Agyness: who plays whom in the fame game?

Famous people are drawn to non-famous people who are alone. I don’t really know why, it’s just a fact. It’s like a lion spotting a lone antelope or Hugh Jackman spotting a chance to show everyone just how gay he’s not. I’m therefore a great advocate of going to the occasional gig or party or botox clinic alone. Because encounters with famous people make great stories to tell your friends when you’re drunk and you need to remind them how lucky they are to know you and that they should really offer to buy the next round. One of my favourite stories to moronically blag to people when I’ve had one too many (which isn’t right now, I swear) involves meeting Agyness Deyn in New York. It’s a winner because it includes a hot girl and New York, so all the sexualities have something to get the horn over.

I was in the Music Hall of Williamsburg, nursing my plastic pint of beer at the back and waiting for Dead Meadow to come on when a girl with short blonde hair and a bowler hat walked in the front door. She looked familiar, though I wasn’t quite sure where from, but I was getting bored, a bit drunk and had already expended my conversation points with the merch guy and the door guy. I had nothing to lose, least of all my dignity – the beauty of being in a large foreign city. I went up and stood beside her. I told her I liked her hat (yeah, great opener – thanks Budweiser). She said thank you. I asked her where her accent was from. She said Manchester. I asked her what she was doing in New York. She said she lived there. She asked me what I was doing in New York. I said wandering around by myself. She asked me if I wanted to go to a club with her and her friends. See – famous people.

Four of us got in a cab and headed for the Lower East Side – Agyness Deyn, a guy called Jackson who was in a band that was about to go on tour with Matt & Kim, a guy called Bunny who was a ‘stylist’ and another guy called something else. To be honest, I got stuck at the guy called Bunny.

We pulled up at the club, which had a line about 30 metres long out the door, and walked straight in, Agyness Deyn now on my arm and the door guy now kissing me on the cheek and welcoming me to his party. The place was full of people who looked like they were either going to a fashion shoot or thought they were at a fashion shoot and we walked to the bar, where some guy gave us all free drinks. Agyness Deyn and I went downstairs, where almost everyone said hello to her and she introduced me to them as her brother. They were American so they didn’t notice that she had a Manc accent and I had an Australian one.

We hung out by the DJ booth, where Nathan from the Gossip was playing kinda naff but fitting ‘indie hits’, and a girl with a big camera took about 50 photos of Agyness Deyn while her now much larger group of friends stood around and smoked. Barely anyone drank, which I guessed was because they all had to get up and do yoga and drink the blood of small children while their parents were asleep.

We all went back to Bunny’s apartment on St Mark’s, which I’m sure cost his parents a lot of money they didn’t seem to be missing. The décor was simple – piles of designer clothes all over the floor and that’s about it. Nathan from the Gossip and I took turns in choosing video clips on demand on TV and eventually I realised that if I didn’t go back to my junkie hostel I was soon likely to witness some small children being eaten.

Agyness Deyn invited me to karaoke in the East Village with them all the following night, but it was expensive and I was not, so instead I met up with them afterwards. But it wasn’t the same. I now knew who Agyness Deyn was and sat around on the steps outside the karaoke joint talking to her friends, who I now also knew by name. I was no longer alone. The famous people left and I walked a couple blocks to meet real friends and tell them a fairly ordinary story involving a hot famous girl.

Tomorrow I’m going back to New York, so if you read The Breakdown in the next few weeks, I’m sorry but you’ll have to put up with more fairly pointless stories. I’ll try to get a hot girl or two in when I can.

From September 2009