After months of planning, the day of my conference finally arrived. A little behind schedule, I popped into the hotel dining room to see who else had made it to breakfast. A surprising number of delegates were there, the majority guzzling Prosecco and some obviously drunk. Some were even already hung over, including my school friend DP who came up to me to offer his apologies for missing the morning sessions. I hoped that the others would make to the lecture theatre in time for the opening keynote.

I left the dining room to return to my bedroom, collect my bag and then join all the other delegates in the conference centre – but somehow along the way I got lost. Every staircase, escalator and corridor looked the same. I became more and more frustrated as time ticked up to and past 09:00 – the time that I was meant to open the event. I knew that everyone would be panicking about my whereabouts, but I had no way of contacting them because my mobile phone was inside my bag in the room that I couldn’t find.

Eventually I asked for the help of two burly female hotel security guards. I was so grateful when they pointed out the paternoster lift that would return me to my room. I climbed inside and they shut the lid on me. Although grateful to be heading in the right direction at last, this was a very eerie experience: a voice inside the lift kept repeating “Rowan Atkinson is in the pay of the Israeli government”.