I looked out the meeting room window to see a huge white Range Rover pulling into the alley down the side of the building.

Ted frisked his oversized hoodie for imaginary crumbs and took a deep breath in.

‘I’ll go and get them. Get ready, Ros, your life is about to change forever.’

I rolled my eyes as I helped myself to a Hobnob from the plate in the middle of the table. The meeting room was nice, big, airy. Just the sort of room in which you’d like to spend eight hours of your day, five days a week, rather than a mouldering pit. According to the pop art painting on the wall, this was the Alexander Graham Bell room. All the PodPad meeting rooms were named after icons of telecommunications: Bell, Samuel Morse, Guglielmo Marconi and, for reasons best known to someone who was not me, Keith Chegwin. Every time I walked past his meeting room, with its bright Cheggers mural on the wall, I couldn’t help but shudder.

‘Ros Reynolds, are you ready to meet a superstar?’ Ted shouted from outside the door. I stood up then sat down then stood back up. What was the correct protocol for meeting internet-famous children? I felt like Mary Poppins without the magic bag. Or the chimney sweep. Or the songs. I didn’t feel that much like Mary Poppins.

Ted flung the door wide, an enormous smile on his face as he ushered in a furious-looking woman with the biggest white leather handbag I had ever seen on her shoulder and a coffee the size of a fire extinguisher in her hand. She had to be the impressive agent. She was followed by a sad-faced man holding a set of car keys in one hand and a four-pack of full-sugar Red Bull in the other. Bringing up the rear of the strange party, was what I assumed to be a Snazzlechuff. He was a shortish human in blinding white jogging bottoms, matching oversized track jacket and enough gold chains to weigh him down to the bottom of the Thames tottered in behind the adults. The outfit alone would have been disturbing enough but, perched on his shoulders was a bizarrely lifelike, furry panda head.

‘This, is Snazzlechuff,’ Ted breathed, holding out his arm as though he were presenting the Christ child.

‘Hey,’ squeaked the panda.

‘Hi,’ I replied, not sure whether to shake his hand or call social services. ‘I’m Ros.’

‘Snazzlechuff,’ he replied, as though he could be anyone else. ‘You can call me Snazz if you want.’

‘Snazz it is,’ I said. I was trying so hard not to stare.

‘We haven’t got long. We need to be in Milton Keynes for the opening of a Tesco Metro by half eleven,’ barked the woman with the handbag as everyone got themselves seated around the table. ‘Let’s hear the new girl’s ideas.’