Yesterday was my worst, ever afternoon since I started working on Pro all those moons ago. As part of my roving reporter bit I was wandering around the streets of London chatting to folks about online music for the latest edition of the podcast – a task, as it turned out, which would have been made only marginally more difficult if I’d approached them with a necklace of skulls, a voodoo doll, and a blood-smeared machete.

The highlights of my bleak two-hour trawl of our nation’s capital involved four people claiming not to speak English, despite the English-language novels sticking out of their pockets, half a dozen “not interested, never heard of online music, don’t want to hear about it, go away before I set the hounds on you”, a couple of “got a meeting”, two “late for buses”, and my personal favourite – one woman who looked like Nicholas Anelka, telling me “not to follow her” after my opening gambit of “hello, sorry to bother you, I’m a journalist with PC Pro and…”

Needless to say, after a couple of hours of this soul destroying work I trudged back to the barn, slumped in my seat and quietly reflected – through sobs – on what had happened. I’ve done these things before and normally people are quite happy to have a chat with a slightly dishevelled, Ringo Starr-voiced journo. I can only assume it’s the issue. The bald facts are that a lot of people download music illegally and they probably felt I was trying to herd them straight into a confession and subsequently the clink. Which is fair enough – but I beg you, if ever you see a slightly gangling, youngish man, with a slightly vacant expression and wayward hair approaching you with a tape recorder in the street, give him a minute of your time, or at least, a funny excuse.