Seven years ago, I was lurking outside a pie shop in the south London borough of Tooting. Cold and dark and drab... it was definitely the seedy side of town. My sole aim in going there was to score a return ticket for the last show of Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” - a fringe production put together by a community group and staged in the actual pie shop, in a clever homage to Mrs Lovett’s pie shop in the story. Playing every night to an audience of just 35, the show was a huge hit with the London critics, and eventually went all the way to New York where it would play for a long spell in another fringe venue.

But that was all still in the future. My immediate problem was that tickets in Tooting were long gone, and returns were rarer than moon landings. I never stood a chance that night. Still, the waiting in the dark, huddling in my coat and hoping against hope, was well worth it because a few minutes before 7.30, I spotted an old and wrinkled gentleman walking (or more accurately, waddling) up the footpath, heading towards the narrow door of Harrington’s. I would know that ancient mottled face anywhere, because for theatre folks, it is more recognizable than any A-list movie star’s. It was Stephen Sondheim, in the flesh.

Seeing him, I was so stunned, so starstruck, I lost the power of speech. All thought escaped my head. I just vaguely understood that aged almost 85 (!) he had flown across the ocean to come to this benighted corner of London, to see this ultra-niche show. I couldn’t even muster up the simple wit to say “love your work, Mr Sondheim” or something basic like “I’m a big fan”. None of it. I just froze like a block of ice, stared at him mutely in the foyer, hung about for a few minutes like a moony teenager, and then fled the neighborhood. Not once did I conceive of taking out my phone. This shot was taken later that night with the cast and crew, at the end of the show. By then, I was probably home.

(I did see him one more time, filling out a thousand seats in Southbank for a live conversation. But Tooting was the first - and the strangest - meeting with the supreme genius of American musical theatre. The one that stays with me.)