You wake up. You stretch. You get out of bed and walk downstairs. But wait – there’s a stranger in your kitchen, holding a knife. You take a closer look. Is that … is that Tom Hiddleston? What on earth is he doing there?
“Morning,” he says, looking you right in the eye. “I finished early so I thought I’d pop back and make you breakfast.” You look at the breakfast. It is a huge plate of raw vegetables and possibly blackberries, with a fried egg on top. You could live to be a thousand years old and never find another breakfast quite this unpalatable. What is going on?
Seriously, what is going on? Why is Hiddleston here? Why has he made you a terrible hot egg/cold veg breakfast combo? And why was he so busy last night? Is he a milkman? Does he sweep up at the fish market before all the traders arrive? Is he a murderer? That, at least, would explain the bizarre look of deferent contrition on his face. You’ve seen that face before, that time you caught your dog eating raw sausages out of the fridge. What has Hiddleston done, exactly? Has he poisoned your plate of eggs and sweetcorn? That’s the only possible explanation.
He sits you down at the kitchen table. His face warps into a nightmare mask of barely disguised sadness. “Pepper on top, right?” he asks you, as if a sprinkling of seasoning will camouflage the affront to God that he’s slid in front of you. But he’s not finished, because he’s waving a bottle of vitamins around and speaking Chinese.
Ohh, that’s what this is. Tom Hiddleston has decided to walk in the footsteps of Nicolas Cage and Arnold Schwarzenegger and supplement his income by starring in an Asian television commercial. This one is for Centrum, a US brand, and airs on Chinese network Weibo. But times are different now. The internet exists, and the world is much smaller, which means that everyone knows the second anyone makes an advert like this. Perhaps Hiddleston knows. Perhaps that’s why he constantly looks as if he’s about to break down in floods of tears.
Perhaps that’s also why he runs away so quickly. No sooner than he’s handed you a full month’s worth of breakfast salad and some multivitamins, he’s throwing his jacket on as fast as he can. “I’ll probably be a bit busy for the next few weeks,” he tells you, “But I’ll make it up to you soon, I promise.”
You look down at your own body, but you can’t tell who you are. You’re definitely a woman, because the container of Centrum had the word “women” written on it, but that’s as close as you can get. Are you an elderly relative of his? That would explain his treatment of you – making you food, reminding you to take your vitamins, apologising for not being around as much as he’d like – but what was that bit at the end? That sounded … sexual? Are you his girlfriend? Does Hiddleston have an elderly girlfriend? Is he sexually attracted to one of his great aunts? It has to be one of those two things. They’re the only possible explanations.
Then, suddenly, and of their own accord, your hands shoot out and straighten his collar. You brush his lapel. It’s the sort of thing that a girlfriend would do. But it’s also what an elderly relative might do. You wait to see what your hands will do next. Will they bring him in for a tender kiss? Will they wipe a spit-dampened tissue across his cheek? Alas, it’s too late. Hiddleston smiles and wordlessly exits, presumably to daydream about the days when people thought he’d make a good James Bond.
Your hands fall limp. The commercial ends. This – the What If You Were Tom Hiddleston’s Girlfriend Or Aunt, And He Didn’t Understand The Concept Of Breakfast, And Also He Might Be A Murderer VR Experience – is over. You pray to God you never have to play it again.
