I don't know why people use toe curling as a metaphor for embarrassment. Every single time I've been really, truly embarrassed either my spine has tried to stab me in the kidneys or my brain has wanted to explode just so I don't have to remember the sheer enormity of how small I am currently feeling.

Last night I discovered a whole new level of shame where you are so, totally mortified that it's impossible to even begin to feel embarrassed yet. As Owen Wilson was on strike against the press thanks to the Kate Hudson rumours, I sneaked out of last night's You, Me And Dupree premiere early. With everyone still going the other way up the red carpet, I try and exit as unobtrusively as possible. In doing so, my broken heel slips on the road causing me to trip violently over my own feet and crash land on one knee (imagine a baby giraffe at its first ice disco and you get the picture).

I scramble up as quickly as possible, only to be confronted with the second incarnation of Lolo Ferrari pointed straight at my head. "Are you alright?" ask the biggest breasts I've ever seen. It's Lea Big Brother. Oh God, there are photographers: "CARING BB LEA IN DYSPRAXIC HACK MERCY DASH" flashes before my eyes.

I mutter something useless, congratulate her on, er, being and wish I'd read Heat a bit more throughly, instead of just flicking to the bits about skirts. We grin awkwardly at each other, then she floats off while I slink off trying to cram 6'2 of muppet into a small puddle of person. "Is your knee alright?" shouts a youth from the other side of the carpet. Fucking hell, I'm a stage attraction. I smile sickly at him and say something inane before scampering off to the depths of the Tube.

Everyone has hideously embarrassing moments, yet knowing that doesn't make your own any less horrific. Still, feel free to share yours, then maybe there can be a database of mortification to draw on in times of need. I tried to remember the worst ones, but, thank God, most of them seem to have been successfully suppressed by years of mental conditioning and prescription drugs. Here's the evolutionary scale of embarrassment as loosely remembered by Kat.

Aged 10: Being the only girl in school to actually obey her games teacher and take all her clothes off to use the communal showers. Never trust the word of a PE teacher. Especially not one who looks like Rosa Klebb.

Aged 14: My mother brandishing my childhood Blue Peter badge at London Dungeons and asking the steward in ringing tones whether it would still get me in free.

Aged 18: Acting out a (filmed) scene from Taming of the Shrew at my college day, and, thanks only to some frenzied waving from my college mum, noticing halfway through that my right breast had been on display for a good five minutes.

Aged 21: While filming The Weakest Link, being caught voting off the same people as the bloke standing next to me on by peering over his shoulder. Anne Robinson has a stare that could bore through titanium: I have never lied so badly in my entire life.

Aged 23: Interviewing some stoned public schoolboy sleb for the Q music channel at the Empire Awards, under the impression he was Peter from Narnia.

Kat: "So, you've grown your hair."
Schoolboy: "Yes."
Kat: "Are you all ready for Narnia then?"
Schoolboy: "Oh, no, I'm not doing Narnia."
Kat: (Thrilled at possible exclusive) "But you've all signed up, surely?"
Schoolboy: "No. Im not IN Narnia."
Kat: (Shitshitshitshitshit) "Oh. Well, have a lovely evening."

It was Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter. Oops.

A fortnight ago: Asking The Automatic where The Automatic were at the Kerrang! Day of Rock. A thousand curses on the fact that the digital music revolution means you never see a mugshot, and that all 19-year-old boys look the same.

I hope this makes you feel better about whatever mortifications you might have recently experienced. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to go and have a short bout of hysterics in the bathroom.