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–What’s the mat­ter?
–What?
–You’re act­ing funny.
–I’m not.
–What is it?
–I’m fine.

You must be famil­iar with this con­ver­sa­tion. And of course there will come a moment when the Jack must pop from the box: you admit what the mat­ter is, and face up to what­ever con­se­quences will follow.

Within a year of us get­ting together, Jols worked out that my opti­mum ‘pop’ moment is after seven ‘What’s the matter’s. Fif­teen years later I’m mak­ing progress. These days it’s more like three.

I’m sit­ting in the Low­lan­der bar/brasserie in Covent Gar­den, with a burger and a pad­dle of three Bel­gian beers sit­ting in front of me. I should be in heaven, but I must admit I’m sit­ting here, once again strug­gling to explain what the mat­ter is.

This week­end break in Lon­don is the only hol­i­day we’re get­ting in 2012, and our sec­ond evening is now leak­ing away. I’ve not said any­thing for the last half hour, and I’ve looked through Jols as she has pointed at all the lovely things in shops.

For once, I know exactly what’s up. But it’s just too embar­rass­ing to admit to.

Let me tell you what the prob­lem is. I know I can trust you.

The pre­vi­ous night we’d been out, had a few drinks, and were wan­der­ing back to our hotel, at around 11pm. The hotel was sit­u­ated a short way along from the Nov­ello The­atre, where Der­ren Brown was per­form­ing his show ‘Sven­gali’. And would you know it, just as we walked past the doors, two men emerged. The first of the men, dressed in a rain­coat and flat cap, ran past us and off down the street. I didn’t see where he went, but as he passed us I saw that it was Der­ren Brown him­self. Exciting!

The sec­ond man remained stand­ing in the door­way of the the­atre, but he caught my eye as we passed, and he smiled and nodded.

Yes, he seemed to say. That was Der­ren Brown.

—That was Der­ren Brown, I said to Jols.

We were both very excited, and we added him to our list of Mike Leigh, Sue Perkins and Ralph Fiennes of ‘star spots’ we’d man­aged so far.

Today, on our way to look round the shops and go to Low­lan­der, we passed the the­atre again. We walked round a cor­ner, and were imme­di­ately accosted by a tall posh man hold­ing a micro­phone. Next to him was a cam­era man and a busy-looking direc­tor (or what­ever). The tall posh man stopped me.

—Do you have a moment to answer a few ques­tions about Der­ren Brown?
—Sure, I said in a most unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally relaxed and expan­sive man­ner.
—Great, he said, and cued the cam­era man, who adjusted his broadcast-quality cam­era to get Jols and me in frame. —So, are you a fan of Der­ren Brown?
—Yeah, I like his stuff. His TV shows and every­thing, he’s really good.
—What do you like best?
—I really like his sort of Vic­to­rian Music Hall stuff, and all that stuff where he places sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages for peo­ple to see in their every­day life, and then gets them to act on it.
—Oh right, great. Have you seen his lat­est stage show?
—No, no. I’d love to, but we’re just off to see a Hitch­cock film across town.
—Sure. And would you ever want to appear on stage your­self?
—Me? Oh, no, no. I just don’t have that per­for­mance gene.

Just as I was say­ing this, a group of schoolkids drifted into shot behind me, and one out­go­ing lad decided to shout ‘Blooauragh­wag­glewag­gle­wahh’ right in my ear as he went past.

—Okay, said the posh man, —thanks very much for your time. It’s a shame that kid just did that, really.

Jols and I con­tin­ued on up the road and into the shops.

—You spoke very well, said Jols with mild sur­prise. —I just stood there and went red­der and redder.

As I walked though, sev­eral things began to revolve in my mind. How come I’d been so unnat­u­rally (for me) calm, and con­fi­dent in answer­ing all of those questions?

What did he mean ‘would you ever want to appear on stage your­self’? Does this mean I’m going to find myself hyp­no­tised and emerg­ing on to the stage in the Nov­ello the­atre at the end of the show tonight, to be laughed and pointed at by a thou­sand people?

A ridicu­lous thought. Ridiculous.

And that kid was weird. Why did he pass me and say ‘Blooauraghwagglewagglewahh’? What, was that some kind of trig­ger or something?

And… last night. Der­ren Brown fixed his eye to the dis­tance and ran past me; quite strange. And then that sec­ond man looked me in the eye, and smiled, and nod­ded. ‘Yes,’ he seemed to say. ‘That was Der­ren Brown.’

It was at this moment that I was passed by a short, rotund, but dap­perly dressed man with sil­very hair. He didn’t look at me, but I looked at him. He looked –not exactly like, but sub­stan­tially sim­i­lar to– Alfred Hitch­cock in one of his movie cameos.

Ridicu­lous, ridicu­lous for me even to turn the han­dle on this idea that was cur­rently tens­ing up in my brainbox.

We wan­dered into the Orla Kiely shop and Jols pointed out a few things.

–Ooh, look at that, isn’t that lovely?
–Mm? Yeah. Yeah.

My voice was too loud in my own head, like I had my ears covered. I paced around the shop try­ing to walk off this miasma. I couldn’t admit to it, could I? Walk it off, walk it off.

As I gazed at the work­man­ship in the floor­boards, I became aware of some­one stand­ing near me. I looked up to see a very tall man, maybe 6ft 5in, look­ing quite intently at me. I moved away. I moved down­stairs. And I must admit I began to sweat it a lit­tle. It seemed less ridicu­lous now.

The man fol­lowed me downstairs.

I went upstairs, and I left the shop, and the man did the same. He wasn’t fol­low­ing me as such, just— doing the same.

This is where Jols found me, out­side the shop, look­ing pale. The tall man was met by a woman at that moment, and they strolled unhur­riedly down the street.

I can’t really remem­ber what hap­pened between that moment and now, with us sit­ting here in Low­lan­der, but I was essen­tially hyper alert and ultra recep­tive to just about every­thing that was hap­pen­ing around me.

Jols was get­ting increas­ingly hacked off with my silence and lack of inter­est in any­thing she had to do or say. Anything except of course in her (quite stroppy) sug­ges­tion that we go to Low­lan­der. She knew I liked it there.

So, here we are, and I have finally sum­moned up the will to tell her all this.

I’m expect­ing an ‘awww, don’t be such an ego­tis­ti­cal moron’ from Jols, but that wasn’t what I got.

—Oh my god, she says. —That’s actu­ally really freaky.

From the cor­ner of a packed restau­rant, a group of men painted head-to-toe in orange and car­ry­ing brass-band instru­ments get up and pick their way with some dif­fi­culty over to the front door and leave.

This is true. This actu­ally happens.

—Look, I say. —I’ve ruined their lit­tle game. They know I know.

They are totally off to find another victim.

Ah, so any­way: we go to see the Hitch­cock movie, which is great, and we return to the hotel at about 10:30pm. Just as a thou­sand audi­ence mem­bers are pour­ing out of the Nov­ello Theatre.

—Quick, mut­ters Jols.

We put our heads down and rush into the hotel, up to our room, and lock the door.

Der­ren Brown must get this a lot.