Marble Arch was also chaos circa 1am, and the stop where my sickly friend Megan was helped from a bench onto the tube, deciding (at the last second) to try and jump out of the door, missing, bouncing off a pole and ending up slumped in a pile. Three minutes later, we were into the Bag For Life/ vomit situation, while a slightly tipsy couple patted her back and assured her that "we've all been there. We've all done it," which was actually kind of heartwarming, especially when everyone introduced themselves.

I got off at the end of the Central line – White City, which smelled strongly of sick and was totally empty aside from around six helpful London Underground employees – and headed back in the other direction to Tottenham Court Road. It was around 2am and it was packed: I spotted my first uniformed police presence and two girls in orange and purple wigs who looked like they went hard, then really had to go home. Crowds of people got on and for the first time in my entire night, every seat was full. At St Pauls, the tube driver announced "this is a Night Tube service" and somewhere down the carriage, a cheer went up. I also noticed a higher-than-average amount of people holding McFlurrys.

It seemed the Night Tube was only really being put to good use in central London, because when I got back out of Zone 1, and towards Stratford, everything went quiet again. The carriage was full of tired construction workers, men in suits, girls wrapped up in massive coats slumped against the seats. No-one was making eye contact. It was still boiling hot and a friend who was elsewhere on the Night Tube WhatsApped me with a conspiracy theory: They’re pumping up the heat to make all the drunk people sleepy, not rowdy.

The Victoria Line was similarly empty: Highbury and Islington was eerie and there were maybe six people on the platform at 2.15am. The novelty of being on a tube at night had fully worn off. Nobody was talking and an announcement told me that there was a signal failure between White City and Holborn, which meant that if you wanted to use the Central line Night Tube, you'd be waiting a long time. I headed back down south to my tube stop in Brixton, through a now very subdued Oxford Circus. The tube was silent apart from a couple of confused tourists with wheely suitcases and two men clutching beers and hugging each other.