Full of bravado, I plunge myself into the crowd at Oxford Circus. Being a sandwich-board man – or woman – may be boring, I think, but it must surely be easy.

Instantly my confidence proves misguided. Although wielding a 3m-high wooden stick attached to a bright yellow, fluorescent sign, to my dismay I discover I’m practically invisible to the teeming crowd.

Hundreds of shoppers push past, ignoring my plaintive pleas to visit the golf equipment sale down the road. Some look straight through me, others smirk. One even stands on my foot.

A nasty gust of wind takes to my sign as if were a sail, propelling it backwards and almost causing me to topple over.

Izez, the man who has been kind enough to lend me his placard, looks concerned.

“You are not holding it properly, you don’t have the skill. You can’t drop it on people,” he says kindly, as if this thought had not already occurred to me. I feel dejected, but my mission is to uncover the lot of a sandwich-board holder, and I will not be deterred.

Fifteen minutes later, things are looking up. I have successfully directed some tourists to Piccadilly Circus, received a wolf whistle from a passing lorry driver and posed for photos for a group of pensioners on a passing bus.

I give myself kudos for keeping the increasingly heavy sign upright, and start to feel more comfortable in my role. At this point, it all goes awry. “Oi, you muppet!” a passer-by yells. “You’re pointing the sign the wrong way. The shop’s in the other direction. Don’t give up your day job!”

My entrepreneurial spirit is badly dented. Just when I start to think things can’t get worse, I feel a droplet of rain. Rattled, I nearly drop the sign on to a passing shopper . . . again.

A personal injury lawsuit is hardly worth the £4 per hour I’d get for this gig. There may be nothing like getting out of the office, but I don’t think I’ll be giving up my day job.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Times Christmas appeal: Letter from the Editor
• Conferences — what a waste of money
• Schools supremo learns a painful lesson