My arrival in New York is always the same – planned to the last detail – and I wouldn’t have it any other way; scripted and timed to a tee. No surprises and an easy transition from post-flight fatigue to oblivion.

Once checked into the Beekman Tower, I head straight out for the essentials: a six pack of Sierra Nevada, two bottles of Californian red and half a pint of Jack Daniels (remember the quantities, you’ll need them later). These I dump back in the room along with a box of Ritz biscuits, a pack of plastic Cheddar and two slices of cheesecake from the market opposite.

I head straight out again, The Smith on Second Street my destination, and I climb onto a barstool and deliver my New York City lines, ‘A gin martini, straight up with a couple of olives, please’. No need to read those cocktail menus they make up; after ten years travelling to the States, it’s either a gin martini or an Alaskan, but that I reserve for the West Coast.

Well, following the screen-play, well established after a decade of low-lit, loud, cocktail dives, two drinks become four – which means crispy calamari twice and at least one other deep fried appetizer before I negotiate the drop from the stool to the floorboards and follow the director’s directions back to the hotel, picking up Chinese on the way.

Back in the room, I arrange my evening’s purchases on the coffee table in front of the TV, flick a cap off a bottle of beer and settle down to TCM. The combination of carbohydrate, salt, sugar and fat putting the brakes on the slide down the exponential slope from Sierra Nevada to bourbon – from jet-lag to oblivion.