Well what a few days we’ve experienced.

After 4 months of hard training, the London Marathon finally came upon us last Sunday. We got up to London on Saturday afternoon to register at the ExCel Arena, bumping into a couple of mates up there too. The exhibition itself is fairly dull. Once you’ve registered you get led round a mixture of stalls selling running clothes and organisations trying to get you to run a marathon in their country for a large sum of money.

One good thing you can pick up there is some wrist bands which, according to your anticipated finishing time, will show a breakdown of your time at each mile marker. These are the same wristbands that litter the road along the 26.2 mile route after runners realise they’ve set their goals too high.

We were also introduced to a new addition to the marathon whist at the exhibition, the P-Mate.

Basically it looks like a paper aeroplane that women piss into and it prevents queues at the urinals. I can report back that I never saw Shella attempt to use one which was unfortunate really because it would have been quite amusing.

Marathon day was yet again another great day. Even though you are given a position number on the starting line, depending on your anticipated finish time, you can normally push near the front, but we didn’t take into account an old lady who looked like she’d come off the set of The Golden Girls who was making sure no one was sneaking further up the line. The consequence was that we spent 24 miles tripping over people as you had a better chance of finding clearer road on a 10 mile tailback on the M1. I honestly think it cost me about 10 minutes of my finish time.

We both had goals – Shella’s was to finish in under 4 hours, mine was to finish in under 3 and a half hours.  It was tough. A boiling hot day had made it imperative you took on water at every drink station. To give you an idea of how hot, I took my first piss of the day at 9am, then had a cup of tea and Lucozade, then drunk at every drink station, plus Lucozade every 5 miles. I then drunk the 3 litres of drink supplied in my goody bag afterwards, plus a bottle from Shella, Bridesmaid Kelly and one of my mates that came to watch. I felt that dehydrated. I took my second piss at 8.30pm. Almost 12 hours after my first.

I finished the marathon in 3 hours 32 minutes and 33 seconds – just 12 seconds outside my personal best 7 years ago. Shella finished in 4 hours 14 minutes.

Will we run again? Well never say never.

By the way, between us we raised over £2000 for the charity Victa so a massive thanks to everyone that donated. Without your generosity we would never have run.

On Tuesday it was my birthday. A man can only be 27 for so many years so this year I’m 28.

I was treated to an afternoon trip with Best man Jon to visit Lace at Selfridges to pick up the suits. I couldn’t contain my excitement knowing I’d be meeting The Special One again.

I actually felt nervous meeting this great man. He now has legendary status, not just on this website, but throughout the world of fashion. I get nervous just getting up in the morning so I made sure I had a clearout before meeting him.

When we arrived at the Paul Smith department Lace was no where to be seen - you could sense the tension throughout the store while we waited for him. It was worth the wait though, he gives off the same aura as Mohammed Al Fayed does when he walks through Harrods. Everyone wants a piece of him.

We were greeted by the customary gangster hug. Jon and I now had it down to a tee. You do a kinda high five handshake at the same time as tentatively hugging the person and also look like your sniffing the person’s back.

Time is precious with Lace, especially when he’s on holiday the following day for 3 weeks to board his luxury yacht in Nice, so we were quickly whisked off to the shoe department where he’d lined up a nice pair of brown wedding loafers for us, and a belt to match.

Then it was time to try on the whole outfit and check it was all ok. Unfortunately my trousers were still too long so a click of his fingers and Lace had called down a pretty French seamstress who was going to do an express adjustment for me. Lace had already admitted he had a secret infatuation with her. Now it was time to see the real Special One in action, spending a good 10 minutes chatting to her in fluent French. Lace later admitted he can speak fluent Italian and Spanish too. Quite handy when you have an eye for the girls like this man.

So we were almost kitted out, the only problem was my shirt had gone missing and they didn’t have  a replacement for me so we were sent to Paul Smith in Covent Garden to pick up another.  A 45 minute journey across London later, only to be told they didn’t have one either. A quick phone call to Lace informs us that they actually have one a few doors down from Selfridges at House of Fraser. I think informing Lace of my marathon feats had him thinking distance was no object.

All was made up when we returned to Selfridges and we met Lace for lunch. All this marathon running had the weight dropping off me. So much so that I was down to 10 stone. He sent over his sidekick Dee to measure me up one more time. I sensed Dee was a little confused by this mutual love that was drifting through the air. Lace was concerned I needed to beef up so treated us to whatever we liked at the restaurant.
This is a man who’s radar is never switched off. Jon and I were starving but Lace can multitask easier than his fluent foreign languages. Between every bite of sandwich Lace would be people watching and more importantly ogling the women.

Lace also briefly allowed us into his world too. He certainly had a lot more to say than when Jonathan Ross interviewed Lady Ga Ga – you never really knew quite what you’d learn next.

Lace lives in Canary Wharf, has been married and divorced, is a Chelsea fan and has a mobile phone that is the envy of any WAG. He seemed to have the whole Arsenal team in his contacts and told us many stories, about them, most of which we were sworn to secrecy. We did learn though that Emannuel Adebayor is very loud when he comes to see Lace, but a charming man.

And so it was time to say goodbye to Lace. A man that if we’d not met could have taken us a lot longer to sort out and potentially could have had no style either.

A celebratory beer (5 to be precise) afterwards to toast our purchases and I was back on the train with some fantastic memories of another funny day.

And there it was, just like Mr Benn leaving the shopkeeper, we’d left Lace’s world and headed back to our humble surroundings.

The run might be over but you can still sponsor us for the London Marathon. Here's the link to do so online - it only takes a few minutes and remember to tick gift aid:

www.bmycharity.com/matthewstorey
www.bmycharity.com/shellasmith