Shake it off: as Taylor-mania sweeps the nation, can a lovelorn Tatler staffer emulate Taylor Swift’s sorrowful progress around London?

Taylor Swift and I have something in common. No, it’s not $1.1 billion in the bank, sadly.

But, like Taylor, I have recently lost my Boy. ‘You’re so lucky,’ a friend tells me one rainy morning. Confused, I ask why.

‘You get to go through a break-up just as Taylor Swift drops a new album,’ she says. Lucky? Unlike the pop megastar, who’s earned millions making music out of her love life, I don’t have a in which to sob. Or a recently single A-lister bestie like Sophie Turner to paint the town red with.

But, as I drown my sorrows listening to – one heart-wrenching ballad after another – I start to wonder: could I turn a crisis into an opportunity? I can certainly retrace the singer’s footsteps in London, sporting a freshly trimmed Taylor-esque fringe. My rationale? I am seeking the tortured poet within me, so that I too can turn my tears into – and maybe even end up with a Swift-sized cheque afterwards. That’ll teach London Boy.

I begin at The Black Dog pub in : the scene of the in the now-infamous song in which Taylor croons: ‘And your location/You forgot to turn it off/And so I watch as you walk/Into some bar called The Black Dog.’ As I sip a Guinness, I wonder which table Joe Alwyn might have been sitting at when Taylor tracked him down on Find My iPhone. At my table for one, I start brooding about my ex – then, suddenly, I have an epiphany: I can make my London Boy jealous.

There is a handsome man working behind the bar. He compliments my fring.