The night I had to choose between Russell Crowe and Jimmy Barnes

It was a warm night in Newcastle and the theatre was filling up with excited Jimmy Barnes fans who had tickets to see his new show – a spoken-word performance combined with song that was opening the Newcastle writers festival.

I had just relinquished my Barnesy ticket to a festival volunteer – I had to go back to my hotel and rewrite my story about Russell Crowe’s divorce auction.

I’d studied the catalogue that week and written about some of my favourite items of movie memorabilia, with my recollections of Rusty in those roles. They were the early parts: Proof, The Sum of Us, Romper Stomper.

But where was the Gladiator reference, asked my editor? In Guardian parlance, this was a “global story”. And did we really need to know so much about the Balmain workers’ cottage where The Sum of Us was set? It needed to be rewritten straight away.

So I said goodbye to my friends going to see Barnesy. I was in a bad mood and tweeted: “Life of a journalist circa 2018 : giving up your jimmy Barnes concert ticket because you’ve got to rewrite your story about @russellcrowe divorce auction.”

Fellow journalists responded – their news desks had sent them to cover the Crowe auction, which was being held in Sydney on Saturday night.

“I have to go to the bloody thing tomorrow,” Sydney Morning Herald journalist Nick O’Malley tweeted.

“So do I,” said Margot Saville, writing for Crikey.

Back in the hotel I browsed the catalogue again: that flimsy codpiece from Cinderella Man, that yellow shirt from Proof, the endless lots of guitars, the fake swords, the cricket bats and jerseys pinned behind glass, the envy-inducing art collection, the diamond rings.

Then, just as I settled in to rewrite the piece, came another tweet – from @russellcrowe himself:

“Interesting . We haven’t talked , and it hasn’t taken place yet ... so...just making stuff up are we ? Haha
Go to the gig . I can’t deal with being responsible for you missing the legend that is @JimmyBarnes .”

Russell Crowe was ordering me to get the Jimmy Barnes concert!

Did his directive override that of my editor? I could hear Crowe’s beautiful, mellow but commanding baritone (his Master and Commander voice – “Men must be governed!”) urging me back to Hunter Street to see Barnes, to lose myself in those anthemic, jangling, evocative first chords of Working Class Man (“Wor-kiiiing hard to make livin’/ seeking shelter from the rain/ father’s son meant to caaaarry on/ Blue denim in his veins/ wwwwooooh o o o he’s a working class man!!”).

But then there was the first part of his tweet with its odd punctuation: “ Interesting . We haven’t talked , and it hasn’t taken place yet ... so...just making stuff up are we ? Haha ”

It seemed a little menacing in an LA Confidential kind of way, as opposed to a Romper Stomper-level, boot-on-neck menace.

Crowe was accusing me of “making stuff up” – then he added a “Haha” to the end. Was it a funny haha (as in “just joking”??) or an evil haha? It’s so hard to tell on Twitter.

Nick O’Malley told me he also received twitter response from Crowe: “At first he ordered me not to attend as I was obviously ‘not the right man for the job’ then relented, apologised for stuffing up my weekend and told me to bring a hip flask.”

After reading Crowe’s tweet to me, another journalist, Shannon Molloy, challenged Crowe: “This seems unnecessarily bitchy, Rusty.”

My breath quickened as I read the exchanges. Would it possible that this would end up with me fighting Russell Crowe, JUST LIKE GLADIATOR???!!

It would be a fight I was sure to lose. Rusty’s fans (he has 2.76 million followers) had already started trolling me, along with O’Malley, who had complained about having to cover the auction on a Saturday night.

My Twitter defence sounded pathetic. I assured Crowe that I loved his art collection! He has great taste (he does have very good taste, that much is true)! And it was true I hadn’t spoken to him – but I was writing about his auction catalogue, not him! I didn’t need to speak to him! And my piece was a preview – that is why it was written before the auction took place.

(Subtext: Please like me, Russell! I am not like journalists who make shit up about you!!)

Meanwhile my deadline approached. Barnes was already an hour into what would be a three-hour performance and I still hadn’t rewritten the piece I was missing the concert for.

It was now hard to focus on my auction catalogue story with Crowe and his followers in my ear. Twitter – for me just a place for mindless banter, random thoughts and sharing story links – was now living up to its meta potential. As I wrote a story about Crowe in a hotel room in Newcastle, he was speaking directly to me, while his trolling fans provided a shrieking background chorus and my friends offered murmured, unhelpful asides such as: “If there’s a more Australian tweet out there I’ll eat my hat,” and “Why does he put spaces before punctuation. It’s weird and unsettling.”

The auction went ahead. It was a roaring success, smashing expectations and bringing in what Crowe described as “$3.7m at the coal face”.

At the writers festival I kept checking my phone, half fearful, half hoping Crowe had tweeted me again.

He didn’t. He had moved on to challenging New Idea magazine for writing what looked to be a fairly far-fetched story that he was in love with the radio personality Fifi Box (“something so wrong with the leadership of this magazine”).

And he tweeted a mega closeup of his beard.

But this is an unchallengeable truth: one weekend in Newcastle I had to choose between spending a night with Jimmy Barnes or Russell Crowe – and I chose you, Rusty, you.

• Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist