As a science journalist, some interviews you do go well, some don’t, but at least they usually have a distinct start and end. That wasn’t the case with Robert Laughlin, whom I once met at the annual Lindau conference for Nobel-prize-winners in Germany.

Most of the conference involves Nobel laureates giving lectures to a select band of PhD students from around the world. But Laughlin, who’d shared the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on quantum fluids with fractional charges, had agreed to speak to me in a private room at the conference venue on the shores of Lake Constance.

Things started sensibly enough (he was ostensibly talking about a new book he was writing) but after about 20 minutes, a conference official barged in.

There’d be an over-booking and no, we weren’t allowed to stay. We were two people in the wrong place at the wrong time – and the fact that one of us was a Nobel-prize-winning physicist didn’t cut any mustard. Out we went.

Laughlin and I packed up our stuff and reconvened at an outside terrace in the summer sun, where we tried to pick up the thread of our conversation.

Now, laureates like Laughlin are the big draw of the Lindau conference – in fact, they’re the whole reason the meeting takes place. If Lindau were a music festival, they’d be the artists everyone’s come to see.

Before I knew what was going on, first one then two then three students had sidled up to our table. Like electrons around a nucleus, they’d been attracted by the presence of a Nobel laureate and weren’t going to miss out.

Laughlin didn’t appear fazed by the unexpected turn of events; in fact, I’m sure Nobel laureates love nothing better than being the centre of attention. Within minutes, the entire table had been surrounded by a phalanx of hangers-on.

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Our one-to-one interview had become an impromptu one-man press conference with me seemingly serving as Laughlin’s minder. As he held court to his gaggle of fawning students, apparently oblivious that I was still there, Laughlin was in his element.

Laughlin probably doesn’t remember the encounter: Nobel laureates, who are the only real celebrities in physics, meet hundreds of people all the time. The students, however, appeared to be enjoying themselves, so the conference organizers must have been happy.

But I just ended up squirming in my seat. I put my notebook back in my bag and let Laughlin take over.