Do you know, 10 Downing Street is just a bit… ordinary. At the same time, though, it’s really very special, and I think it’s the ordinaryness that makes it that way.

Tonight’s event - drinks with the Prime Minister - was smart dress, obviously, but other than that it was very casual. I didn’t wear a tie, and that put me in the majority. The staff were very normal and not at all well-spoken or posh. Even the prime minister, who wandered around the room shaking hands and saying hello, was very off the cuff and unprepared when he did a little talk to us all. He cracked a surprising number of jokes for a man in the middle of a financial crisis, and everyone laughed. I don’t think it was out of politeness, either.

So what’s it like? Well, getting onto Downing Street itself was a lot easier than I’d expected. I took my passport as proof of identity, and I was on a list that had been finalised well in advance, so no doubt there had been some kind of secret service checking up going on beforehand, but it took less time to get through all the checks and scans than it does to get onto a plane.

Speaking to the other people there (all members of the British Society of Magazine Editors), everyone had been a bit nervous beforehand, and there was some excitement as we walked up the famous street, past number 9 - the first address on the street - to number 10, the most famous (number 11 is the last address on Downing Street). The policeman who stands outside said there was once a very rough pub on the corner - one of the worst in London - but he didn’t know where numbers 1 to 7 had disappeared to. Neither did he know what it was like inside Number 10, despite working there. He asked us what it was like when we came out and explained that there was a definite divide between the staff on his side of the door and the other. He was police; the ones inside were government security (yes, it was a real gun, yes they were real bullets and no he hadn’t shot anyone yet).

I’d been led to believe that once you get through the door you’re up against a wall of steel bars and that the door is only ceremonial, but it’s nothing like that at all. You actually find yourself in an airy hallway with a fire to either side (unlit), a disabled toilet to the left (the window above what looks like the next door down the street is actually the window of that loo), a long corridor down to Number 11 and another leading straight ahead. That goes to the Cabinet Room, apparently, but although Gordon Brown invited us to pop down and have a sit at the table we couldn’t; he’d forgotten that he was supposed to be having a cabinet meeting in there, and as soon as he was done chatting with us he was sucked straight into it.

Number 10 has often been described as warren-like, and that’s very apt. It really is huge, with a little garden in the middle decked out with tables and umbrellas.

We walked up the famous staircase lined with the black and white portraits of former prime ministers (they’re running out of space - Tony Blair is already lined up with the top step) and into the Pillared Drawing Room. The photographer, merrily running around snapping pictures of us in front of exhibits from the Government Art Collection, told us to go wherever we wanted so long as we didn’t open any closed doors, and so we walked through to the State Banqueting Rooms (tall ceilings, Trusthouse Forte-style panelling, lots of candelabras and rather impersonal), and the White Room, where the Prime Minister meets visiting dignitaries. Whenever you see him (or her) photographed meeting with another prime minister or president by the fire, it’s been taken there.

We (two of us) got chatting to one of the Downing Street staff, who was quite happy to natter about all sorts of things. We were on the first floor, he said; below us were offices, and above us was the Prime Minister’s flat. I asked him if there was a bunker beneath Number 10, and it turns out there isn’t; it’s under Number 11. Someone else asked if there was a special toilet just for the Queen and he said there was, kind of. Did we want to see it, he asked. Of course we did.

So he walked us down a corridor to a rather ordinary looking little bathroom which we used, just so we could say we’d been in the Queen’s toilet. It was two rooms, with the loo in the inner room, its walls floor-to-ceiling gold mirrors, and three orange lights up through the extractor fan. Very strange; it felt like a very posh airline toilet. The soap was Carex (although I opened a drawer and found some Moulton Brown) and one of the taps was missing its turner. Mrs Thatcher apparently had it jazzed up when she lived there, and it was certainly very 80s.

He was quite happy to talk about the people that worked there. Gordon Brown did a lot of work; Tony Blair went to Chequers every weekend; John Major always worked sitting at the cabinet table, which sounded too much like working at the dining table for my liking.

You really couldn’t fault any of the staff: they were friendly and approachable and put everyone at ease, and the food was good enough to forgive the rather abrupt half eight drying-up of the wine.

I wish I could have taken in a camera or a phone, but they all had to be left at the door, which perhaps explains why you never really see pictures from inside 10 Downing Street. As we all traipsed out at the end of the night, though, we stood by the famous door in front of the inscribed letter box (’First Lord of the Treasury’, as if anyone needed to know you lived there) and had our pictures taken for posterity. Everyone was a bit self-conscious about it, of course, but as the policeman said everyone did it we soon got over the embarrassment.

All in all, an excellent - and very unusual - unusually ordinary night out.

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