Celebrity Changing Rooms

A full and varied week has just drawn to a close with a surreal moment.

Now, I'm fairly used to celebrities in my local health club. I've had the likes of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant spread out beside me on the stretching mat and, you know, they wince just like the rest of us folk in the gym.

But it was a slightly more unusual sleb sighting earlier as I stood in the changing room in only my unters watching the cricket. A guy came in, alighted right next to me and stripped off in a flash. It was none other than Ralph Fiennes. Like all good reporters, I made my excuses and looked away.

Now, if I had experienced this a few weeks ago, I might have been minded to annoy Ralph by validating his performance in The English Patient (year?), or more likely for his stunning Hamlet which I witnessed from Row A in Hackney (year? Oh, the memory doth failest me). But, as he stood next to me and we did all we could to avoid eye contact, my mind began racing with a string of disrespectful, inappropriate questions, one of which included: "Hey, Ralph, would you recommend the in-flight entertainment on Qantus?".

Terrible things, tabloid newspapers. They quite change the way one thinks.