A Thursday evening, last year. I am in a pub in smelly London attending the very jolly and well-attended launch party for Sarah McIntyre’s magnificent Vern and Lettuce book. (Buy it. Buy it now). I have had some champagne and some cake. Rude not to. Now I have some beer. Mr David Fickling has given a rousing speech which has, as usual, entertained and roused. There is more cake available and there are any number of talented cartoonists knocking about the place with whom I may converse freely about pens should I so desire (and I so do). In particular I spend a good deal of time catching up with my good friend Faz Choudhury. In short, all is very much well with the world.

Into this personal paradise enter a man, a woman and a boy. The man approaches me in familiar fashion, smiling. Says hello. Says, “This is my wife, Lucia”. I think, “never mind your wife, who are you”. I smile dimly and take my first opportunity to scuttle away over to Faz and John Aggs who, upon my embarrassed enquiry, inform me of the mystery man’s identity. He is BG, a fine fellow who I have indeed met before a couple of times and whom I had good cause to take proper note of and remember. I am ashamed and embarrassed by my shoddy memory and the resultant lack of warmth with which I responded to this perfectly lovely man’s greeting. I resolve myself to openly confess my earlier lack of recognition and to apologise. When I do so, somewhat stumblingly (and mumblingly), BG is very gracious and we have a brief, very pleasant chat about his work and the failings of Italian government and (if my, as I may have mentioned, rather substandard memory is to be believed) earthquakes. I feel this has been a good save – a social gaffe tackled head on and turned into a jolly and friendly exchange. Well done me. I am engulfed in a warming sense of relief. Or perhaps that’s just the effects of the champagne and beer.

Shortly after, I am still congratulating myself on my social sow’s ear to silk purse conversion when I find myself standing next to Kate Brown (creator of Spider Moon and a fellow alumnus of The DFC comic). I start up a friendly (on my side at least) conversation with her but find her strangely more reticent than I remember her. It’s almost as if (oh the irony) she can’t remember who I am even though we’ve met a number of times before. But, while not exactly warm, she’s polite and attentive and I press on. I ask if she’s just in London for the day and she tells me that, yes, she’ll be catching a train back to Oxford relatively soon. I ask what she’s working on at the moment and she tells me a little about her next book, the details of which are unfamiliar to me and sound like somewhat of a daring change in direction from her previous work. I ask her if she knows how well Spider Moon is selling. She hasn’t heard the question properly and asks me to repeat it. I repeat it.

“I didn’t write that,” she says

And all becomes clear.

She is not Kate Brown.

Not at all.

In fact, look, over there, there’s Kate Brown, looking as if she’s leaving soon (quite possibly she has a train to catch back to Oxford). She looks a little like the woman I’m talking to. Kind of. If you squint a bit. And stretch her vertically by about eight inches.

Oops.

Several dry months of further, even more stilted, but profoundly polite, conversation follow in which, I am sure, the poor woman who is not Kate Brown (who is, instead, award-winning children’s author Sally Nicholls) would be perfectly happy for my wish to melt from embarrassment and be soaked into the pub carpet to come true. I cannot recall afterwards which of us first moved away, or how that blissful escape was made, I am only grateful that somehow the whole ordeal is over.

Of course, quite probably, I’d met her sometime before and just didn’t remember…

Dave Shelton is the creator of slapstick noir graphic novel Good Dog, Bad Dog (winner of the inaugural Leeds Graphic Novel Award). His debut illustrated novel, A Boy and a Bear in a Boat, will be published in January. Current work includes a new volume of Good Dog, Bad Dog and strips for The Phoenix comic.

More on Dave here.