Alice Jones: It was enough to make Beyoncé's halo slip

At 10.40pm on Monday night, Beyoncé sent me and 20,000 other adoring fans into the night singing the chorus of "Halo". At 11.40pm, still stuck in an unmoving taxi in a desolate, rainy coach park behind the O2, the words coming out of my mouth were considerably less angelic. Having sprung out of my seat the second Beyoncé left the stage, I didn't get home to Brixton until after 1am, tired and some £45 the poorer.

Thanks to a spectacular failure of co-operation between the UK's most successful live music venue and Transport for London, there was no Jubilee Line running. With no other Tube lines servicing the arena and the O2's shuttle bus booked up, the remaining options were to drive, take a train to Charlton and then a bus or hop on one of the half-hourly Thames Clipper boats. I took the latter, at a cost of £6.50 plus booking fee. With my weekly travel card, a journey to North Greenwich would normally cost me effectively nothing.

The boats were full for the return leg so, rather than risk not being able to squeeze on a bus and missing the last train, I took a taxi back to central London, from where I would catch the Tube. In the event, my taxi was held in a badly lit car park for over an hour. One of the gates was locked, forcing four lanes to bottleneck down into one.

Outside the gate was gridlock, thanks to the vastly increased volume of cars – and not a marshal in sight. I missed the last Tube and was forced to take the taxi all the way home. By which time, Beyoncé was but a distant memory.