I’m interviewing Daryl Braithwaite this week.

Me and Mr Horses will be having an actual conversation. He’ll be addressing my personally. He might even say my fucking name. it’s all very soak-the-office-chair-through-my-only-work-appropriate-jeggings kind of excitement. But, as do most good things in my life, it also poses a big problem:

I will be leading the conversation.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am genuinely talented at making a simple social interaction more awkward and irreversibly uncomfortable than seeing your grandmother masturbate to a film poking fun at asylum seekers and victims of the Holocaust before wiping her hands on the pages of the Bible. Except I don’t need to be sexually explicit, racially insensitive, blasphemous or even straight-up evil to turn a simple conversation into an experience you have to physically shower after to feel clean again. It usually starts with a forced empty silence before I let rip with a “…so how about that local sporting team?”.

What follows is a round of confused, semi-annoyed laughter forced out of the conversation participants with as much enthusiasm someone passing a corkscrew through the last stretch of their intestinal journey. And just like the aftermath of a razor-sharp spiral inching its way through a rectal opening, the following minutes aren’t pretty.

See, I like to think my jibe a triumph of ironic humour, laced with intelligence and social foresight. I think I am transcending that lingering awkwardness by dragging it out of the shadows and throwing it into the spotlight, a like a metaphorical bogart (which is actually both fictitious and metaphorical anyway) I destroy the great squirminess of small talk by laughter. And nie times out of ten…

It really doesn’t work. Apparently having to explain my jokes means it’s not a very good one (just like that headline I wrote which encapsulated a quote from the Bruce Willis classic film franchise Diehard in a story about the a football team called the Diehards… it turns out I was one of the only people in a population of roughly 3,000 who has any cinematic taste).

I’m not saying that I’m socially incapable, but I am saying that sometimes my conversations can take weird turns and when they nose dive into strange territory, it doesn’t long for that plane to crash. While being interviewed for my current job, I found a way to work in my favourite small-time chicken shop chain into the conversation (it’s called Super Rooster and it will change your fucking life. Next time you pass through the Darling Downs do yourself a favour and validate your previously meaningless existence). Just last week I met a gym manager in the street and managed to turn an innocent conversation about him going to the bank into an innuendo-laced dialogue about sacks. Only two days ago I actually said “my uterus is yours” to the co-worker who kindly passed this Daryl interview on to me.

I can’t really be trusted to pull off an actually professional interview with the man/god who created my dance floor anthem which I request without fail on any night out before forcing some poor schmuck to lift me in the chorus and spin me around.

How do I maintain my composure when addressing the voice I hear when I break out into a Baywatch-style run on the treadmill like I’m lip-synching to safe my life?

It’s going to be very difficult to come back from my blurting out a teary request to join the big man on stage to interpretive dance to Horses wearing a brown unitard, ears and a tail. In fact, I might go ahead and say it is impossible.

I really don’t know how to prepare myself for this kind of feat. This is bigger than all the other interviews I’ve done in my life. It’s bigger than the time I interviewed the fire captain who also played the Santa Claus at 98 per cent of my childhood Christmas parties, it’s bigger than the time I interviewed the local councillor who I used to exclusively squeal around as a toddler, hell, it’s even bigger than the time I interviewed the guy who was manning the barbecue at an Anglican church Shrove Tuesday pancake cookup. I’ve talked to some big boppers in my time, but Daryl takes the cake.

All I can do is stick to my list of questions and hope for the best. I suppose if all else fails, I can talk about the weather, or something.