I recently found myself at the stage door of a West End theatre with a group of obsessive fans, waiting for the League of Gentlemen to emerge.

It wasn't my decision to be there but my friend's, who had an uncontrollable crush on the three actors. She had made a trip up to London to see them perform in a West End play. But she didn't want to just stop there and I agreed to help her get autographs, pictures and some personal contact after the play was over.

It wasn't her star-struck attitude that worried me but the fervour of some of the fans who had turned up, many of whom were so odd, they wouldn't have been out of place in Royston Vasey.

The longer we waited, the more ill at ease I felt among these people who had met through the League's website fan club and were swapping minutiae of the most obscure sketches with a glint of something unhealthy in their eyes. Many spoke of the three comedians as if they were old friends, comparing what they had said outside the stage doors at Brighton with the few niceties they had uttered outside the Blackpool theatre.

Some spoke of seeing them at Christmas and giving them carefully selected presents, and then having a quiet cry in the corner to relieve all that emotional build-up. Many had bags of gifts ready to dole out that night.

One girl who had undertaken a six-hour journey on her own from Cornwall had three bags of presents, one for each comedian, and looked nervous enough to be on a first date, repeatedly touching up her make-up.

I couldn't decide whether to be impressed or appalled. The only thing I had ever got this passionate about was a Channel 5 soap called Sunset Beach, when I had begun Internet-stalking the gorgeous priest Antonio and tried to discover his Hollywood address to send him fan-mail.

But I had never showed this level of commitment - to be standing on the street for three quarters of an hour, in the cold, waiting for three middle-aged actors who specialised in the comic-grotesque to emerge momentarily, before they got into their cars and sped off.

When the three men appeared the fans flocked around them with digital cameras and grasped their arms. Their presence caused rising temperatures and soaring adrenelin but, barely as the cameras stopped flashing, the men were in their cars and the fans were winding it up until the next meeting at another stage door.

Many of the stalwarts remained standing by the door in a state of delayed awe. The girl with the presents now looked empty-handed and sad, slowly making her way back to the train station for the long journey home.

It's a lonely business, this fan worship.