“You’re so money baby.”

As I work in a murky provincial corner of the ‘meedya’ I sometimes find myself on a ‘list’ of ‘important people’ who are then invited to a ‘thing’ that involves food, drink, untold glamour (basically fit women in skimpy outfits) and no financial outlay.

Which happened the other week and, as the above sounds utterly brilliant, I promptly RSVP’ed to the affirmative secure in the belief that the organisers should have first checked if I were actually important before offering me ‘free shit’.

I inform them that myself, Uncannily Similar and ‘others’ shall be attending.

Amazingly, no-one at the P.R. susses that I am, in fact, ‘No-one At All’ and accept.

Uncannily Similar: Right. Got a few more ‘on board’. Be about half a dozen now.

Me: Erm. Ok. Who?

He reels off a set of names and –

Me: ‘Janice and Paul’?

U.S: Aaah. Yeeah.

Me: No offence. Janice looks like a homeless. WHEN SHE MAKES AN EFFORT. And – not being funny – Paul is a fucking DWARF. An – no, hang on – an ACTUAL dwarf. His eyes don’t even point in the same direction – no, shut up, he’s got the little hands and everything – there is NO WAY anyone will think that we are ‘high-rollers’ worthy of ‘free shit’ when the CIRCUS IS IN TOWN. Never.

Three hours later.

We’re all wasted on free booze and acting like over-excited children. We’ve gone back for ‘seconds’ at the buffet (some of us ‘thirds’), loudly demanded why the champagne appears to have dried up and have also asked where the free cocktails have gone.

I decide to leave, aware of the fact that I’m not getting on to any more P.R. mailing lists in the near future.

And get home to find a troubling letter from a hospital on my doormat.

Chinatown.

“Here we go.” I think to myself.

There is an obvious Mental heading straight for me. I’m like a magnet for these people.

I’m outside the office building that I work in, smoking a cigarette with some colleagues. A very small, over-dressed, ridiculously be-spectacled nut-case heads in our direction. He looks like someone has 'wardrobed' him with the brief of ‘making me look as out of place as possible with a budget of only a million pounds’.

His wheeled-suitcase is probably worth more than the house I live in, and the back-street where we choose to smoke is somewhere that people are routinely murdered after dark. True. This is already very weird.

“Hi. Do you know somewhere I can get some Chinese food?”

It’s ten o’clock in the morning. And millionaire-boy wants some Chinese food. Of course. And he’s asking me. Obviously. Nut-case.

“What?”

“It’s just I have to be at the theatre in an hour and I’m starving.”

Fuck’s sake we’ve all got problems, it’s only gone ten and I’ve had a dreadful day already. I’m guessing you’ve come from the train station across the street and am – DO YOU KNOW WHAT FUCK OFF.

That’s what I think. What I actually do is brusquely give him directions to Chinatown, secure in the knowledge that there shan’t be a single place open before lunchtime.

Some time passes. I’m smoking a cigarette with a colleague who I threatened with physical violence over the phone one evening some weeks ago but we’re fine now. It’s a long story and I don’t come out of it terribly well.

Colleague: I know you’re a Gay Magnet but that was just stupid. And you didn’t have to be so rude.

Me: Do you want some more? Do you? Anyway. What?

Colleague: That was Wayne Sleep.

Me: Was it?

Colleague: Yes

Me: Oh.