The next day, as we stood in front of the Venus de Milo in the Lou­vre, I looked over his shoul­der and saw that he was googling him­self.

Specif­i­cally, he was googling ‘Did Ask or Task air in France?’

I know why he was do­ing it: it was be­cause he was feel­ing sore about the con­ver­sa­tion with his agent and he needed re­as­sur­ance that he wasn’t wast­ing his life, that his work had had some im­pact on the world. He wanted to know if there was even the tini­est pos­si­bil­ity that as he walked around the cob­bled streets of Paris, a French per­son might spot him and say, ‘Isn’t that Andy Daw­son? From that un­known sub­ti­tled Eng­lish game show that only ran for eight episodes?’, de­spite the fact he’d never been rec­og­nized in his home coun­try. He needed to have hope that this could hap­pen, more than he needed to take in the beauty and his­tory of the fa­mous an­cient Greek sculp­ture that was right in front of him. More than he needed to hold the hand of the woman he was in love with, who was stand­ing right next to him.