In September 2004, I spent a night with Mr Big. We met at his place, and hung out, and chatted, and drank, and... It wasn't nearly as good as I'm making it sound. When I say 'I spent a night', actually, we spent about an hour together (and he was late). And when I say 'Mr Big', I mean Chris Noth, the actor who plays Mr Big in Sex and the City. And when I say 'his place', I mean the Cutting Room, the bar he co-owns with a man called Steve Walter, which is not all that nice, and which is located on the wrong side of the fringes of fashionable Manhattan. It was a bit of a let-down, and I'd forgotten about it, until I went to see Sex and the City, the film.

That was the first time I'd set eyes on Noth since meeting him in the flesh. I was struck, again, by how ordinary he is to look at. There's been oodles of bitching regarding the fading charms of the four female stars of Sex and the City - how dare they flaunt their 40-plus hag-bag bodies in front of us, with their 40-something heads and their 40-something arms and legs and so on? Yet there's been no mention of Noth. Noth, who, at 53 3/4, has a couple of years on Kim 'Samantha' Cattrall (aka the oldest woman ever to draw breath, if you believe the majority of media commentators, chaps who apparently never have to so much as look at a woman older than 25 in the normal run of things). Here's the truth about Noth: He's paunchy, he's baggy, and his eyebrows have been over-dyed weirdly black. He's a decade older than on-screen love interest Sarah Jessica Parker - and it shows. Carrie could have done better.

Which is not to say that Noth isn't a nice-enough chap. When we met, he was entirely amenable - it's just that he wasn't all slick and charming and heart-stoppingly gob-smackingly charismatic, à la Big. All of which is my problem for believing in a fictional character - but still. He's a bit vague, a bit bumbling, and not remotely glamorous (imagine Mr Big without the super-sharp suit, and the well-crafted one-liners, and... exactly).

He poured himself a Red Bull ('It's too early for vodka', he said. It was 7.30pm), and rambled on about the live-music credentials of the Cutting Room, while I of course just wanted to know about liquor and celebrity clientele and nights of debauchery.

Noth opened the Cutting Room in 1999, he said, as a refuge for 'poets and troubadours' like him - although his co-owner Steve told me it happened after his accountant introduced them, on the grounds that they both loved women. Noth did make a couple of Big-worthy statements: 'I like my Martinis like I like my sex - dirty, but not filthy'; and also that his special drink is 'Belvedere vodka, straight, on the rocks; which we call a DTT, which represents Don't Tell Tara'. Tara Wilson is Noth's long-term girlfriend; the couple now have a child together. 'It's for when I come here and get smaaaaaaaaaashed. And I go: Don't tell Tara I got drunk!'

But mainly, he just wanted to show me his jukebox. The bar does serve as a music venue of moderate repute. There's a stage at one end of the joint, and Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sheryl Crow, and Stills and Nash have all graced it at some point. Chelsea Clinton has been there three times, the Bush girls are regulars, so is Russell Crowe; but that's about as glam as the Cutting Room gets. But then, Noth's not wild about glam. He told me that New York's all 'Death by Trendy right now... Like the Meat Packing District, which is the Hot Place, but it's just so boring and not sexy...'

Thing is: I like Death by Trendy. I also like the Hot Places - much more than I like sweaty raw unplugged guitar sessions with actors who are not-so-secretly frustrated musicians. So I made my excuses and left. Or perhaps, Chris Noth made his excuses and left. Either way, that was the end of my night with Mr Big.