: 26 March 2002 :

I met Edwina Currie on Saturday night.

You know when you're singing loudly and lustily and someone comes round the corner, and you don't know whether to suddenly go quiet or just carry on? Well, I had just put my washing in the machine (“you made me forget my dreams”) and I was walking back across the courtyard (“when I woke up to you sleeping”) and I noticed a woman coming down the steps opposite me (“there was blood on the sheets again”) and just as I hit the high note she said “Excuse me...”

So I stopped singing, and she explained that she was visiting the college for a BBC World Service conference and did I know where the drinks and the meal would be? I had a fair idea, so I said I'd show her, and while this exchange was going on I recognised her as Edwina Currie, Tory politician and author of trashy sex novels. All the way between the courtyard and the dining hall, while I answered her questions about the college and aren't the old buildings lovely, I was trying to think of some witty parting shot. I couldn't think of anything that was any good. In the end I just said goodbye when she got there.

Although it would have been funny if she'd been drunk, or rude, or done something gossipworthy, I have to say she was perfectly ordinary and polite, and there isn't any reason why she shouldn't be.

Not a fascinating story, then, just a little brush with a famous figure. Maybe some other time I'll tell you the story about when I went for a birthday meal with my family, and we saw Michael Portillo get pissed and spill a Bloody Mary down his shirt.