LIKE the crowd, the policeman was getting wet and bored. "Tom left an hour and a half ago," he told the people waiting in the rain outside the Empire cinema in London's Leicester Square. That's Tom as in Tom Cruise, Hollywood superstar and the reason the crowd had turned out on a gloomy July night.

Herded behind crush barriers, they were waiting for the movie M:I-2 to finish and the audience to leave the cinema.

Even news of Cruise's early departure failed to move them. The big event had already happened a couple of hours previously when Cruise, who shows himself as a bit of an action man in the Mission Impossible sequel, arrived with Russell Crowe, star of this year's biggest hit so far Gladiator.

It was a publicity person's dream date - two of the biggest male movie stars in one photograph. Ideal material for the front pages of the tabloids the next morning. Much better than Tom and Nicole (Kidman, Mrs Cruise).

Pictures of them are commonplace. The policeman was unimpressed, preferring to discuss the merits of Spanish literature with a foreign tourist.

Film stars are clearly not his favourite people, condemned as "not socially useful - what do they do for other people's lives?".

The sight of model Elle McPherson emerging from the cinema signalled the end of the movie and the start of the post-premiere party.

First, guests were reduced to the status of lowly tourists. They all had to queue up to board coaches to transport them to the party venue, a marquee by a spectacularly floodlit Tower Bridge although the rural sounding location Potters Fields turned out to be an NCP car park.

How gratifying it was to see the producer of an Oscar-winning film having to catch a coach like the rest of us.

Tom, of course, had his own transport. He'd gone off to dinner while the audience watched him climb mountains, zoom about on a motorcycle and generally behave like a pocket-size James Bond.

He wasn't in the marquee to greet his guests who drank champagne and cocktails (including one called Cliffhanger involving gin, Cointreau and setting fire to a piece of orange).

There was an attempt at an Australian theme - M:I-2 was filmed down under - with plates of crocodile and kangaroo (Skippy RIP). You could tell this was a select party because there appeared to be no members of the cast of EastEnders present, not even Wellard.

One thing you can usually guarantee is that someone from Albert Square, generally Patsy or Martine in the old days, will be at a film premiere. Oscar winner Angeline Jolie, possessor of the poutiest lips in Hollywood, wandered around looking a little lost.

Maybe she was missing new husband Billy Bob Thornton or just knackered having come from the set of the new Lara Croft film.

Then all of a sudden a murmur ran around the party: "Tom's here. He's wearing a red jumper".

We made a beeline for the crowd jostling by the entrance. "So where's Tom Cruise then?" I asked loudly only to be shushed by embarrassed fellow journos who pointed out he was standing behind me.

He may look heroic on the big screen but Tom is not very tall. I hesitate to say short, he's rather fond of suing newspapers who tell untruths about him.

All I saw was a flash of red and then he was gone as swiftly as he'd arrived. My night with Tom was as short as the man himself.