'OK ...' says Peter. 'And once more, maybe?'

I start again, but I begin to improvise this time, changing certain words and phrases to make me seem more urban and streetwise, like at any moment I might do a fmgersnap and start downloading something. It seems I am actively trying not to get a job I actually want.

Oh God. I am being contrary.

Peter looks at the first man, who casts an apologetic look back.

'I guess I should just say again,' says the first man, 'that I think this'll work a lot better if you just ... be yourself.'

I buckle under the pressure. I read the words as myself.

I am furious when I get the part.

SHISHAS

I am standing in the airport holding a three-foot metal shisha. The kind you see old men in films smoking unusual tobaccos from, inside tents in Middle Eastern villages.

My friend Wag is standing next to me, also holding a three-foot metal shisha.

'That was nice of them,' I say. 'To give us both these big shishas.'

'It was,' says Wag. 'It was very nice of them.'

We look at our suitcases, and then at our backpacks, and then at our little carrier bags full of water and chewing gum. We look at our huge and cumbersome shishas again. It is four o'clock in the morning and the last thing we need is huge and cumbersome shishas.

'So ... we're going to take these shishas all the way back to England, are we?' says Wag.

I nod, because it is the right thing to do, and so does Wag, and we both pretend it was a very normal thing to say, and that there was no subtext there whatsoever. Why wouldn't we take these shishas all the way back to England? They were, after all, a kind and generous gift from some kind and generous people who'd been showing us around their lovely country - and who doesn't take a gift home with them? Rude people, that's who. Ungrateful people. And we are neither.

We inch forward in the queue towards security. We move our suitcases. Our backpacks. Our little carrier bags. And then we look at each other and shift our shishas, too.

The main problem, I decide, as I look at Wag, is that carrying a shisha around an airport makes you look like a drug-obsessed tourist intent on using his shisha for illegal means. Plus, we look like those sunburnt men you see shouting their way through airports who leave a vapour trail of Kouros and Ouzo, and cradle straw donkeys and wear sombreros and have specially made T-shirts with names on them, like Titty, and Biff.

Oh, God. We're Titty and Biff.