Romesh Ranganathan, the stand-up comedian is a regular hero

I was on Oxford Street the other day and I was approached by a lady. She was in her mid 40s and spoke very little English. She simply showed me a piece of paper with three phone numbers on it, said “lost” and started crying.

Now this is obviously a bad situation. I’m not sure what it says about me that for a good while I suspected this to be some sort of robbery scam. A new technique whereby, instead of pick pocketing or snatching a phone, you instead pretend to be a tourist and start crying. Within seconds, my computer like brain decided that this was unlikely. I took the piece of paper and called one of the numbers. The name of the person I was calling was Mona. The crying lady watched me closely, still occasionally doing that post cry hiccup thing, as if to remind me why I was doing this.

I got through to Mona who very quickly was able to convey to me that she didn’t have a clue what I was saying. So I passed the phone over to my new friend. Now what I expected was for ‘Sobby’ to convey the issue to Mona, arrange where to meet and be done with it. What actually happened was that these two girls decided to have a right old natter. I have no idea what they were saying, but it went on an inordinately long time. I don’t know every language but I am pretty sure it doesn’t take 15 minutes to say ‘I went shopping with you and you left me behind stupid’. This put me in a bind. I was sympathetic to this woman’s plight, but at the same time I didn’t want this stranger arranging her social calendar on my wedge. But she doesn’t understand a word of what I’m saying. So what I decided to do was look up the street and then at my watch repeatedly while sighing. This was actually a very clever way of saying, ‘Actually I’m on my way to a meeting you cheeky little git’.

This, unsurprisingly, didn’t work. She carried on yammering on about whatever political issues were concerning her. I was getting increasingly annoyed. The conversation was unintelligible bar Sobby repeatedly saying “Top Shop”. We were nowhere near Top Shop. But I decided that a little extra time taken to find her friend after the amount of time taken on my phone was perhaps exactly what this woman deserved. So I said nothing.

Eventually, she put the phone down and handed it back to me. As soon as this happened, I was relieved. And my feelings of concern for this woman’s wellbeing returned. Not enough to tell her the Top Shop situation though. I’m not Mother Theresa.

“I decided the best option for both of us would be for her to be lost indefinitely”

As we parted, she said thank you and I went to shake her hand when she lurched forward and hugged me, saying, “Thank you so much.” I felt for her even more. I really couldn’t tell her about Top Shop now. She would know that it was because of the hug, and this would look like some sort of pervy transaction where I decided to tell her the truth because she touched me. That would be weird. So I decided the best option for both of us would be for her to be lost indefinitely. I went for a coffee, and wandered back that way afterwards. She was gone. I spent the rest of the day thinking about what it felt like to be a hero.