'Do you want our autograph? We are famous...' My daughter and a dozen of her alarmingly pubescent friends are leaning out of a brand-new stretch limo, shrieking and madly giggling at pedestrians as they pass slack-jawed along our blue-rinse suburban street. It's Liberty's 10th birthday and what better place to move into double figures than in the leather embrace of a 28ft, white-and-chrome chavtastic super wagon?
The stretch has become the crucial accessory of our celebrity-addled times. From the red carpets of Hollywood to the taxi-ranks of Heathrow, a limo brings with it a declassé glamour all of its own. The smoked windows force our minds to turn somersaults imagining the debauchery taking place just out of sight - in the middle of the high street. The truth, of course, is rather more mundane.
While my daughter and her chums cavort in the back, spilling lemonade from their champagne flutes and fiddling with the bass levels to get the most out of Now That's What I Call Music 59, I'm sitting up front with the ever-patient Graham.
He's been a driver with A1 Stretch Limos for 18 months and is happy to dispel a few 'stretch myths' for me.
'It's not all party, party,' he says. 'Most of the work is restaurant and theatre work, shopping trips and 50ths - I'm on first-name terms with all the doormen at Harrods.' So no drugs? No sex? No famous people? Reluctantly, he admits there have been famous people, but he shouldn't really talk about them... Come on, who have you had? 'Well, Beyoncé, Jennifer Aniston, Johnny Depp...' The names filter through to the wild-eyed Tweenies sitting in the back like a religious mantra.
A deep hush descends, followed by screaming and back-slapping.
Like almost all stretch limos, the vehicle we're in is a Lincoln Town Car. The cars are bought direct and then 'stretched' by coachwork companies. This one has been done by a firm called Attitude. Anything can be supplied, but the basics include bar, telly, flashing fibre-optic and strobe systems, and sculpted leather benchseats.
This one is 28ft long, has a 4.6-litre petrol engine and does about 10mpg in town. It costs £60,000. 'They're easy to drive,' says Graham. 'Just avoid Covent Garden and Soho - the taxis hate you and the corners are hell.' Parking is never a problem - you just stop where you are. 'They're very manoeuvrable,' he says, nimbly putting us through a three-point turn. 'With a bit of space, you can even spin the back end right out,' he says with a grin.
I ask about the money. He says an 'average job lasts several hours and costs about £250'. He'd expect to do five over a weekend. 'But we'll consider anything. I've got a 12-hour hire tomorrow - and last summer I drove a guy to Spain and back.'
Our two hours of faux fame come to an end. My 10-year-old and her friends decamp from the limo for cake and karaoke. Their first song? Beyoncé and 'Crazy in Love'...
