Singles shake-down

ELNA BAKER is 28-years-old. She’s been living in New York City since moving there at 18 years of age to go to university. She’s five foot 10 inches and beautiful. She’s a comedian. In conversation, she has a self-deprecating charm and ready wit that makes her disarmingly attractive.

Unsurprisingly, she’s kissed a lot of guys since moving to New York, but she’s never slept with any of them because she’s a Mormon. It’s a stance that creates “a relationship Catch 22” with her amorous encounters. The longest non-Mormon boyfriend she had stuck around for four weeks, and that was because, she kids, he was outta town for two of those weeks.

Her decision to write a memoir about the conflict between her religious convictions and life as a bohemian in the world’s funkiest city has made her, as she puts it, “oddly famous in Mormon circles”.