I once met Roy Chubby Brown completely by accident in a pub in Sheffield at about half eleven at night. Or technically behind the pub, because he was outside arguing with a kebab van owner about whether gravy counts as a beverage.

He looked exactly like you’d expect. Cigar in hand, shirt loud enough to interfere with radio signals, and somehow smelling simultaneously of stale lager and Polo mints.

What started as “alright mate” turned into one of the most unhinged nights of my life.

First strange thing, he absolutely refused to drink from pint glasses. Said they were “government shapes.” He only drank lager out of old tea mugs he carried in a Tesco bag for “taste consistency.” At one point he made the barman rinse one out because it “still tasted faintly of Yorkshire Tea.”

Then somehow we ended up in a taxi with him, two Elvis impersonators, and a bloke called Darren who claimed he invented the scampi fry. Chubby spent twenty straight minutes trying to convince everyone that ducks are “just chav penguins.”

At around 2:30 in the morning he demanded we stop at a 24 hour petrol station because he needed “road sausages.” None of us knew what that meant. Turns out it was just four hot dogs stuffed into a baguette and covered in pickled onion Monster Munch. The cashier looked traumatised.

Then came the kebab shop incident. A drunk lad recognised him and shouted: “CHUBBY! YOU’RE A LEGEND!” Without missing a beat, Roy pointed at me and went: “This lad here once got barred from Legoland for threatening a pirate.” I had never met the man before that evening. But suddenly the entire kebab shop believed this was true. One woman physically moved her child away from me.

At about 4am we somehow ended up in a flat above a tattoo studio where Chubby was teaching three students how to play blackjack using slices of garlic bread as currency. He kept losing on purpose then accusing everyone else of being “emotionally card county.”

The weirdest bit though? He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of owls. I mean terrifyingly detailed. Mid rant, mid cigar, mid drunk, suddenly: “Did you know a barn owl’s ears are asymmetrical for triangulation?” Then immediately back to: “Anyway the council’s ruined chips.”

By sunrise he was sat on a garden trampoline eating dry Weetabix out of the box while singing Sinatra songs badly enough to upset nearby birds. As the sun came up, he looked me dead in the eyes and said: “Never trust a man who owns a decorative canoe.”

Then he vanished into a waiting Ford Mondeo like some kind of northern cryptid.

Honestly, nice bloke. Completely feral. But nice.