens’ dad’s office at Chatham Dockyard, Ramsgate marina, the witch ducking stool, the Chaucer statue: endless evidence their marriage was genuine. Not only pictures, but plane tickets, hotel reservations, utility bills - it really isn’t worth trying to hoodwink the US government. They make even being in love seem an exhausting chore, still less faking it.

Imagine having to mine your life constantly for details and photos in order to keep living it. You’d need to be a pretty committed porn star.

Or columnist.