Emma Thompson wonders if she should have gone out with Donald Trump after all

Emma Thompson is admirably principled, down-to-earth and a fountain of upbeat humour.

Donald Trump is... Well, not any of those.

Yet Thompson is starting to rethink her decades-old rejection of Trump's dinner date.

She jokingly theorised about where she could be if she had gone out with him on The Graham Norton Show:

I could have changed the course of history.

Imagine how much happier the world would feel if Emma Thompson was in Melania Trump's place... And how less happy Thompson would be.

But it turns out her real reason for regretting not dating Donald Trump was not personal ambitions for power. It is far more devious than even that.

The story starts in 1997 when filming Primary Colours, a movie about Bill Clinton. Back then, she only knew Trump for two things:

One only associated [Donald Trump] with tasteless architecture at that point.

And still a boundless sense of narcissistic madness.

In her trailer, she had a landline phone that no one had ever rang and she assumed was broken.

She said:

[The phone] rang one day and I picked it up and it was Donald Trump.

Donald Trump was on the other end of the phone... And I thought someone was having a laugh. 

So I said: 'Oh, fuck off'. 

And he said: 'No, I'm ringing to ask you if you would like to come and stay in one of my lovely apartments and maybe we could have dinner.' 

And I just didn't know what to say. I was just absolutely astounded.

Because how did he get my number? 

I mean, a number that I didn't have!

She added:

So I just said I'd get back to him.

And in so many ways I wish I had. 

She helpfully explained her bizarre wish:

Because if I'd gone out with him for dinner, I couldn't have done that.

'That' she demonstrated by ruffling Adam Sandler's hair, because checking whether Trump's hair is actually real is the only acceptable reason to touch him.

She added:

And then we would all have known. 

Then maybe he wouldn't have been President! 

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