A couple of weeks back I was talking to a girl here about a concert she went to by the appallingly named Boyz II Men. She was telling me how in the interval she'd been standing in the bar next to someone she vaguely recognised but couldn't place. In the end she realised he was one of the blokes from the now defunct Liberty X. I think she was quite chuffed about it, although I wasted no time in telling her it was a poor relation compared to my own famous-bloke-at-a-concert story. When I went to see Steely Dan a few months back, just as the show was about to begin, Paul McCartney came and sat two rows immediately in front of me. It was a slightly surreal moment - just as I turned to my wife to say "That bloke looks just like Paul McCartney", the woman on her right, with whom she hadn't exchanged a word but whose excitement at being in the proximity of someone so famous nullified the London convention of scowling at/ignoring strangers, announced to her "That's Paul McCartney!", and a ripple of whispers promptly circled its way out from him. It was an interesting insight into the life of a megastar - complete strangers coming up and shaking his hand, heads turning from all over to gawp at him. He took it, as you might expect from someone who experienced Beatlemania from the inside, in his stride.

I'm happy to say I resisted the temptation to join the throng of McHangers, although had I been sitting immediately behind him I might have struggled to resist asking him what he thought of the support act's version of Norwegian Wood. Or better yet, leaning forward and whispering "Have you heard? Apparently Paul McCartney's here." I more or less managed to forget he was even there, until the band intros at the end. At the point where Walter Becker announced Donald Fagen, McCartney stood up and applauded, hands aloft. That's how good Fagen is - he gets a standing ovation from Paul McCartney. And after 25 years of telling people that The Nightfly is my favourite album and getting blank looks, 25 years of people not having heard of Steely Dan, here was substantive validation. Ever since then, whenever anyone has told me they don't know or don't like the band, a little voice in the back of my mind says "Ah well, Paul McCartney does".

The next day I went to work and got people to try and guess behind whom I had been sat. I told one of the girls that he was probably one of the ten most famous people in the world, and that he was English. "Hugh Grant!" she guessed. "Even more famous" I replied. "Bruce Forsyth!" she offered.

When I told her the answer she said "Oh, I don't really know the members of The Beatles", which remains one of the most extraordinary displays of wilful ignorance I've ever witnessed.