Interrupting our tea, sandwiches and conversation at London's Langham Hotel in 1996, Buzz Aldrin said he needed to visit the men's room. Told by a waitress that he should walk 15 metres along a corridor and then down some stairs, the man who had piloted the first manned spacecraft to touch down on the Moon, said: "There must be a closer one. How do I know I'll find my way back?"

Buzz's wife Lois, awaiting his return to our table, said two minutes later: "Oh, I do hope he's not got lost."

He returned to eat a small fancy cake and said that in two months he would be accompanying two French divers in a small submarine to view the wreck of the Titanic. But I wanted to ask about space food. His favourite was "shrimp cocktail from a squeeze-pack".

The first drink he had on the lunar surface was "just a little wine from a communion kit I took with me". During Apollo 11's return to Earth he successfully spread ham paste on a piece of bread in zero gravity.

I asked Buzz if he thought that man's desire to conquer the Moon was originally inspired by the power it was believed to hold over women. "That's ridiculous," he said. "Oh, the Moon is important to love," interjected Lois. "But there's not one astronaut who realised that. I used to look romantically at the Moon, even before I got my Buzz.

"We were Things people," humoured Buzz, nibbling on a cake. "Operators. Manipulators of objects. "If you want poets in space, you'll have to wait, darling."

"This man had the lowest heartbeat of anyone on a spacewalk," noted Lois, rubbing her moon-rock wedding ring.