The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Brushes with celebrity

Brushes with celebrity

by 123 Comments

In a week when Paul Gascogne kissed Prince William and Sylvester Stallone shadow-boxed with The Pope, do you have any A-list tangles to share?

0

Comments

  2. Lots of low level encounters mostly from my London years…

    In Ireland I opened the door to the Mansion House for the new mayor and future Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. “which way is the bar youngfella?” were his memorable words, probably because I had a pint of Guinness in each hand.

    As a huge Waterboys fan, I bumped into Mike Scott when he’d just arrived in Galway and was delighted when he remembered our encounter when my sister met him a few years later.

    In London I met other musical heroes; Roddy Frame in a pub and Nicholas Currie (Momus) waiting for the tube after an Edwyn Collins gig.

    Martin Fry bought me an orange juice and later that evening I killed the mood of a house party where I was the only sober person by damning Glenn Gregory’s latest recording with faint praise.

    Charlotte Coleman minded my jacket and invited me into her company at a comedy club. Sean Hughes, comedian introduced me to Emo Philips, Bob Mortimer and Mark Lamarr and back in Dublin came over to chat with me and my friends while all the stars of Dublin including some of U2 were in the room. I knew Michael Smiley when he was just a stand up

    I was in the house when the Bluetones signed their record deal.

    When I worked for the evil Halifax corporation I served Patricia Hodge, Nicholas Lyndhurst and Jay Aston of Bucks Fizz.

    I failed to score with an actress who went on to star in Hollywood movies and TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic. Even the taxi driver thought I was in.

    I gave Wilmott Brown from EastEnders directions on the Northern Line once.

    I met Roger McGough in a pub, had a lovely chat about his work and told him to check out John Hegley and Irish poet Pat Ingoldsby. I am aware that he did subsequently.

    I’m sure there are more. I’ll use my intoxicated state as a get out clause for my shameless name-dropping.

    • On my honeymoon, I bumped into Nicholas Lyndhurst in a clothes shop in LA. He was buying a pair of cargo ‘pants’, I was buying a pair of shorts. He gave me a look that said “if you say ‘You plonker, Rodney’ I’m going to smash your face in”.

      I gave EastEnders actress Daniella Westbrook an earful when she jumped out of a taxi and walked to the front of the queue at a pizza place in Covent Garden. “Do you know who I am?” Yes, love, you’re a has-been coke fiend who can wait in the queue like the rest of us. She got back in the car and went somewhere else for her lunch.

  3. I know this isn’t quite what the OP is asking but it’s a interesting story I hope.

    I was once mistaken for a celebrity but I don’t know who. Let me explain. This was about 20 years ago when much thinner and healthier-looking.

    From my home in NZ, I had paid online for 2 annual tickets at the large theatre around the corner from where my parents lived in Portsmouth. It was a present so I wanted to pick them up from the box office when I arrived in the country – and then just go on foot from there to my mum and dad’s place.

    When I got a taxi from the train station it was a London-style black cab and I asked to be taken to the theatre. I had luggage and the cab driver was very helpful, gushing and smiley and chatted about where I had flown in from and what the flight was like etc. Massive grin, prolonged eye contact. A bit strange.

    As the conversation went on, I realised that the driver had made an assumption that I was an actor. I put him right on that and said all I was doing was picking up tickets for my parents. He said that he understood – and for me not to worry, because he wouldn’t tell anyone.

    The more I said that I was not an actor, the more he reassured that he’d done a lot of driving for people in the public eye. He knows that trust is everything and that I have nothing to worry about.

    So I just had to go with it. I should have asked him who he thought I was.

  4. Mentioned this before but I thought it amusing so will go again.

    I was walking out of a record store called Collectors Corner in Melbourne. The door wasn’t on the street but was down a short path about six feet long.

    I was coming down that short path when I saw a gentleman standing off to the side allowing me to exit. As I nodded in thanks I thought, “I know you” I couldn’t place him at first. The moment I twigged was when I hit the street proper. I looked back at him and thought “That’s Mick Jones” Thus distracted I walked head on into a woman that could only be described as, “a busty blonde.” It was like a scene out of Benny Hill. As I apologised to her I was thinking, “I hope Mick didn’t see that.” I glanced around to see him pissing himself with laughter, he must have realised the part he played in it.

    It was in his Big Audio Dynamite days.

  5. On the towpath at Richmond one winter morning 40 years ago, my mate Karl and I saw a very familiar figure coming the other way. It was James Bond himself. Karl said “Alright, Rog? Bit parky, innit?” And the then still Mr Moore replied “Brisk, is it not?”

    We didn’t really know how to answer that (“Yes, it isn’t?”) and in the stunned moment he slipped away from us.

  6. There is a picture of my brother in one of the Lich curry houses. It was taken by the owner, convinced he had Salman Rushdie in for a tarka dhal. He spent ages talking to his “famous” customer too.

      • Briefly shook hands with Mother Theresa (this was in the early 70s when our class did a football marathon after what seemed like everyone in the UK had seen her on St Mugg’s TV show). She was an incredible aura about her – something that I’ve never forgotten

        Met and chatted to Philip Larkin when I was at Hull Uni in the mid-70s (I was outside a student occupied administration building smoking a jazz cigarette with someone who knew him); Offered PL a toke but he declined

        Briefly met and chatted to Muhammad Ali in a hotel in Jeddah in 1981. He’d just had his last fight a few weeks earlier and as clearly punchy

        There are a few other lesser figures but they’re the three biggies

        • I tell a lie.

          About 10 years ago when my wife and I moved back to Ireland we were staying in the same hotel as then CIA chief John Brennan. JB and his secret service detail were traveling with his father. Then in his early 90s, the old man was making one last trip back to Ireland to attend an event called The Homecoming. While no relation to me, JB senior was childhood friends with my Dad was my aunt’s brother-in-law which meant the Superspy and I shared a couple of cousins.

          When I briefly got to meet and very briefly chat to them the next morning, the. only topic that didn’t come up was the more senior of our shared male relos (a gobshite of the very worst stripe.)

          When checking in the previous evening, I was amazed when I learned that Mrs J and I were shown to the front of the hotel overlooking the street and given the nicest room in the place.

          It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning my jet-lagged brain worked out why we and not he had been given this particular room.

  9. Bookselling was good for celebrity spotting and I spent several years doing that in a few locations. To keep it to customers rather than celebs turning up to plug their books, and mainly on the rock side of things –

    Lancaster – the regular rock star customer was John Squire, who was always keen to talk about he was buying but looked like a strong puff of wind would blow him over. Very polite too, as was everyone I mention here. Some were keen not to be too visible, but I never encountered any ‘star’ who was unpleasant on account of their celebrity.

    It was also in Lancaster that I helped Richard Thompson choose a Christmas present for his youngest (Richard is Sufi but his then wife is Christian). I was at the peak of my Thompson obsession and it’s the only time I got a bit star struck.

    Victoria Wood was a regular, and always seemed to be very shy. Her credit card signature read ‘V. Wood’ in small, legible writing. Alan Bennett was less frequent visitor and I sometimes wondered if they had met. The answer came in his diaries when he said they first met ‘almost epically’ at the avocado counter at Sainsbury’s in Lancaster.

    I once saw in Sainsbury’s myself. She was wearing shades which I thought odd, until I realised it wasn’t to deflect attention, it was so others couldn’t make eye contact. Imagine being very shy yet realising that more than quarter of a century later some random would think it worth mentioning that he once saw you doing your weekly shop.

    On to Taunton where the regular rock customer was Joe Strummer. Very cool and aware that lots of people would know who he was, but cheerful and friendly with it. Charles Dance would come in too, which always made the women in the shop go weak at the knees. I was immune to his sexual charisma, but he is charm itself. I did once sell a book to Michael Portillo there but I’m not sure he belongs in this list.

    To Chelmsford, where Suzi Quatro would shop. I once had a short but invigorating conversation with her about a book called ‘How to Make Love Like a Porn Star’. She is much more Joe Strummer than Victoria Wood, happy to be seen and often distinguishable by the fact she would be wearing a Suzi Quatro satin tour jacket.

    I once sold books Liam Howlett and Natalie Appleton. She bought several books about pregnancy, he bought the the book tie-in of Jackass the Movie. And on a Prodigy note, when Gail Porter’s boyfriend was local Keith Flint, whom I never saw, she bought a book I had written a recommendation for. The memory of her beaming smile still keeps me warm on cold winter’s nights.

    There were more, but that’s what has spilled out of my head in the time it took to drink my coffee.

        • Ah right. No, I work for a completely different company – Waterstones, with no apostrophe. I’ve encountered – as customers – Annabel Croft, John Gordon Sinclair, Virginia McKenna, Bruce Foxton and Dylan Moran, among others. All perfectly lovely, although Moran was a little reluctant to be recognised or acknowledged.

          Outside of the bookselling, I’ve sat at the next table to Elvis Costello and Sting [yes, both at the same time] in a pub in Acton Green and on a train opposite Polly Harvey between Herne Hill and London Blackfriars. On the sporting front, I’ve followed Bob Willis down an office corridor, arm-wrestled with Geoff Capes and jogged 400m around a running track with Sebastian Coe.

    • I once put together a little beat combo featuring vocal stylists The Mikettes (the daughter plus two of her friends) for a charity gig in Highgate. Victoria Wood was a patron of whatever charity it was, and while the rest of the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves she sat there stony-faced through the whole thing. She didn’t loosen up during the meet and greet either, obviously wanted to be somewhere else. I still love her though.

    • I was working on the GQ Awards at the Natural History museum when Gail Porter was at the height of her fame and she was a compère for the evening. Crews can’t start rigging until the museum closes at 5.30 and it’s a real rush to get everything done, involving lots more crew because you really only have an hour and a half, two max. Ms Porter was rehearsing her lines at the lectern and I was taping the mic cables down when she looked down and gave me the same beaming smile. I was still floating on air at 2am when I nearly pulled the head off the dinosaur (cables caught in the neck bones from a “snake” hanging from the mezzanine above which I was pulling up).

  10. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, but I once waited next to Paul Heaton for a cubicle (not the same one) in the Prospect Centre toilets in Hull. Celebrity glamour, eh?

  11. Years ago, my partner used to work for a video editing company in Soho. He’s met many celebs, including Christopher Lee. He also bumped into Ian Brown in a corridor. It was the classic ‘both trying to get past on the same side’ situations. Ian Brown did his famous ‘monkey dance’ as he shuffled by. My other half was in absolute awe and still smiles at the mention of it.

    • I met Christopher Lee once. His voice seemed to come from deep in the bowels of the earth. I could swear the floor vibrated, but I was pissed so probably not.

      • In London in the 1980s, husband and I did a few little micellaneous jobs in Christopher Lee’s flat (I think some little antique needing restoration led on to joinery, picture framing etc). Even at home he was extremely stylish (and obviously an actor – you might have been right about the floor vibrating!). But very courteous, helpful and fair (and no snobbery in sight).
        It was same with a few other public figures we did work for (whatever their background).
        It helped to give our spirits a lift when struggling through a recession (as did being able to see the interiors of buildings not open to the public, and the views from them).

    • Decades ago, I went early morning to a video editing company in Soho to install some equipment I’d designed and wanted to test, only to find Dawn French in there doing voiceovers for some adverts. There was much laughter and, frankly, not much work done. When she’d finally finished, she asked “Breakfast, anyone?” and we all decamped to a nearby pub for a Full English. I think it was about 3pm before I got any work done, and I didn’t make it into the office at all that day. Train and taxi home, and a lay down on my sofa due to being overly “tired and emotional”.

  12. Richard E Grant waiting at a bar in the Albert Hall (at a Who gig ) I missed the opportunity to say “We demand the finest wines known to humanity”

  13. Working in a bar in east London in the late 90s, a lot of slebs and future-slebs passed through. A few favourites:
    Kylie – tiny, asked for a mint julep which I had to ask someone urgently how to make while grinning inanely at her. She declared it ‘awesome’
    Talvin Singh – Around the time of ‘OK’ winning Mercury prize. Perfectly nice bloke, but after a few drinks would start ranting and referring to himself in the third person
    Jason Spiritualised – would often come in with John Coxon (guitarist in Spiritualised and also half of Spring Heel Jack). Enjoyed chilled rose and tequila. Once came in late at night while I was sweeping the floor, lights on, and a live Spiritualised album on full blast. He was very nice and after I locked up, took me around the corner to the Strongroom to see where he was recording – and where Spacemen Three had recorded The Perfect Prescription and even let me have a twang of his thin line Tele
    The Beta Band. Two of their partners were bar staff, so around time of first few EPs they’d be in a lot. V lovely and indulged me the first ever print interview I did (talked total nonsense tho)
    Jarvis Cocker – fave memory is him getting slung out after spilling some bloke’s drink and being a dick about it. Asked the massive South African bouncer “don’t you know who I am?” as he was manhandled out looking like a pissed grasshopper
    Terry Hall – would come in wearing double denim and a Man U lapel badge. Very shy and quiet, would get a g&t and nervously perch on the vast leather sofa in the middle of the bar and sip it, until someone inevitably recognised him at which point he’d scuttle out. As he’d come in towards the end of the dayshifts around 5, when it was dead before the post work rush at 6, I got to know him a bit, as he was recently married and not – well, happy.
    Mark E Smith. Spent an afternoon in the bar with a local photographer and someone else, and probably about 2 crates worth of Peroni. No coherent conversation ensued, despite me stupidly fanboying when it was my turn to serve him
    Tony Wilson – launched an MP3 streaming service (Vitaminic) in the bar at a press event. Enthusing charismatically to assembled media, in Birkenstocks and purple glittery toenail polish
    Bobby Gillespie – very nicely complimented the music I had playing on the PA and asked if I had ever heard of Roky Erikson

  14. Stood next to Elvis Costello at a backstage urinal at Glastonbury.
    Andy Partridge took me to lunch and forgot his wallet. Yeah, sure you did Andy…
    I once lied to David Cassidy.
    Saw John Cale on a Cardiff street a few weeks ago but he looked angry so I just walked on even though he could see I’d recognised him. He didn’t look like the kind if guy who’d appreciate a smile, an extended hand and an unsolicited “hey, I love your stuff. Well, some of it. Actually, just that one you did early on. You know. With the tune and everything.”
    Stood next to Van Morrison as he (very politely) signed an album for my friend.
    Went to pick Mike Oldfield and The Proclaimers up from BBC reception in Cardiff. The Scottish lads were chatty. Mike was obviously contemplating some seriously austere mathematical problem in his head so thought it best not to interfere. Even when we passed a grand piano on the way and the urge to announce it became almost unbearable…

    • In the spirit of the John Cale story: I once failed miserably to speak to Robert Fripp and Toyah. They were trundling down the hill into Douglas while I was trundling up, going home. I caught his eye and nearly spilled out about forty years of fan-boy blethering – then remembered that he famously liked his privacy to be maintained – so I chickened out and just smiled enigmatically (ie, grinned like an idiot) at the pair of them when we passed on the pavement. Cue “Memories are Made of This”

      • Always used to have a mental image of RF and TW on that Mr and Mrs marriage quiz they used to do with Derek Batey asking in those inimitably oleaginous tones: “When Robert and yourself were out courting did he walk on the traffic side of the pavement all of the time, some of the time or none of the time?”

        Perhaps you can now put me out of my misery

      • I met Toyah once. It was way before she married Fripp and when she was having serious hits. I was a minor pop presenter on a minor TV show in Wales and she came up to me, smiled sweetly, offered a hand and said “hello, I’m Toyah.” As if I didn’t know. But lovely all the same.

  15. Clare Grogan at the bar in Dingwalls at a Maria McKee gig. I had my poster on my bedroom wall about 10 years earlier. She clocked me recognising her, smiled, and started her “yes, I will sign your beer mat/ticket/chest” move. In my effort to keep my cool/stop my legs from giving way, I blurted out “Excuse me love, can I get to the bar?”

    At the end of the gig I saw TV weather girl Siân Lloyd in full TV makeup (her hair had so much hold spray, it looked like a Lego crash helmet) and Lembit Öpik. My knees did not buckle.

    • I once had an evening where I believed I danced with Clare Grogan in a club in Liverpool. I was very very drunk so am not completely sure about this

  16. I was having a quiet drink at the Cambridge Folk Festival (backstage bar, Dahling), when Annie Dressner, NY chanteuse and David Ford collaborator, kept smiling at me, ahead of coming over to check out who I was. Unabashed by my not being famous, we had a brief chat about the unbilled performance she had just given, and about Mr Ford. I think she must have been missing her Dad. Or seeking a good review in little read UK blogsites for any future records.

    • I’ve been friends with Annie’s husband for over a quarter of a century, since he was an undergraduate playing at the Folk Club. He’s engineered some of her records, and I’ve engineered some of his. I see her around at gigs (they live near one of my regular haunts, the Blue Moon music pub). We always end up chatting about our kids.

      In June, I went to the Blue Moon with my Best Man and his Australian wife, over to visit family. There were about 75 in the audience (I knew 50 of them) and 15 on stage (I knew 14 of them). Mrs BM now thinks I know everybody in Cambridge…

  17. Many years ago I found myself face to face with Welsh rugby legend Neil Jenkins as we entered a revolving door from opposite sides. For a second we both pushed in opposing directions, then my brain shouted “That’s NEIL JENKINS!” and I let him have the right of way, as it were.

    I bet he still tells people about it…

  18. I once had to fetch a Papaya for Bryan Adams in a Farnham Sainsbury’s. The woman accompanying him might be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in real life.

    And I once kicked Ed Stewpot Stewart’s son very hard and quite often in a football match,

    • Obviously this was before your Damascene conversion. This admission brings to mind the usual response to one of the many dreadful calls from Stockley Park VAR HQ “they’ve obviously never played the game”. You might well be a poacher turned gamekeeper.

      Reading this back I realise that your handle has always had me thinking that you’re a ref. Ignore the above if you’re not.

  19. Shared a train table with Oscar winner Frank Finlay.
    Shared a lift (elevator not hitchhiking) with John Culshaw.
    Leonard Cohen at an exhibition of his art.
    Stood behind Joanna Lumley in a queue at a motorway service station.

    Been mistaken for early seventies George Harrison, Mike Rutherford and I was asked how my concert had gone after being mistaken for one of the Fabulous Salami Brothers.

    After a show by John Tams, in the bar afterwards a friend was thanked for a wonderful show despite not being John Tams.

  20. Found myself standing next to weatherman Michael Fish at a bar as he was ordering food. “What name is it?” said the bar person, and he said, “Fish.”

    Not much of an anecdote, really, now I read it back.

    Doing corporate after dinners I’ve worked with Brian Conley, Dara Ó Briain, James Nesbitt, Hugh Dennis, Tim Vine, Angus Deayton, Al Murray and Sir Lenny Henry – all of them very professional and either wary or weary of getting mobbed by 500 black-tied pissheads when leaving the stage.

    Oh, and! Shaun Ryder in a hotel bar in Marble Arch at 3.00am. A colleague approached him and told him he was his hero, and Fool’s Gold was his favourite song ever. Shaun thanked him politely. I caught his eye and grimaced and he shrugged. Happens all the time I guess.

  21. Some are sort of B+ rather than A listers….!

    Off the top of my head…

    Whispering Bob Harris last night at a gig – a real gent, and he is very tall!
    Warren Zevon on his last visit here
    Paul Young…also very tall
    Paula Yates in a shop…sadly two days later I heard she had passed away.
    DONOVAN after a gig
    Peter Asher backstage before a gig.
    Seth Lakeman recently in Ibiza
    PP Arnold after a gig in Looe
    Robert Plant at Cropredy
    Spencer Davis at a tiny gig a few years ago….spent ages chatting
    John Grant

    Have interviewed…
    Hugh Cornwell
    Steve Harley
    Dave Hill of Slade
    Simon Nicol…also chatted with Dave Pegg.
    Chris Leslie
    Paul Carrack
    Dean Friedman
    Eddie Lundon – of China Crisis…lovely chap
    Albert Lee…a truly nice guy
    Phil Beer – also did a house gig for us a few weeks ago
    Howard Jones
    Tony Christie…that was weird
    Mike Hurst (the Springfields, producer of Cat Stevens amongst others)
    Dave Kelly

    • I one shared a compartment on the Ffestiniog steam train with Bob Geldof (post-Rats, pre-Band Aid) and Paula Yates. Paula offered me a Polo mint, and I gave her an Opal Fruit in return. My mum had no idea who these strange people I was talking to were.

      A year or two later, I played post-voice-drop teenage Aled Jones at snooker in Porthmadog. He was very good, having nothing better to do than practice and wait for the royalties to flow in when he turned 18.

  22. I’ve spent time over the years in the company of a few acclaimed artists but as only some people would recognise their names and even fewer would recognise their faces I don’t think I can lay claim to having had any brushes with celebrity.

  23. Had interval drinks with Declan McManus at a Royal Albert Hall James Taylor gig. He couldn’t resist talking to me when I collected my drinks order in the name of the artist we were all there to see.

  24. Back in my nursing days I worked at that hospital where all the famous people go to detox/de-stress (Edgbaston branch). I was named nurse for the offspring of an incredibly famous 80’s/90’s sports star, which I was quite excited about at the time. I was rather looking forward to meeting said sports star and they did come in to visit their child, except it was on my day off.

    Whilst working there as a nurse (and later as a psychotherapist) I did get to work with…
    A Championship footballer (at the time)
    A future gold medal winner at the commonwealth games
    A Lord
    The guitarist of a very famous rock group
    A fairly famous film director
    The child of a very famous soap star (who I did get to meet)
    and more recently in the NHS a not so famous soap star

    I also met Henry Cooper at a school fete.

  25. Working in London seems to help in these matters. A civil servant who has worked in several government buildings over the decades I’ve shared lift journeys with a few of our illustrious parliamentarians. Hesletine, Gove, Eric Pickles, Douglas Hurd, Amber Rudd, Theresa May and the like.

    And London pubs can seem stiff with them at times. Memorably, Nick Lowe and Huey Lewis were standing chatting to each other across the main door way of a pub on Dover Street, opposite the Ritz, as I went in. I clocked them both and paused. They’re both very tall. I just stopped myself from saying ‘you’re both very tall’ and walked in without saying ANYTHING to NICK LOWE. A chance forever missed.

    Two of our best pals are Tony Christie’s daughters. I used to work with one of them many years ago. TC himself is a lovely feller, and very quiet. His wife is utterly utterly lovely and has been wonderful to our daughter. She was a model in the late 60’s and had me spellbound one New Years Eve telling me tales of her youth and being pursued by Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood and Steve Winwood.

  26. Sat behind Bob Geldof on a Eurostar train. He was having a very well informed conversation about agricultural aid.

    Kwasi Kwarteng loitering in some bushes outside Sunbury conservative club.

    One for the northerners – Bobby Knutt in Yankees burger bar in Sheffield. He had a starter and a pudding

  28. Richard Harris and Dickie Attenborough asked to share our table at The Coal Hole, next to The Savoy, on Strand.
    The woman standing in the aisle, in my way, while I was carrying a Digi BetaCam to the top of the raked seating at Abbey Road turned out to be Minnie Driver, when she got on stage to sound check.
    I got in a lift at the Midland Hotel in Manchester to find Phyllis from Corrie, complete with purple hair and she asked me in that voice, “Which floor luvvie?”
    Also at the Midland, on another occasion, was at the next breakfast table to Wayne Sleep who was both very loud and very drunk, at 7.30 in the morning.

  29. I was on a plane to Zurich once and Jonathan Miller was on board. He had a friend (stooge?) with him and at the luggage carousel he was ranting away “those bastards at the BBC never understood me…”

  31. Back in the early 90s, my pal won tickets on the local radio station to see Curve at the Cambridge Junction. We went to the soundcheck, shared their backstage rider (a plate of ham sandwiches and bottled lager), jumped around at the front then I danced with guitarist Debbie at the post-gig Indie Disco. In the mid-90s, Curve had split and Debbie joined Echobelly.

    In the late 90s, my pal from Frankfurt came over and we spent a morning among the cheap CD shops of Berwick Street. We hopped on a bus to Notting Hill Gate and went to Music & Video Exchange. Working behind the counter was none other than Guitarist Debbie.

    “Hello Steve, what are you doing in London?”

    My German pal was in shock for the rest of the day. All he could say was “How?”

    Most of Lush worked at the M&VE at some point, too.

  33. I once stood behind Michael Stipe as he was buying a vacuum cleaner in an appliance store in my neighbourhood in Berlin. He was very friendly and chatted with the sales woman for ages – who clearly just took him for another annoying foreigner and wanted to get on with her job.

    Mr. Stipe’s neck is amazing.

  34. I once nearly killed Norris from Corrie. I was working – well, nearly – in a hotel bar, where the one-note actor had come to give a charity talk in our function room. He drifted over to the bar, where, for some reason, the glasses were stocked bizarrely high above the service area. He leant right over the bar to get a look at the mixers (not a euphemism), which coincided with the exact point I knocked a glass off. Gravity’s kiss took hold, and the old-fashioned dimpled glass began hurtling towards poor Norris. My manager, in a rare moment of sober clarity, performed a Schmeichel-esque dive to grab the glass, and did so with such acuity that Norris never noticed.

    The manager was sacked a month later, having been found drunk – and naked – by the cleaning staff. Norris was not involved in this incident.

  37. Shared a 2nd class compartment (remember them?) on a train from London heading south with Mark Little. I was hammered and had fallen asleep, presumably before he got on. He very kindly informed me at Haywards Heath, when I woke up, that all the trains were knackered (was the night of Fatboy Slim’s do on the beach in Brighton). I thanked him, tried not to make a comment about Bouncer, and then staggered over to another platform to get a train back north to where I actually wanted to go (and had slept through).

  38. A few years ago while wandering around M&S in Leeds I became aware of being watched in that creepy, tingling on the back of the neck kind of way. Turning around my uneasy gaze fell upon an elegant immaculately dressed older gentleman. Pristine Blazer and perfectly pressed slacks. However his face. My God ! A hideous mask of contorted, disgusted hatred, and his baleful stare was directed straight at me. Then without a word he walked quickly away, disappearing silently into a throng of shoppers. It was only later that I realised it had been Paul Reaney, member of Don Revie’s legendry 1st division championship winning squad.

Leave a Reply