Our strange relationship with columnists

I’ve been reading newspapers since I was a teenager and have become strangely familiar with those who write about their lives, even though I’ve met very few of them. Recently, this has gone from being a moderately amusing side interest to an increasingly sad one. 

In the late 1990s we lived a few doors down from Times columnist Robert Crampton, in Hackney. We had dinner with the Cramptons a couple of times and found them perfectly affable. And then we moved. So I haven’t seen him in years. But were I to bump into him now, I’m pretty certain he’d be struggling to remember who I was, whereas I’d be more: ‘How are Nicola and the kids? Do you still get to that beach hotel in Pembrokeshire? And how did you get the car out of the ditch during your mishap in the woods in France in 2015?’

I’ve met some others too, usually at parties: Ulrika Jonsson, Julie Burchill, Giles Coren.