Michael, why on god’s green ...

Question: Michael, why on gods green earth did you spend five minutes in bed with Gillian Anderson on Saturday?

Answer: How the heck did you hear about that?!?! That was supposed to be a secret! Well, it's out there now so I may as well spill. Gillian was at the Ritz Carlton in Pasadena for press tour Saturday promoting her Masterpiece Theatre miniseries Bleak House (premiering Sunday on PBS), and, following her press conference, I asked the PBS publicist if I could get five minutes one-on-one with her for a top-secret story I'm working on for TV Guide magazine. Well, not only did Gills say yes, but the rep asked if I would mind going to her room in a half hour to do it. Would I mind? Would I mind? Does a wild bear mind doing No. 2 in the woods? Cut to 29 minutes later: I knock on Gills' door, walk in and find her waiting for me (pause for dramatic effect) on her bed. Being the gentleman that I aspire to be, I reluctantly offer to pull up a chair alongside the bed, but she has none of it and invites me to jump in the sack with her. (Note: I attended the very first X-Files convention in San Diego in 1996. In other words, I shouldn't have been allowed within 50 feet of Gillian Anderson, let alone inside her suite at the Ritz.) What happened over the course of the next five minutes will stay between me, Gillian, Gillian's manager who was sitting on the other side of the room with a baseball bat in her hand and the readers of TV Guide magazine. (I wasn't kidding about that top-secret story. Really, I wasn't. I swear.)