WORST of TIMES

WORST THING ABOUT YOUR APPEARANCE?

My best girlfriend describes me as “the gay that style forgot”. There have been so many fashion disasters I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t suffer from an especially dialled-up version of narcissistic personality disorder, despite being on telly, but the other day somebody sent me pictures of myself when I was 17 and I look like a mash-up of Little Lord Fauntleroy and Kim Jong Un. I used to wear a tweed jacket and even went through a Brosette period in the 1980s with Grolsch bottletops on my shoes and spiky hair. That was not a good look.

WORST HOLIDAY?

When I was little, we ended up staying in a kosher guesthouse in Bournemouth and were forcibly entered into the fancy dress competition. My brother got to be Kermit and for some reason I was dressed up as Miss Piggy. Nevertheless, the grandson of the owner of the hotel, who dressed up as a fisherman, won the competition. And I’m still angry about that.

WORST ENCOUNTER WITH ANOTHER CELEBRITY?

Nobody looks at anyone at my gym, so I just thought there was a homeless girl running next to me. And then I had a moment of epiphany: it was Harry Styles.

He’s evolved into a real artist, so when I subsequently saw him I got strangely starstruck. We ended up involved in a conversation and all I will say was that it was the worst social car crash ever. He hugged me because he needed to make it stop. It was like an act of social euthanasia.

My friends usually make sure that I don’t meet people I admire because it’s not going to go well. I will, for the first 10 minutes, tell them, like a crazed fan, everything brilliant about them, and how I’ve read every interview and watched everything they ever did on YouTube, as they sit there and slightly glaze over and try to get an injunction.

WORST MOMENT OF YOUR CAREER AS A CRIMINAL BARRISTER?

The worst case that I did was the last case, where I had begun to fall out of love and passion with the bar, and the case was deeply horrible. I had lost the capacity to feel a sense of mission and purpose, which is absolutely required for you to replenish your emotional currency every day to go out and battle on behalf of the client. I ended up getting really depleted, and consequently quite ill. That was the worst case I did. It involved human trafficking and was very, very difficult.

WORST THING ABOUT TECHNOLOGY?

I’m like a snaggletoothed Wykehamist mixed with a Luddite. I’m so useless, it’s embarrassing. But it’s the best reason to have godchildren, right? I know they are going to be brilliant, intelligent and change the world – one of them even speaks Mandarin – but right now they can show me all of this stuff on my phone. I had no idea. I’m not just a late adopter, I only recently got on Twitter.

WORST TREND OF THE MOMENT?

The worst trend is to be constantly not present because you are on your phone at dinner. I hate that. I don’t care what you do the rest of the time, switch your phone off when you’re with someone.

Rob Rinder’s ‘Interrogation Secrets’ is on Crime + Investigation on Sundays at 10pm and available to stream on C+I PLAY