This morning as I waltzed back into my road having been to collect my newspaper I came face-to-face with a national media figure walking his dog (and a bicycle) towards the tow path. In the past I have met him on business on half a dozen occasions, and socially maybe three or four times, mostly through a pal who lives in nearby St Margaret’s.

My instinctive reaction – to blank him, as he did me – was interesting. Given our history, the fact is that at the very least we know each other by sight (mind you, since he appears regularly on radio, television and in newspapers he’s instantly recognisable anyway) but I guess he has the excuse that, since he cannot be expected to remember the name of every insignificant person he comes across, it was better to pretend he hasn’t registered my presence. Or maybe he blanked me because I blanked him first. Upon spotting him I certainly did a ‘double take’ (as you do in such circumstances) before deciding to ignore him.

Thinking about it afterwards, I felt that perhaps the incident said rather more about me than about him.

I know people whom, if they happened upon someone remotely famous, or even spied them from a distance, would make a point of engaging them in a conversation of some sort, or at least say “Hi!”, even if they’d never previously been introduced. Personally in such circumstances I would go out of my way to avoid doing this - both because I assume that most people in the public eye must occasionally appreciate being able to go out without being pestered and furthermore, as an individual, I’m a shy, retiring type who generally likes to mind my own business. Obviously there are exceptions - if Kylie Minogue sashayed towards me across the room at a cocktail party and cooed “Hello Kevin, I’ve always wanted to meet you” … whilst I might raise an eyebrow, I would certainly do her the courtesy of exchanging at least a polite word or two, if not bodily fluids.

A not dissimilar situation occurred to me on Monday evening. As I was sitting in an Indian restaurant, sipping a beer & reading a newspaper whilst waiting for my takeaway meal, a familiar face walked in to collect his. He was (and I suppose still is) a B-list television presenter who worked for many years both at the BBC and Thames Television, where we came across each other occasionally over contractual and other issues, and – in the last fifteen years – I’ve come across him & his wife socially once or twice. I guess there’s a chance that he may not have recognised me since I’ve put on about thirty pounds, lost all my hair & grown a beard in that time, but (my point is) again we studiously ignored each other for the five minutes it took for his meal to arrive.

No doubt most human beings would be content or better to come across someone they used to work with (however infrequently) or had met before … and I’m an anti-social loner git who begins from a starting position in which I assume I’m so uninteresting that nobody would particularly want to spend the time of day in my company … until, that is, Brian Ashton names me in the England Rugby World Cup squad.

Given my own antipathy to the prospect of celebrity I have a natural cynicism about those who court it. As the cost to the taxpayer of Tony Blair’s vainglorious farewell global tour soars past the £1 million mark, I noted yesterday that concern is growing amongst Whitehall mandarins at the proposals that Cherie Booth (Blair’s wife) should become a Dame - and soccer player David Beckham a knight of the realm - in the traditional Prime Minister’s departing Honours List. As I’m opposed to all four (Blair, Booth, Beckham and the Honours List) on principle, I’m rather hoping that Mr Blair will press on regardless. Somehow it seems entirely appropriate for Booth & Beckham to be included in a line-up as potentially grubby & discredited as Harold Wilson’s infamous (Lady Falkender) Lavender List of 1976.