Switching off the spotlight

Having tea with Gillian Anderson is a thoroughly pleasant business — a splash of muted glamour in a fairly drab London autumn. I thoroughly recommend it, as a more engaging companion it would be a challenge to find.

We meet in the studiously bijou surroundings of the Zetter Townhouse in St John’s Square, chosen, I suspect, because no one there has the slightest clue who she is. She is wearing the no-make-up disguise, and glides serenely under London’s radar, something she clearly enjoys. She is a tad jetlagged, she says, having just arrived home from a three-week stint ‘doing press’ in LA.

We are talking in the Games Room downstairs when there is an unexpected rattling at the window. We are momentarily flustered – is it a stalker?, a pap? — though all is well and we laugh off our over-reaction. In that moment, though, when we glare at one another wondering if we should be alarmed, I see those green eyes and Special Agent Dana Scully appears before me.