In which I don't know who you are

Maybe it’s because I’m not a celebrity, not someone whose famous name elicits wonder and marvel in others that it’s alien to me, but I’ve never understood anyone who’d use the phrase “don’t you know who I am?” in order to get their own way. It smacks of spoilt starlets desperate to get into oversubscribed clubs; people who’ve been dragged up without a manner to their very being; and dodgy autobiographies by Piers Morgan.

The Writer was at a press event last week when a woman at his table declared – declared, that is; not admitted, confessed, or had it otherwise wrung out of her under duress. She willingly and proudly stated the fact – she’d “had to” whip out the phrase recently having been sat at a less-than-satisfactory table at a restaurant in New York (that, quelle horreur, she’d had to book and pay for, as if the fact of handing over cash for something was enormously beneath her. Not entirely sure she should be allowed to eat out on a regular basis if she can’t get her head round the business model of a restaurant).

The idea of ever saying anything or doing anything like that is entirely alien to me, and makes my skin veritably crawl with the awkwardness of it all (a bit like that yellow string vest in the latest episode of Girls. Shudder).

Surely by asking The Dreaded Question, which is less of a question than it is an aggressive (and misconceived) statement of belief that you’re a superior being to all those around you, you’re only setting yourself up for a fall. Clearly, the person on the receiving end either doesn’t know who you are, or you’d already be getting the special treatment, in which case, stating that you’re someone special is likely to have rather less than the desired effect; or they do know who you are, and have decided that you’re not worth it.

Either way, asking the question makes you look like a grade-A idiot.