'I'll Never Wash This Hand Again'

When I was about 18, a friend and I went to the Stratford Rex in East London to see a singer called Kelly Price perform. My friend M is a tallish, slender girl with an enviably smooth chocolatey complexion and sleek figure. In fact, she looked like Naomi Campbell. Next to her, I was short, pasty (yes, black people can be pasty too) and dumpy. She later went on to become a beauty queen.

Her looks had attracted the attention of one Richard Blackwood, who at the time was positioning himself as the UK's answer to Eddie Murphy, which I'm sure he distances himself from now - who'd want to be associated with paternity wrangles, gay rumours and Donkey? - but I digress. M and I arrived at the concert and she went over to say hi to Richard, introducing me to him. Nice to meet a well-known face, I thought to myself. We enjoyed the concert, and that was that.

As we were about to leave, a guy brushed through the crowd and said breathlessly to us: 'Guess who's standing over there. Timbaland.' M and I rolled our eyes, then thought for a second about the possibility of this guy not making this up. So we ventured back into the crowd to investigate.

Sure enough, behind a wall of big black geezers, was a member of the Itty-Bitty-Celebrity Committee. Timbaland.

I have to say, at this point, that I'm a huge fan of his work. I think it's a testament to his skills that he's still as relevant now as he was over 10 years ago - in fact, some of the stuff he did back then still sounds fresh now, and if you listen to lots of music you can pretty much date a track by the production style; it's the aural equivalent of cutting it open and counting the rings. And when he first became well known, every producer worth their Cubase started copying his style (think stuttering beats and, if you listen closely, vocal samples and snippets of what sounds like beatboxing, set somewhere in the year 3067). It was much like the vocoder obsession R&B and hip hop have at the moment - once there's a trend, everybody does it to death.

Then you have his voice. Over the beats, his voice was deep, stamping his authoritah over the track. Except... it doesn't sound like that in real life, or at least it didn't when he came up to me and whispered in my ear. I asked him to repeat what he'd said, but he didn't. He was softly-spoken. I was slightly disappointed - it was like hearing Barry White turn into Mickey Mouse.

Oh, and the height. I'd got the impression that he was short, but there's short and there's me towering over him in my 1.5in heels. I'm 5'5.

I've yet to explain why he smelled of flowers, or rather flower-scented room spray. It's not very manly, is it? Very odd.

Anyway, I shook hands with him, told him I was a fan (I still wish I'd asked him to say hi to Missy for me, I was a big fan of hers at the time, too). So my first encounter with a genuine celebrity (sorry Richard, it was nice while it lasted) was a nice one, albeit one that left me slightly bemused. I also wonder what he was thinking at the time. He meets so many people that unless he has some kind of scary memory, there's no chance he'd remember me.

So. Have you ever met a celebrity? And how was the encounter?