One of the perks of living in Los Angeles is that famous people whom you have never met will occasionally pick up your tab for your lunch. No kidding. It happens all the time.

Okay, not all the time. But it happened to me last Thursday when Drew Carey bought lunch for me and Judy Rozzelle, my friend and the author of Shuffletown USA, at Swingers, a diner on Beverly Blvd., in the Fairfax District. It was a special occasion for us because it was the first day Judy was able to drive after having surgery six weeks earlier. She’d had a birdcage contraption installed around her spine in order to alleviate what we call in the South, “miseries” in her back.

Swingers is a great place for lunch, especially if you like classic 90s’ punk pumped at “11.” The style is Googie diner-retro. The vibe is knowingly tragically hip. The servers are all beautiful and smarter than you. They dress like they came straight to work from clubbing all night. Nearly everyone has a tattoo, a piercing or both.

Given all that, the food is great and surprising healthy. It’s vegan-friendly. You can order a quinoa salad on the side, for example.

I missed seeing our host even though he was standing right behind me at the cash register. I mean, I was aware there was someone behind me, but I was mildly desperately in need of quarters for the parking meter. We’d only found a dime or two in the car, which had bought us about eight minutes. The meter, which was a block away in front of the DWR at Sweetzer, was ticking away and 40 bucks in parking fines were at stake.

Problem was the cash register was broken and couldn’t be opened. A repairman fiddled with it as three of us hovered — the restaurant manager, the big guy behind me later identified as Drew Carey and me.

When I glanced at Judy, who was already seated at our table about five feet from the cash register, she signaled — using the hand signals every Angeleno knows to mean “there’s a celebrity standing right behind you,” but I was distracted and oblivious to such trivialities. Later she told me Drew was wearing cargo shorts and purple crocs.

The cash drawer was opened finally, and I hustled out to the meter and bought us an hour. We had a nice lunch, talked about writing and discussed our stop earlier at Tree People up on the ridge at Mulholland and Coldwater, where Judy was considering volunteering. (Looks like she’s going to work with parrots in the Valley instead.)

When it was time to go, the waitress told us that Drew Carey had put out a Tweet earlier in the day announcing that he was picking up the tab for lunch for the house at Swingers until 2 p.m. We all know Drew Carey, of course, from his eponymous 1990s’ sitcom and as the current host of “The Price Is Right.” He’s also a political oddball — a libertarian in a town that is synonymous with “liberal,” but we won’t hold that against him, especially while he’s buying us lunch.

Naturally, the question arose: why was Drew Carey buying us lunch? Our server did not know, but she said that there was a precedent. Carey had done the same thing during the writer’s strike.

Later, I check the Intertubes to see if I could find a motive for Carey’s generosity. All I found was this on his Twitter page:

I’m at Swinger’s at 8020 Beverly Blvd in LA. Anybody who gets here by 2pm and is prepared to leave a good tip, your meal is on me.

No particular cause other than a generous gesture in tough times. (And, yes, we left a bodacious tip.)

So, thanks, Drew Carey. We had a lovely day on Thursday, and lunch was terrific.

And to any other film or TV stars, recording artists, high-profile entertainment journalists — and, yes, even reality show stars — for the record, I’ll be having lunch at Hugo’s in West Hollywood on Wednesday at noon. Straight up.