Judge Rinder says Harry Styles encounter was ‘worst social car crash ever’

The two celebrities bumped into each other at the gym

Judge Robert Rinder has reflected on bumping into Harry Styles in the gym, calling their encounter “the worst social car crash ever”.

The ITV daytime star said he was “starstruck” when he noticed the former One Direction singer on a running machine next to him in the gym.

“Nobody looks at anyone at my gym, so I just thought there was a homeless girl running next to me,” he told The Telegraph. “And then I had a moment of epiphany: it was Harry Styles.

“He’s evolved into a real artist, so when I subsequently saw him I got strangely starstruck. We ended up involved in a conversation and all I will say was that it was the worst social car crash ever.”

Rinder added: “He hugged me because he needed to make it stop. It was like an act of social euthanasia.”

The TV judge said that it doesn’t usually tend to go well when he meets people he admires, because “for the first 10 minutes” he acts like a “crazed fan”, telling them how he has “read every interview and watched everything they ever did on YouTube”.

Harry Styles and Florence Pugh in ‘Don't Worry Darling’ (© 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved)

Styles can currently be seen in the psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling, alongside Florence Pugh.

Read The Independent’s three-star review of the film here.