I was in the penthouse suite of a hotel on the Sunset Strip, stroking a $1 million pair of diamond-encrusted hair straighteners, when Run (or possibly DMC), of the 1980s hip-hopsters Run DMC, strolled in, causing a gaggle of anorexic-looking marketing ladies to try to press on him the very latest in designer Dustbusters.
This is why, if you ever get the chance, you must go to Los Angeles a few days before the Oscars. It's the only way you'll be able to tell people that kind of stuff without making it up - not even the part about the designer hand-held vacuum cleaner. Hooray for Hollywood.
As I admired the entirely impractical diamond yokes, a lady with a gravity-defying bouffant lulled me into a near-hypnotic state as she breathlessly explained just how special the hair equipment was. "So, this is the Chi Flat Iron? It's, like, got real diamonds studded all over it? And has its own security team and Brinks van? And when the Chi stylists do the celebrity's hair? They sprinkle real diamond dust in it so they can really rock the look? It's like: Oh. My. God? Fierce? Ya."
If you are disoriented reading this, imagine how I felt actually living the Run-DMC-diamond-hair-straightener dream. Not that I'd dream up something like that, especially the Dustbuster part, because you'd probably need to be on some kind of medication to even imagine that happening, but all I'm saying is that it was the surrealist thing.
It began at a party the night before, when Van Morrison was presented with an award by an adoring Al Pacino. The celeb factor was slightly higher here than in the penthouse. Let's just say I don't think Run (or was it DMC?) would have got down the green carpet unless he could have proved some Irish ancestry, although William Monahan, who a couple of nights later won an Oscar for his script for The Departed, also got an award - and in his speech he said: "You do know I'm not Irish, don't you?"
A fellow journalist spied a particularly beautiful woman and decided that, although she was stunning, she wasn't completely out of his league. So he went over to chat her up, only to find that Stuart Townsend had got there before him, because the woman in question was Charlize Theron. Gutted, he was.
I, meanwhile, was trying my luck with Orlando Bloom, by which I mean I was standing behind him with an available look in my eye as he danced to Morrison singing Real Real Gone. This was not infidelity, by the way, because my boyfriend and I have all-bets-are-off celebrity-romance lists. Orlando, Johnny Depp and Paul McCartney are at the top of mine. He has Julie Andrews and Pamela Ballantine, the UTV presenter, on his, which is a bit scary but, at the same time, oddly reassuring.
Earlier I'd bumped into an Irish journalist I knew who was now based in Hollywood. She told me in hushed tones about the legendary "gifting parties" at which Oscars-bound celebrities congregated in Beverly Hills mansions and penthouses to be given tons of free stuff.
She had plundered these swag parties the day before, coming away with bags of cosmetics, jewellery, spa treatments, household accessories and - she wasn't entirely sure about this one - a soft white leather dog with a T-shirt that said: "Pick of the litter." "It has no face. I had to turn its back to me it was that creepy," she said. If she was trying to put me off the swag expedition, it didn't work.
We talked some more about the joy of free stuff generally, and I asked, trying to keep my voice even, whether I could be her partner in swag the following day. She said she'd see what she could do, and that's how I ended up in the penthouse, singing Walk This Way just loud enough so Run (or possibly DMC), but not his minder, could hear.
Turns out, though, that I'm a rubbish swagette. You're supposed to swan up to the stands, pretending you're writing a big feature about chocolate, or leather jewellery or vanity bags, and wait for the mountain of swag to unfold. I found this difficult and, instead, stood looking desperate until someone took pity on me and stuffed a bag of chocolates or a scented massage candle or a teeny-weeny yellow designer T-shirt into my swag bag.
My haul is a bit pathetic compared with my friend's, but now I read in the New York Times that all swag has become taxable. To avoid the notoriously efficient IRS - well, that's one reason - I am looking to get rid of it. E-mail me and, in no more than 100 words, explain why you deserve my stash of Hollywood swag. The most entertaining e-mail wins the lot, including, perhaps, my friend's creepy white leather dog - but not including a top-of-the-line Dustbuster. Sorry.