Room 101

So I guess you're wondering how I ended up spending an evening finding out random facts about a complete stranger. Including the fact that she's going to hand her notice in tomorrow so she can go travelling around Australia. Her brother is joining the navy, and will become a lieutenant, and she is a big Top Gear fan.

I'll be honest, this was definitely an instance where I should have perhaps used Erica's patented SAWO technique (Scowl And Walk Off). I didn't. For that I suffered. Not in any major way, just in a kind of socially embarrassed way. It wasn't as bad as the time I paid to spend an evening with a Chinese prostitute. Well, not quite.

Here's the story.

"Is this the queue for Room 101?" I asked the girl in front of me at the London Studios. It was. We made polite conversation until my friends arrived. And then, as it would have been rude to ignore her once I had no further conversational need of her, I continued to include her in our conversation.

The thing is, we then filed into the studio audience together, and sat next to each other for the entire recording.

After the taping, we filed out of the studio together, and, my friends went to Embankment and the girl and I walked towards Waterloo together. She lived in Stratford. I said, "So, are you taking the Jubilee line home then?"

"No - it takes ages. I'm going on the Central Line."

"Oh. Me too."

Ten minutes' wait for a Waterloo and City Line train, fifteen minutes of train journey, and my least favourite part? Saying goodbye as the tube finally pulled into Bethnal Green, and then doing that awkward smiling thing for about six million years between the train stopping and the tube doors opening.

And she was another fucking Kate.