I could either put the dishes away and go to bed or take a walk in the night-time industrial wastelands of 1980s London. I chose the walk and bumped into Eminem.

We knew each other vaguely and we linked arms and continued our walk in a charged silence. He led me into the student hall of residence that was his home. By this time we were holding hands. The bar area was made up of four railway carriages, all packed with students. As I stopped to say hello to someone I knew, a small dog licked my leg.

Eminem and I became a sort of informal item and he would wait at home for me while I commuted to New York every day to run a disreputable research project.