Pizzas galore!

“And making money,” I try.

“Yes. But mostly the people.”

Around the room, Chris’s colleagues stand with serene smiles Blu-Tacked onto their faces. In their identical black tops they remind me of something. At first I think it’s priests, then I realise it’s fascists. One chap has gone so far as to shave the company logo (an apple with a bite out of the top) into the back of his head. “It’s a community,” says Chris.

A preposterous 4,000 people applied to work in this shop. They could have filled the 138 positions about 29 times over. The chosen ones were flown to California to be indoctrinated at company HQ. Everyone I ask is a bit sketchy on the details, though. They mumble about “seminars” and “workshops” and I’m left to presume they spent their days naked and wrestling in an apple-shaped mud bath, chanting: “Steve is God! Steve is God!”

Steve Jobs, or His Holiness Apple, is the company’s chief executive and architect of every area of the empire. He personally approved all elements of this store and his attention to detail is infectious.

One guy drags me into a corner to show me how the ridges on the ventilation unit run seamlessly from panel to panel. “Isn’t it amazing,” he breathes. Apparently it took several goes to get them right.

To get a reaction I tell him this shop is not a patch on Prada’s popular new boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. For a second, the flames of psychosis flicker in his eyes and I think he’s going to take a 17in PowerBook to my skull. Then his zombie look returns and he asks sweetly if I’ve ever thought about “going wireless”.

Confronted with all these loons, I start to question my generation’s consuming devotion to what are, after all, pretty bits of plastic and wire. I scale the glass staircase to the first floor and prepare for a sermon from Ron Johnson, senior vice-president of retail.

“It’s more than a store,” says Ron, whose casual sweater and folksy tones create a cunning illusion of normality. “It’s in the middle of life, a place to belong.” He boasts that the staff speak “24 languages . . . and one of them is Windows”. Chuckles all round prove members of the Apple cult are alive and present.

“It’s about people more than things,” Peter Bohlin, the shop’s architect, chimes. Ron spends a lot of time detailing free seminars for Apple beginners and areas such as the Studio where “creatives” can help you catalogue your holiday snaps. “We’ll even help you choose a screensaver.” Thanks, Ron.

He refers to more advanced classes as “going deep” — surely the filthiest bit of corporate jargon ever coined — and lip service is paid to bringing the local community in. Vertigo, the current single by U2, who are in Apple’s ad campaign, is played to rousing effect.

“We’ve created a lot of reasons to come,” Ron finishes, iciness starting to creep into his voice. “And — when you come — there’s a lot of reasons to come back.” Our eyes lock and an involuntary spasm kicks up my spine. The assembled staff look like they might start speaking in tongues. The applause is inappropriately frequent.

We no longer pray on the sabbath, we shop, and if M&S is the Church of England — drab interiors and shoppers deserting in droves — then Apple is Kabbalah; voguish, hokey and more than a little pretentious.

On leaving the store I find the Apple-mad tourists are still outside. “What’s it like?” gasps one smallish fellow who can’t believe my luck.

“You know . . . fine,” I mutter, thinking what suckers we all are for a nice bit of design and some clever marketing.

“I’ll be queueing on Friday night,” he tells me. I’m sure he won’t be the only one.