No surprises

Her penchant for deep stalking on social media means Sophie White already knows a creepy amount about new friends — totes awkward

Arelatively new friend in my life is the author of a funny and fabulous memoir. I read her book and distinctly remember thinking, “This woman is so cool; we’d be great friends, I bet”. I believe this about loads of famous people I admire. Jon Ronson and I, for example, would definitely be buds.

I think if Diane Keaton and I were to hang, we would totally gel. Myself and Tilda Swinton could swap clothes. Jay Rayner and I could eat our faces off together. And it’s not just because I’m a desperate wannabe who gets off on the mere proximity of celebrity — I feel I could really enrich their lives, is all.

So after I read this book I put my mind to meeting the author. Luckily, I had a professional excuse to interview her, after which I basically asked her out on a friend date. Platonic friend dates are actually more nerve-wracking than normal dates, and soon Himself was mocking me mercilessly over the exhaustive analysing of each text correspondence, the agonising over outfits and the general giddiness that comes with any new affair. “Shut up,” I huffed. “It’s just because I know we’d be so good together.”

Suffice to say we are good together, and I even decided to take the next step and introduce her to the Bitch Herd. This was risky, as the Bitch Herd are infinitely better, cooler, funnier women then I am, so there was a danger of being massively upstaged by them. Luckily, they all got on, and I wasn’t relegated.

With everyone getting on so well there

“Platonic friend dates are actually more nerve-wracking than normal dates ”

was bound to be a rub, and the rub is this: when you befriend the person whose memoir you greedily devoured in three days, you wind up knowing a lot about them. Personal info that would ordinarily come up over time, is, instead, in your head from day one. So you’ve a dilemma: pretend not to know or be upfront when they tell you something: “Ah yes, of course. I read that on page 88”.

This is a niche problem that I notice is gradually becoming more universal with everyone living in each other’s pocket via social media these days. If I meet someone I know and they start telling me about their weekend, I always feel a bit creepy because I already know about their weekend. I watched it practically in real time on their Insta stories.

Then I tell them an incident that happened involving a toddler, a baby and the booze aisle of Aldi, and I spot the same slight hesitation in their smile, because of course they saw my post and pithy caption on my Instagram.

Now I feel as though I’m constantly self-plagarising, trotting out the same anecdotes on every conceivable platform. Repetition in small talk is tiresome, but I never mind having a favourite dinner over and over, such as this comforting chicken dish.