Lately, in the grip of a cost of living crisis and with only my earnings to throw into the family budget while my husband Anthony is trapped in no-salary start-up hell, we’ve been looking into ways to really sweat our assets.

With one double bedroom and a box room on top of ours and our two children’s bedrooms, in a house only ten minutes by Tube from central Londonwe are lucky that our home itself could be used as a money spinner.

We’ve often had ad-hoc lodgers crashing with us, usually as a favour to the children of friends. So why not take in as many lodgers as we could cram in and charge them for the privilege?

Which is how I found myself beamed into an update of Seventies sitcom Rising Damp, me as a female Leonard Rossiter, landlord to a bunch of young’uns, all willing to live with oldies like us to pay peanuts for a room close to their work or college.

We can’t, in good conscience, charge more than a peppercorn rent – as well as putting up with two wrinkly housemates, the lodgers share one bathroom.

My fellow empty-nest friends think I’m mad, but I’ve always loved a full house of teens, their friends and assorted strays. So at first – as well as our daughter Adelaide and her boyfriend, back from uni and looking for jobs – we took in a friend of theirs in the same position, who we called Handsome Lodger.

Our son Winston and his girlfriend often popped back from university, so we were regularly a household of seven. We had Housemate Rules for everyone, family member or lodger: cleaning, their own shelf in the fridge, cooking their meals earlier than us unless eating with us, being at least willing to be on standby for looking after the dogs.

We were fine with overnight guests, didn’t mind smoking as long as it wasn’t in their rooms, had relaxed boundaries on them using staples such as milk, butter and laundry tabs.

We loved it: the competitive nights watching University Challenge together, the jigsaw puzzle craze we all got into, even the tiffs and tears of relationship rocky patches. We were like village elders, called in times of crisis, rather than just the Bank of Mum and Dad we had sometimes felt like during our children’s teen years.

Then Adelaide and her boyfriend got their own place, leaving her double room free, and Handsome Lodger moved to Bude. We have never advertised for lodgers, always getting them by word of mouth, and it wasn’t long before Handsome was replaced by Posh Lodger.

When Winston graduated this summer and moved back home, a trainee lawyer friend of his asked if he could move into our tiny half-bedroom, a place to rest his weary head for the three hours a day he wasn’t at his office in the City. But Adelaide’s room was empty too, so it made sense to rent that out as well. Anthony was keen – three lodgers would add up to more than £1,500 a month.

So when a friend of a friend said her son had moved to London and wanted to live with a family close to his work in Fitzrovia, it seemed perfect. She described her 20-year-old as quiet and hard working – music to any landlady’s ears. He asked to meet us and see the room.

He was 6ft 7in and charming. I told him how I had always liked a busy house full of the children and friends, so having hordes of lodgers felt no different. He said that sounded fun. We dubbed him the Tall Lodger.

Already feeling slightly motherly, given his youth, I decided we should throw Tall Lodger a welcome dinner. It was a merry evening, with Winston celebrating a new job and Posh Lodger having sold a few paintings.

Spirits were high, as were voices, wine levels and the occasional billow of illicit smoking. ‘I did see Tall Lodger looking a bit thousand-yard stare at times,’ Anthony said to me later, ‘but I figured he was just a bit shy’.

We were a little surprised when he announced after dinner he was going for a run. We couldn’t think of anything more gruesome but, hey, he was young.

The following night, we had an old friend for supper and, with Winston as croupier, settled down to a raucous game of poker, inviting Tall Lodger to join us. He politely declined.

The next night we had Winston’s reprobate godfather staying. They got stuck in on all their shared vices, loudly hailing Tall Lodger when he walked in from work. This time even I picked up on his diffidence.

Just three days after his arrival, Tall Lodger texted me. ‘Could I have a word?’

‘Eek, sounds ominous,’ I texted back. No answer.

‘It’s the smoke,’ he said when I met him in the kitchen. ‘And the endless partying. I just really hate smoking. I hate the smell and I can’t sleep.’

I reassured him. ‘Don’t worry about that – no one is smoking as of Monday. You just hit the end-of-summer vibe!’

He looked sadly down at me. ‘No, my bags are packed and I’m leaving right now.’ He hesitated, but went for the killer blow. ‘It’s not you, it’s me. I’m just an introvert and I need a more low-key environment.’

I was mortified. After only three days, I was being fired by a lodger 35 years my junior. I’ve since had some bracing group therapy from the cast of assembled lodgers and family. ‘We love the warm party vibe – he obviously couldn’t handle it.’

Even his mother was abashed. ‘I can’t believe I have such a square son,’ she messaged.

We replaced Tall Lodger with another friend’s child. But I couldn’t help feeling like Edina – and not Absolutely Fabulous, at that – for frightening off the young lad. Which is why I am minding my Ps and Qs with his replacement, a lovely 18-year-old girl studying fashion.

I’m trying very hard to be ‘low key’. I now know my place.