Evie can’t help herself. All day she has been trying to write, to get her book ever closer to being finished, and yet somehow all her love interests are suddenly being written as though they’ve got Duke’s blue eyes or wide shoulders. In the café where she went to work this morning, on set this afternoon, and now in the hotel bar, still a thousand words short of her target, she keeps thinking about her fake date with Duke last night.

Frustratingly, considering she hates all of it on principle, it went so much better than the coffee shop – until his mood changed, anyway. Before that point she’d been perilously close to enjoying it. When Duke relaxes and forgets to be ‘on’, he’s okay company. Not that he does that often, of course. It’s odd. She woke up thinking about the closeness of his arm when they were walking, the flex of his forearm muscles when he grabbed the pole of the merry-go-round. It must be tiredness, or ongoing jet lag, but it’s on a loop in her head, annoyingly, and she can’t stop playing it. So she googles him, just to distract herself, and before long is reading feature after feature on him, including in one of the Saturday arts sections in The Times.

She reads:

Duke Carlisle isn’t your average Hollywood rising star. After a decade and a half in pursuit of his dream, he tells Sally McVitie what he’s learnt about love, laughter, and the importance of honesty onscreen … and off.

Duke Carlisle sits across from me in a central London hotel lobby; arms resting on his knees, baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. ‘It’s not like I’m Bieber or anything,’ he tells me with a sardonic smile. ‘People do recognise me, but it’s all about context. When I’m suited and booted it’s obvious I’m on the clock and it’s okay to approach, but when I’m like this I mostly get left alone. It’s the paps, really, who don’t have any boundaries.’

I tell him that must be hard – I don’t even like it when I get tagged in a mate’s Instagram photo without prior permission.

‘Thanks for saying that,’ he tells me, those famous blue eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘I know it’s a bit like complaining my diamond shoes are too tight – I’m aware of that. But equally, when did we collectively decide that making movies means I’m allowed to be followed down a dark alleyway at night, or photographed putting the bins out with a hangover?’