Bear with me on this one. I am not intimidated by stars. I am properly admiring of their talent, if they have it, or of their allure, if they have that. But I know they're basically just the same as us. This is why, in interviews, I am quite often embarrassed about putting probing personal questions to someone I have just met. Equally, though, I despise hacks who affect a mateyness with stars on the basis that "they're just like us" and "we're all part of the same game". So when I found myself sitting slap-bang next to Jude Law and Jonny Lee Miller at Nicholas Wright's play The Reporter at the National Theatre this week, I did that typically English thing, and ignored them. Even though I very politely interviewed Law about a million years ago, when he was just Jude Law rather than TABLOID FODDER JUDE LAW, and even though I was due to interview Miller two days later, about his new film The Flying Scotsman. This is an old-fashioned but very touching biopic of Graeme Obree, a Scottish nobody who took on the international cycling lobby and won, setting various world records on a bike he built himself out of washing machine parts and BMX tubing, all this despite suffering severe bipolar disorder. Miller is very good in it, and I was looking forward to asking him about the punishing physical challenges of the film and the moral challenge of portraying a man he had come to know well. I had even given an undertaking not to ask about his personal life (for which read: ask questions about his ex-wife Angelina Jolie). But Jude 'n' Jonny, were out having a good time and didn't need me butting in. And there was the added complication that I'd have had to lean over Jude to say hello to Jonny, doubtless transgressing some unwritten but potent precept of showbiz etiquette, and then I'd have to remind Jude that I had interviewed him, and then he'd have to pretend to remember, and then there'd be an awkward silence... So I kept my powder dry, kept schtum, and looked forward to remarking to Jonny on the coincidence of our synchronised theatregoing when I was formally introduced to him later that week.

Except that, the following day, the interview was cancelled. No reflection on me, I was told, but we'd been slow responding to accept the interview (I'd been out of the country when it was offered on Friday: it was a bank holiday weekend, so arrangements were only confirmed on the Tuesday, a few hours before I saw him in the theatre). What's more Jonny, while leafing through a copy of the Standard, had changed his mind. Actually, I got the distinct feeling that Jonny himself had nothing to do with it, and that his "people" were throwing their weight about, but I may be wrong about that.

Either way, I was left fruitlessly but fretfully wondering whether it might have made a difference if I'd just leaned over and said hello. Had my reserve - call it politeness, call it shyness, call it stupid - tipped the balance between my getting the interview and not. Could I have charmed him? (When I interviewed Rosamund Pike this week this week she said I seemed like "an incredibly nice man". But she may have been acting.) The disappointment was exacerbated by the fact that I liked The Flying Scotsman, but I also believe it needs all the publicity it can get. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe millions of people are even now saying "can't wait for that movie about the depressed Scottish cyclist" and getting ready to shatter the opening-weekend box-office record set by Pirates of the Carribbean: At World's End.

On balance, I think I did the right thing. The benefits, to them and me, of not harrassing, or even just distracting, actors when they are off duty, outweigh the slim chance that an intrusive "hello" among the stalls seats might have made a difference this time. What do you think? Oh, and Jonny, if you are reading this, and you change your mind again, call me...