Back in the early nineties I had a girlfriend attending Goldsmiths College in East London. She shared a large crumbling Georgian house that was a maze of rooms and odours. As well as my girlfriend Sinead, there was a stunning, blonde girl named Sarah. She had a jealous boyfriend that would appear at the house randomly to check on her. He was built like a brick shithouse. The building was also host to a variety of student stereotypes including musicians and dope dealers. A pizza box had been left on top of bin bags in the kitchen, where an infestation of maggots grew exponentially. Abandoned there to breed in a grotesque experiment. It was a nice place. I liked it.

One afternoon myself, Sinead, Sarah and Harry the Dealer decided on a whim to go the pub instead of classes, as students are often wont to do. I don’t recall the name of the boozer, but it was a typical East London hellhole furnished with a sticky red carpet. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see Reggie Kray appear through the door with a shooter looking for Jack the Hat. After a few pints I was pleasantly sozzled and playing pool with a skinny geezer with a weasel moustache who looked vaguely familiar. ‘Christ!’ I thought, ‘He looks like bleeding Mickey Pearce!’ It was Mickey Pearce too, him off of Only Fools and Horses. He turned out to be a nice chap and was indifferent to being recognised without his characters trademark Trilby hat. But he hadn’t been working for a while and was having a moan while downing his Guinness, about the shows producers only making Christmas Specials from now on and he had kids to feed and blah blah blah.

I had to laugh meeting Mickey Pearce, drinking in the afternoon waiting for Chritsmas to roll around. It had only been a few weeks earlier that some friends and I had drunkenly forced Ricky Butcher out of our local pub in Twickenham by constantly jeering “RRRICKEEEY!!!” And, “Who killed Eddie Royal?” That was the burning Eastenders question at the time; who killed Eddie Royal, the landlord of the Queen Vic? It turned out to be Nick Cotton of course, who every decade or so, pops up in Albert Square with an “Allooo Maaa.” Kills someone then disappears again.

After an afternoon of boozing we said goodbye to Mickey. Sinead and I decided to go back to the house for some drunken monkey business. Sarah was in full party mode so she and Harry the Dealer went on to the Goldsmiths Tavern to drink themselves silly, and that’s the last we saw of them that night. A couple of days later I was back at the student house lounging in the living room with Harry the Dealer, when the phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Is Sarah there?”
“No, can I take a message?”
“Tell her Jim called.”
And that was that. But the voice sounded terribly familiar, almost like a dodgy TV advert voice-over. Harry was laid back on the brown couch rolling a fat one.
“Who’s Jim?” I asked him. “Jim? Oh that would be Vic Reeves.”

Vic Reeves? I had never really understood Vic Reeves humour, until one night I was quite mashed watching the Big Night Out, and Vic blew up plates of stacked ham with explosives and I thought that was just hilarious! Harry the Dealer proceeded to tell me the tale of what had happened the night he and Sarah had gone to the Goldsmiths Tavern.

The place had been packed solid, but propped up at the back of the bar drinking away was Vic Reeves who spotted Sarah and took an instant liking to her. They got on famously and when time was called, Sarah invited Vic back to her room in the big student house. About half an hour after they had sneaked in Sarah’s boyfriend made one of his unprompted visits and caught them red handed and presumably butt naked. Events must have played out like a Benny Hill sketch, because Vic climbed out of Sarah’s bedroom window and ran down the garden path with his trousers round his ankles and was chased down the street by Sarah’s boyfriend, shouting and waving his fist into the moonlight. I always picture the events like a speeded up film accompanied with comedy music. Vic constantly adjusting his large rimmed glasses for effect.

I swear this is true, Harry the Dealer told me. Sarah did end up getting married to Vic in the end, before running off in an astonishing cliché with her fitness instructor. A few years ago I did have another surreal incident that happened on a train, involving me, Will Self and ‘Duckface’ from Four Weddings and a Funeral, but - as the saying goes - that’s another story.