The day Simon Le Bon came round to my house

He sat in the kitchen drinking tea and playing guitar. No, really, I wasn't hallucinating

I was 16 years old and in seventh heaven. Photo credit: Mark de la Hunty.

My best friend used to say I had a ‘hyper-real existence’. And I guess that’s true - I have met a lot of celebrities and had a lot of crazy things happen to me. But the event I’ll tell you about today was maybe the craziest.

When my favourite pop star came round to my house

My hair was a state, but that wasn’t foremost on my mind. Photo credit: Mark de la Hunty.

This story appeared in the Guardian in 2014 – but here are more details.

I was an obsessive Duran Duran fan – I just loved the music so much. It inspired me to want to become a singer-songwriter. So when I had to leave school in 1996, aged 16, and the deputy head told me I’d have to work out what to do with my life now, I replied ‘I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to go and find Duran Duran.’

I found out where the band were recording, thanks to a fellow fan I knew called Mandy. It was at the guitarist Warren’s home studio at 24 Octavia Street, Battersea (a posh part of south-west London, about an hour and a half from where I lived with my parents).

So I started hanging out outside the studio. One day, Simon Le Bon turned up on his motorbike. We became friends, bonding over the fact that we both came from Pinner.

He said ‘I’d like to go back to Pinner sometime.’ He took my home telephone number (I didn’t have a mobile back then – neither did most people). The next day, he phoned me up and, to my utter disbelief, asked if he could come round.