Watch a video of Gok Wan's tips for choosing glasses

Since Gok Wan shot to fame in the celebratory, moving, right-on makeover-fest How to Look Good Naked, I have known that he is the person whom I most want to be my new and dear friend. You must understand, I am not alone in this desire: both Dame Judi Dench and Victoria Wood are committed Gok-lovers. Indeed, judging from a quick straw poll of my female friends, 97 per cent of womankind feels much the same way, too. They all agree that a night out on the razz with Gok is the premiere celebrity dream date for women in 2008 - pole-vaulting over being invited to one of Sir Elton John's White Tie and Tiara Balls for the new No 1 spot.

We're all pretty much in accordance with how the ideal night out with Gok would go, as well. Don't misunderstand us: we love Gok on How to Look Good Naked, which, with its heady combination of cunning accessories, “You go, girlfriend!' positivity and celebration of women's thighs, makes us all both weepy and euphoric when we watch it. We love how Gok is pretty much the only person in 21st-century culture who actually seems to like normal, wobbly, slightly insecure women - calling them all “My girl” with genuine affection, putting them in life-changing dresses and confirming his place as Britain's foremost and, indeed, probably only philogynist.

But it's also clear that, released from the confines of a constantly-being-lovely-in-a-pre-watershed slot, Gok - an irrepressible, camp Anglo-Chinese stylist who looks as if he wakes up every morning shouting “I LOVE LIFE! I'M GOING TO TRY AND EAT THE WORLD TODAY!” - would be a right dirty bitch. He would be a razzmeister. A hootenanny whore. My womenfolk are all in accordance with how the ideal Gok Night would go. We would drink ludicrous cocktails - or Goktails - smoke fags with him, stroke his legs, bitch about celebrities, discuss sex in a thoroughly filthy manner, and have him call us “Girlfriend” at least half a dozen times before we get cabs home; possibly too drunk to see.

So, having scored a night out with Gok (The Times is pretending that it's an interview to publicise his new Channel 4 show, Gok's Fashion Fix, but I, obviously, know that this is the night when the souls of Wan and Moran intertwine, as destiny intended, in a bar), I dress wholly in accordance with the Fashion Laws of Gok Wan. I'm wearing a pair of Spanx Higher Power “sculpting pants” from my knee to my bra. I am wearing a 1950s-style cocktail dress that goes in here and out there, in acknowledgement of my “totally hot, real-woman curves”. I have on a pair of “sassy” yellow heels and some “va-va-voom” lipstick. There was a momentary dilemma over what to do with my “bangers” - whether to wear them up or down - but eventually I just put them in the usual place, and sashayed out of the door to meet Gok.

And here he is, standing outside the Charlotte Street Hotel, smoking a fag, finishing up a day's work on his new show. He looks tired - six-day shooting weeks, for the past five weeks, have left him pale, with fake-tan tide-marks between his fingers; and his red eyes are hidden behind sunglasses - but he is instantly, totally Goktacular. We hug, he warns me that it might give him an erection - “It's been a while” - I stroke his beautiful face, and when he calls me “Girlfriend” for the first time I'm afraid to say that I turn aside, and do a little, secret Henman-fist. Tonight, Matthew, I am Wan's Gokette.

Holding hands with Gok as we walk down the street is about as happy as I've ever been in my life. Not least because of the reaction we're getting. I've walked around London with Courtney Love, Mary J. Blige and Doctor Who, but I've never seen a reaction like this. The traffic grinds to a halt on Oxford Street. Clusters of women gather and take photos of Gok on their mobile phones. The most notable thing is the look on the facesof the women observing him: totally warm, innocent, joyful affection. I've seen harder-faced women looking at puppies wearing hats.

“The reaction from fans is amazing,” Gok says on the way back to the hotel. “I have had women crying their eyes out in front of me, trying to touch me, telling me how I've changed their life. It's like being a rock musician or something. It's like being the Beatles.” Pressed to speculate on why their reaction is so visceral, he says, with economic wisdom: “Clothes talk. They tell your story. And we change women's stories - which are sometimes quite unhappy - without plastic surgery or therapy, but just ... a dress.” I look down at my outfit. What my outfit says is that I haven't missed an episode of How to Look Good Naked for three years, and that I love Gok Wan. I am pleased with what it is saying. That seems about right.

Back at the hotel, we settle on an outside table with the cocktail list. Gok chooses something fruity with rum in it - “basically the gayest cocktail on the menu” - and we discuss his putative TV makeover stylist rivals, Trinny and Susannah, and Nicky Hambleton-Jones. “Trinny and Susannah - they're like Laurel and Hardy,” Gok says, both fondly and with the knowledge that they are yesterday's chip paper beneath his Cuban-heeled glory. “And Nicky Hambleton-Jones - I met her at an awards ceremony and you know what? She was really, really nice. But I finally thought, ‘If I hated my body, who and Nicky] would I want to see?' That's the bottom line.”

We can talk about inferior TV make-over stylists for only so long before we turn to life's biggest topics: sex, fags and Kylie. Indeed, the first few minutes are devoted to working out which is the most important - with the battle between sex and fags being particularly troublesome. Gok loves smoking (“I've smoked more since the smoking ban.”). He had his first cigarette at the age of 11. His father had left it burning in the ashtray in the family's restaurant in Leicester. “I thought it was so lovely,” Gok sighs. “I nicked a whole packet off him the next week.” He used to bunk off school, go down to the scraggy wood on the edge of his council estate, and smoke with the “naughty girls”. Although he didn't know what he wanted to be then, he was already hyper-aware of fashion.

“I can remember every single piece of clothing I've ever owned,” he says. To prove it, he recites a single day in his life, when he was 4 - still pre-nursery - and went through four costume changes in a day, “because I couldn't wear the same outfit to walk my sister to school as I did around the house”. The tourist board in Leicester recently asked him to write something for its brochure, “but I couldn't do it; I always had such a terrible time there”. He's close to his family, though; he has all of them - big brother, big sister, mother and father - tattooed on his arm, in stick-man form. They take up half of his right arm. It's quite a moving sight.

“I've got another tattoo,” Gok says, showing me his upper-arm, and a pretty authentic-looking barcode across the tricep. “Does it work?” I ask. “Yes,” he says. “If you scan me, I come up as ‘Soft Fruit and Sweets'.” A skater-dude in a vest top, with long, honeycoloured arms, walks past.

“Oh, he's so my type,” Gok sighs, exhaling his smoke through his nose, like a lusty dragon. “I love skaters, waiters, air stewards, runners. I'd definitely like to follow him down the street, hahaha.” My transcription of the interview records that we then spend the next 17 minutes discussing Kylie. More specifically, her recent, cataclysmic slide into fashion “meh”-dom.

Gok turns over a multitude of fashion options for her, before finally concluding that she should go “1930 to 1950. I'd go feminine mystery. It was an amazing time for women's fashion, because of the power they gained during the war, and Kylie ... Kylie's just had her own war, hasn't she? We should go all Sabrina.” He's practically sketching out outfits on a napkin. “I should pitch for the job, shouldn't I?”

As our dear friendship has now reached a plateau of cheering conviviality and, to be fair, a £60 bar bill, I feel that I can now confide one of my deepest secrets to Gok. “Gok,” I tell him, slightly shamefacedly. “When I put on a nice outfit I hear you in my head saying ‘Girlfriend's got it all going on!'”

Amazingly, he seems all right with this: “Cool!” Indeed he, in turn, has a secret of his own to share.

“I'd quite like to get a role in Ultimate Force,” he says, giggling hysterically, but also clearly quite serious about acting in a Ross Kempstarring drama about the SAS. “I'd love to be one of those guys who can come into a room and shoot everyone. And I'm going to do a nude photoshoot - but only when someone offers me £1 million to do it. Then I'll start my own charity, to help bullied teenagers, with the money.”

We do some more gossip, and briefly try to “cure” Amy Winehouse (“If she thinks she needs crack to have fun, she should try coming out with me”) but then it really is time for us to go our respective ways. Gok leaps into his cab, with a flurry of “goodbye, darlings”, while I settle the bill. I am just sighing over what a lovely evening I have had, and how totally Gok'n'roll I now feel, when Gok's head pops out of the cab window. “Do you need a lift anywhere?” he asks.

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