It was 2015, just a few months after I launched my first studio in Hampstead, North London, the city’s wealthiest community, when an horrific trip to hospital took place.

Most of my clients booked me via my website, and this young Russian woman was one of my first major (rich) clients. She had sent me an enquiry and told me she was looking to get in shape before her son’s parents’ evening at school.

That’s got to be a joke, right? I thought to myself, reading the enquiry. Well, no; keeping up an elite appearance is not uncommon in Hampstead, so I thought little of it at the time.

It wasn’t long before the Russian woman – let’s call her ‘AlLEGra’ – was walking through the studio entrance. Allegra instantly knocked me for six at how beautiful she was. Six-foot-tall, legs up to my chin and a face not too dissimilar to those that grace the catwalks of London Fashion Week. Androgynous, but beautifully so.

However, it wouldn’t be long before I’d realise that she had the body of a Greek goddess but with the brain of a Greek salad. She was already in what we fitness professionals call ‘shape’, so I was interested to see how much further she wanted to push herself.

Within a few minutes of our first session, what struck me the most was that every time Allegra moved her legs, she sounded like a TV suffering from interference.

Crackle – crackle.

Every step.

Crackle – crackle.

Could it be that her pair of custom Nike Air’s bubble had a puncture? Was she in fact a humanoid and these were her badly-oiled joints creaking? Or did she have a Quality Street fetish and was stashing empty wrappers in her drawers? As a fitness professional, I did my best to ignore the noise and concentrated on trying not to show my confusion as I evaluated her health and body movement.

Thirty minutes in, however, the noise remained loud and crackly.

Then, I noticed she was overheating and her ankles had turned blue while she was on the spin bike. Curiosity got the better of me and I broke the patter with genuine concern.

‘Erm, are you OK, Allegra?’ I ask. ‘Your ankles don’t look … kosher.’

What an understatement. Her ankles looked like they would give Violet Beauregarde a run for her money.

‘I zawzis in Cozmo, it good for fat loss,’ she replies in a thick Russian accent pointing towards her feet.

(Be thankful this isn’t the audiobook. Whenever I try to do a Russian accent, it always sounds more Basil Fawlty Hitleresque than actual Russian.)

‘Erm, what’s good for fat loss?’ I reply, knowing I’m not going to like what I hear.

‘Ziszellophane,’ she says. ‘You wrap yourself and you lose ze fat.’

I take a good ten seconds to decipher the word ‘zellophane’. Aeroplane? Cello pain?

‘Sorry. Come again.’ The penny drops and I gawp. ‘You’re using cellophane to lose weight?’

‘Yez, it very good!’

By now, not only had Allegra’s ankles turned bright blue, but she was overheating faster than a politician on Question Time.

‘Let’s get you off the bike, girl; something’s not right,’ I say, now realising that this dim bulb had mummified her legs in sandwich wrapping, cutting off valuable circulation.

And then, with an impressive swan dive that would challenge Tom Daly for his medals, Allegra dismounted the bike in one casual collapse.

So, here I am, in my studio with a Russian supermodel who’s passed out on the floor because she thought it was a good idea to wrap her legs in cling film in order to lose weight. Oh, thank you very much glossy magazines. Thank you very much.

‘999. What’s your emergency, please?’ the soft voice on the other end of my iPhone 7 was reassuring.

‘Ambulance, please,’ I reply, taking my client’s pulse, and checking her airway was clear of loose clothing, OTT jewellery and cling film.

Ten minutes later, the ambulance had rushed Allegra and me to the local A&E. Following a quick bout of resuscitation, and unwrapping from all the cling film, my client’s temperature is normal again. I pretend I’m concerned but all I am worried about is the imminent arrival of her next of kin. Allegra had spoken of him briefly at the beginning of our session and I sensed he was not one for romantic comedies. Cue the silver Mercedes G Series with blacked-out windows screeching up at the front of A&E.

I’m a dead man. I’m sure of it.

I wait patiently outside the hospital and listen to my heartbeat thump loudly in my ears. Judgement Day is here. Sauron is about to lay the smackdown on Middle Earth, and there’s no James Bond coming to save me in the nick of time. I’m expecting a 10-foot, leather-clad, knife-wielding, bouncer-type manscaped within an inch of his own life with huge war scars striped across his face to beat me to within an inch of my own life with my own shoes.

Instead, to my surprise, a small Russian doll of a dude steps out of the vehicle, spots me and calmly walks over. ‘Are you… Matt? You did vell, zankyou.’ He puts his little Oddjob hand inside his well-laundered suit jacket.

I fully expected him to pull a shiv and stab me in my stomach Gulag style and I brace for impact. Instead, he pulls out a massive wodge of crisp notes and siphons off more £50 notes than I could count. Easily more than two grand. He hands the notes to me with a crooked smile.

No gold teeth.

‘For your… troublez,’ he says.

I stand there gobsmacked. But, thankfully, not literally. I look at him dumbfounded. He looks back at me with a careful confidence of a man who knows that he has just bought my silence. He grabs my hand and firmly places his other hand on top of it.

‘Zank you.’ He nods, looks at me dead in the eye, and then walks into the hospital.

I take a seat on a squeaky plastic chair and place my now drenched hands onto my head and breathe a sigh of relief.

To say the situation is surreal is an understatement. Not only had I had just lived through my own personal Bond movie, I had a fistful of money in my pocket.

Suffice it to say I never saw Allegra again. I like to think she was sent back to the warehouse where she was made for re-wiring, or progressed to more heavy-duty way of losing fat, like self-amputation.

I’d like to say that her kind – rich, stupid and careless girlfriends who feel forced to stay thin and taut – are rare in the fitness industry, but, as you’ll soon discover, this was just another ‘normal’ day in the life of an in-demand personal trainer to the world’s elite.