Don’t meet your heroes. Best case scenario, you’re just going to come across as a grinning idiot.

Of all places, I went down to Swindon yesterday, and spoke at a music industry symposium that had been put on by the Borough Council. I couldn’t for the life of me figure how I fit into the proceedings, because it was pretty much all about growing the region’s music sector — and I know nothing particular about the region.

But despite the fact that they weren’t paying for anything other than my train fare down there and some sandwiches at the catering table, I jumped at the chance. The reason? Barry Andrews was going to be there.

Barry Andrews, if you don’t know (and why would you?) was an original member of XTC, and the frontman and founder of my most listened-to band of the 1980s (beating out even the Smiths and the Cure), Shriekback.

He was otherwise engaged for most of the proceedings, and so he made an entrance partway through my presentation. I was riffing on how local music industries can use the internet for music, and in walks someone who’s been one of the biggest contributors to my love of music, and to my conception of what’s possible with organised sound. It was a bit daunting, but I struggled through. No idea what I said, but I think I just defaulted to my usual stock catchphrases.

I was such a huge Shriekback fan. I went and saw them live a handful of times and they were some of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. Shriekback embraced a really dark aesthetic with songs like ‘Nemesis’, ‘The Reptiles and I’ and ‘Lined Up’ — and they did some of the creepiest romantic music you’re ever likely to come across (one of their songs was used in a love scene between a serial killer and a blind woman in the film ‘Manhunter’) — but they just seemed to have such clever, referential and intellectual fun with it all that I couldn’t help but be impressed.

I mean, here was the guy who had penned ‘Win A Night Out With A Well-Known Paranoiac’, and brought the funk to underground art rock. Here is an artist who releases an album package where the record sleeve is an advent calendar for the end of the world. A song about the imminent collapse of civilisation called ‘Hooray for Everything’. Pop songs about prehistoric fish. Lyrics like ‘Fiddle with the wooden Jesus / It’s a special kind of thing’.

So I made no secret of the fact that this was why I was there. And — I have to say — I meet quite a lot of famous people doing what I do, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve been actually ’star-struck’.

I’ve had such enormous respect for the man for over 25 years, and he’s long been on my list of ‘6 people I would have at the ultimate dinner party’ — but the fact that I was so excited when I finally got to meet him came as a complete shock to me.

I did the ‘I’m such a fan’ spiel, got the name of one of his records wrong, and then ran out of interesting or intelligent things to say.

In short, as you can see above, I was a complete embarrassing fanboy. Next time I meet him — and I intend that there will be a next time — I’ll be way cooler.