A few hours before he was due to play at Revs last Tuesday, viral flautist Azeem Ward was conducting a ‘meet and greet’ session in the St John’s College bar. Wave after wave of red-trousered Johnians and fawning freshers approached him, keen to see the formerly screen-exclusive Azeem live in the flesh.

Azeem shot to internet fame in May, when over 100,000 people joined the Facebook event for his senior flute recital at the University of California. It was a well-timed email from two Homerton graduates that led to this tour, but he is certainly not leading the hedonistic, rock'n'roll lifestyle that one might have imagined.

Along with DJ Underbelly, he has been touring the UK for over a month now, booking many gigs himself, travelling by Megabus and sleeping in Travelodges. When one of the John’s Ents officers dropped a ham sandwich in front of him, despite having been told that he was halal, he looked particularly despondent.

It was curious, the way Azeem was handling his fame. Clad in a grey t-shirt, grey trousers and a nondescript chequered shirt, he cut a forlorn figure. He was constantly buffeted by requests for selfies and was asked the same inane questions over and over again. “How did it feel to have all those people tune in to your concert? Is this your first time in the UK? You’re from San Francisco, right?” When a nervous fresher asked him where he had visited so far on tour Azeem replied: “Shall I name them all or just let that go?” And that was that.

He answered their questions with a long pause, a heavy sigh and a tone that verged dangerously on sarcasm. Whether he had been media-trained or not, speaking to him was like squeezing blood from a stone but, bizarrely, he would also burst into laughter at the most unexpected of moments. He guffawed over a BBC news report he had seen on TV which had asked ‘Is the UK racist?’ “Obviously you can’t decide that in one go on television,” he said. It was a valid point, but I don’t really see why it was so funny.

While Azeem seemed to be a fish out of water, managing the destabilising shock of fame with an unfortunate mixture of awkwardness and surliness, on the other side of the bar, far from the fawning fans, was a different story entirely.

Alex Rice and Rob Knaggs, the two Homerton graduates, were sipping their pints, totally at ease. They had sent Azeem an email in May jokily asking if he would be interested in supporting their irony-heavy faux-lad-rock ensemble Sports Team at a gig sometime. Though they were not expecting him to email back weeks later asking to be put in touch with a tour manager in England, it was certainly savvy of them to recommend themselves for the job.

As they made their way towards Revs for the sound check, the sight of the diminutive Azeem, flanked by the two Cantabrigians in their ripped corduroys, battered Adidas trainers and circular specs convinced me that this must have been one of the most unlikely musical alliances of all time.

Indeed, throughout the whole evening I had an uneasy feeling of the ground shifting beneath my feet. I hadn’t known what to expect, but being there with Azeem was certainly not as funny as the idea of being there with Azeem. Nobody seemed to be sure if this ironic mass display of hysteria had actually gone too far.

Azeem, who plans to record two albums and forge a musical career when the tour is done, was adamant that his fusion of flute and hip-hop instrumentals would surprise people and in truth, it wasn’t that bad. He even covered Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’ at one point. But sadly, I still left with the sense that he is surviving off the dregs of a joke, and that we’re all rapidly forgetting the punchline.