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Sorkin, whose past romantic interests have reportedly included actors Kristin Chenoweth and Kristin Davis, columnist Maureen Dowd and model Paulina Porizkova, as well as former wife Julia Bingham, addressed his former Australian flame.

“Jillian, I just want to say, chances are in the last 35 years you’ve gone out with another guy or two,” he said. “I’ll have to get over that. I do hope you’ve had as happy a life [as you deserve].”

During an extended interview that later included a new romantic twist, Sorkin said he was happy to hear how the Australian federal election had gone.

“You have something that we do not have in the US, or we no longer have in the US: independents,” he said.

“People who are fiscally conservative but yet they want to do something about climate change, they want to something about equality, things like that.

“We don’t have that. We have the red team and the blue team.

“And the red team refuses to accept provable facts and refuses to deny provable falsehoods. They absolutely believe [the last presidential] election was stolen and a whole bunch of them tried to overthrow the election on January 6th.”

Sorkin revealed the key role that Nicole Kidman played in launching his Hollywood career when she came to see his Broadway play A Few Good Men, which he’d mapped out on cocktail napkins while working behind the bar during a production of La Cage aux Folles.

“She came to see it, called her then-husband, Tom Cruise, and said ‘you should get over here. There’s a part you’re going to want to play’,” he said. “Tom came to see the play, called Jack Nicholson and said ‘you should get over here’.”

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Sorkin wrote the screenplay and Rob Reiner directed Cruise, Nicholson and Demi Moore in a movie that became a hit and earned four Oscar nominations, including best picture.

Near the end of the session, when Sorkin was taking questions from the floor, there was one from an upper tier that revived hopes that Vivid might include sparks as well as lights, music and ideas this year.

In a tentative voice, Jillian/Gillian asked Sorkin: “How important was it?”

The crowd went wild.

In the crush in the foyer, it was impossible to locate the woman Sorkin seemed to wish would join his personal social network.

So it was not clear whether Hollywood’s most famous screenwriter met up with his lost love after the show.

More than one audience member – this one included – left hoping so.

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Email the writer at gmaddox@smh.com.au and follow him on Twitter at @gmaddox.