The question on everyone's lips since the #WaterstonesTexan, tourist David Willis, got stuck late at night in a central London bookstore is - what was he reading?
Speaking to the Huffington Post, as he recovered from both being imprisoned and becoming a Twitter celebrity, Willis revealed he actually did have something to read - but it was something he had already bought.
"Actually, ironically, I had a book with me that I had bought, a London tourist guide," he told HuffPost UK. "And I hadn't had a chance to read it yet, I wanted to find a time to read that.
"So I guess I would have read that, it would have been a good opportunity to do some planning, being locked in a bookshop."
David Willis was locked inside Waterstones
Willis had only just arrived in London in the preceding few hours, having taken a trip to Rome, and went upstairs to use the internet in the Trafalgar Square store. It is his first trip out of North America, and he has since been joined by his girlfriend Amy McLain, for five more days in London and then another five in Paris.
"It hasn't put me off London," he laughed. "It could have happened anywhere, it's just really ironic and funny that it happened here. It was my very first few hours, it was such a crazy coincidence that it was here."
McLain, who was on her way to join Willis in London as the Twitter storm broke, said she could not believe the reaction it had got. "It has been such a crazy surreal day. I was sitting on the plane and getting so many messages, and I was just, waiting to get here. It's been a weird start to our plans, but it's a funny story to take back with us," she said.
The pair have been together for four years and live in Dallas. McLain said she would not have necessarily expected Willis to be the sort of person to get stuck in a book shop. "I was still at work waiting to be picked up to go to the airport, and he texted me, that he was leaving and all of a sudden he realised he was trapped in there," she said.
"I was telling people, 'oh no, David is stuck in a store!'. Now today they are texting me saying, 'David's all over the internet!'. It's so funny they are watching it all online. He's been getting a lot of texts from back home, people he doesn't even know. In Texas, it was in the middle of the day, so everyone was awake."
Willis even joked with McLain that she should "head to the bookstore" when she arrived in London.
She was too busy laughing to panic at all, she added. "I was laughing a lot but then I was like, oh, maybe he's upset about it. Is he laughing about it too? But yeah, since he got out he's definitely had a good sense of humour about it.
If the situation had gotten more severe, he would have had to have settled down with a longer book. But it wasn't so peaceful, because every 10 or 20 minutes or so, he thought someone was arriving to rescue him. But it ended up taking two hours."
Waterstones has been quick to poke fun at the mishap - posting a blog on its website entitled 'What to read when you've two hours on your hands...and you are locked in a bookshop.' Here are our suggestions.