It was 2003 and I was aboard the good ship Aurora or the "Plague Ship" as the redtop dailies christened it, owing to a severe outbreak of the norovirus which laid flat hundreds of passengers and led to us being turned away from various ports.
I'll blog about this on another occasion because it was amazing to witness at first hand what happens when there is major ilness onboard a cruise ship.
Friendly Gibraltar let us ashore, despite the Spaniards closing the border, and as we docked, I was standing on the upper decks when a bloke standing next to me unravelled a blanket on which he daubed the word HELP! in massive letters.
The world's press and tv were at the dockside and they filmed it and took pics which ended up in the newspapers.It was even live on the telly at the time.
When I arrived home, I was relaxing by watching Have I Got News For You when one of the questions to the panel was about the "plague ship" all over the news.
Imagine my surprise when the film they showed to illustrate it included a closeup of me next to the plonker with the HELP! blanket.
It's a show I have always wanted to go on but preferably on the panel and not as a specimen.
By the way, the plonker got chased all round the ship by angry officers who confiscated his blanket and gave him a good telling off.
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