A strange thing happened this week I logged on to book swimming at my local pool and staring out at me on the page was a photograph of an ex girlfriend holding a yoga mat. I messaged her to say it was an unexpected surprise, we’re still on good terms it was some 40 years ago. Then I remembered in 2018 at Heathrow Airport there was a large poster for Portrait of Britain and who should be on it but her. She’s since put both photos up on her Facebook page.
In 2021 on the Leonard Cohen Facebook page there was a link to an article on thebritishacademy.ac. uk website from 2016 following the death of LC. The photograph accompanying the article was the opening of LC’s artwork in Manchester and to my surprise there I am. See photo. I know I’ve put a photo from the 1974 Windsor Free Festival which I came across while browsing on the Internet looking for information about it, and finding myself on it.
One year after the death of Jo Cox the Great Get Together was started on the Green in Heckmondwike I seem to recall a photograph appeared on the Afterword from the front page of the Guardian (there was of course a large press presence here) which showed my wife talking to Jo’ Cox’s parents.
Any unusual photographs you’ve found of family or friends that you didn’t know existed but were pleased to find?
An article about expected bad weather for the last day at schools before the summer holiday, quite a few years ago now, was illustrated by a photo of my dad’s second wife (a teacher) standing under an umbrella looking miserable surrounded by children.
She had died, much too young, the year before – so it was quite a shock to suddenly see her in the paper!
A mate of mine turned up on Street View about 15 years ago. That’s all I have. I used to have a bit of a presence, gurning unsteadily at the camera at publishing parties, but that’s long gone.
There’s a photo of the back of my granddad’s head as he works as a finisher in a boot and shoe factory. We randomly found this image on a website celebrating the (now long gone) boot and shoe factories of Northamptonshire. I don’t have any photos of my granddad, so this came as a very pleasant surprise.
A chum was a commercial photographer before retiring. He would occasionally enrol his friends and family unto shoots. So if anyone ever rented a TV, back in the 90s, from Radio Rentals, lured in by my fizzog, you’re welcome.
In a similar vein, about four years ago the BBC filmed a tracking shot of me as part of a local news story. I knew nothing about it until one of the neighbours told me I was on TV.
Some years ago we were watching the evening news at home and there was a item about the new-fangled idea of recyling. Our youngest was being a bit demanding and stroppy over something or other and my wife pointed to the TV where there was a young girl putting some plastic into a recyling bin. “Try to be more like that lovely girl on the television” my wife said before we all suddenly realised that the lovely girl in the recyling centre WAS our youngest – she had spent a few days in Dublin with my mother the week before when the news item was filmed in the local recycling centre.
That must have been trippy. Imagine if the girl on the screen wasn’t your daughter, but as soon as said that she suddenly was, and the girl on the screen was now in your living room. It would have been like a Ray Bradbury story.
Holy Shit, I knew I should have checked the date on that tin of mushrooms.
I was watching a documentary on Channel5 about The Great Storm Of 87, when they cut to some footage of the weather centre at Bracknell, and then stone me, there was my dad.
It was a wonderful to see him again, as we lost him in 2000, so viewing this after all this time was a surreal experience, especially as the family had no knowledge of this footage existing.
None of us remember him coming home and telling us, that they’d had a film crew at the Met Office.
My sister was working at a beach bar in Portugal in the early 80s and a travel firm paid her a few dollars to pose on the beach in her bikini with some young bloke and a child as a happy family. Fast forward to 2012 and I was working at TUI travel and flicked through the new brochure and there she was. Apparently it’s on numerous photo banks for “young family on beach” and pops up all over the place.
I was contacted some weeks ago by a television producer who asked if I would care to film a short piece about the First Night of the Proms for inclusion on Points of View. I demurred. I am determined to leave as small a footprint behind me as possible. It’s going rather well. In fact it could be the one aspect of my life that I can boast of being an unmitigated success.
Not sure I can agree with that – considering how many denizens of this very blogosphere have a Pencilsqueezer hanging on the wall…
I wear thinking that. Plus the ones which are on album covers.
Well, quite…
Some people take me far too seriously.
Some people are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them P.
I was once sat in a park just near Great Ormond Street hospital. We were there waiting an hour for some test results on my daughter (all good – brilliant hospital) and an ITN camera crew asked me about something the government had just decreed relating to children. The way the question was phrased seemed to me to be designed to get an angry response so I declined the opportunity to be on the ITN News. I can’t remember what the point was. It’s onlt now that I have realised how calulated their presence was – lets get some voxpops from disgruntled parents – lets go hanf outside GOSH.
Admittedly not quite on topic. I have twice spotted myself on local TV news getting on the tube. Possibly preserved in some archive, but unlikely.
The first time was in the early 80s. I was getting on the Victoria Line at Finsbury Park. I had spotted a camera crew on the platform, but didn’t think for a moment they would direct the camera at me. That evening I saw myself.
The second time was in the mid 90s. I think they must have used CCTV footage from TfL. I saw myself getting on the District Line at Victoria. The unlikely aspect was that I had gone down to the local Chinese takeaway to collect a lunch order for me and my colleagues. As I waited I was watching the lunchtime news on the TV in the shop and there I was again. I was amazed.
The footage wasn’t reused in the evening.
I only used the Internet as an example but seeing yourself on TV or someone you know I would say counts.
Once on the local news I saw a friend standing and waiting to cross a road, nothing exciting but still a surprise.
My examples are a bit tenuous, but my next door neighbour is pictured in all his glory having a fag in his garden on Google Earth, one of the faces they have omitted to blur out.
My dear old Mum was unwittingly pictured twice in the local rag, one time having an intensive chinwag outside a local shop, and the other time walking down the street with my grandmother. Both of them are long departed, as are the cuttings of the events which are sadly lost.
Is it not possible to contact the newspaper and ask for prints?
Many years ago, when I worked for an oil company, we went on strike. The photographer caught me, leading the strikers, marching along the road. I know this picture was used in a French newspaper. Little did I know that it was also used in a Scottish paper. I always wanted a copy but I could only find one at about £200 and I didn’t want it that much. Forgot about it and my kids did some digging. I got a lovely framed colour print for my birthday and they promised that it wasn’t expensive.
You have unearthed some fascinating stories here, Hubert.
Some heart-warming, some rather spooky.
Twang’s sister will forever be part of Young Family on the Beach with a bloke and a child she’ had never met,
Locust’s dad’ second wife even after her death was to be woman standing under an umbrella looking miserable surrounded by children.
Once an image is out there on the net, you can never have control over it.
My dad appears on the cover of an LP! It’s by the Beaufort Male Voice choir, he wasn’t a member of that choir. Not sure if it’s on Spotify
I’ve spotted an old acquaintance of mine twice on the BBC News website. I’ve not spoken to her for well over 20 years.
In one instance, a few years ago, she was seen in the front row at the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, watching an act I know she’s always liked.
The other was somewhat odder. There was a feature on a new and expensive book of photos of the club scene from the 1990s, all taken by the same photographer. Amongst the many photos of wasted clubbers was one of her stood on her own, eyes closed and possibly a little drunk.
Maybe 15 years ago, on the last day of the Spanish tax returns season, a camera crew stopped me on my way to work and asked me if I’d done mine, as they do to people every year, because its such a fascinating question. I said ‘yes’ and appeared on the morning and evening TV news because it was clearly such a brilliant answer.
Brief excitement (i.e. I got a fair few emails and messages) in friend group and at work ensued as people still watched the news on the telly in those days. I imagine this moment of starmaking television brilliance hasn’t been saved for prosperity sadly.
I had my picture in the Gloucestershire Echo a few times around 1970 when I was a student in Cheltenham – once on a demo, once doing some street theatre, and, I kid you not, as shopper of the week when I emerged from a corner shop with coffee etc.
The most extraordinary find was by my cousin. His dad (my uncle, obviously) served in the Navy during WW2 and he was searching for pictures of the ship he knew he had been on – blow me, there was a picture of several crew members playing hockey on the deck, and he was unmistakably one of them.
Slightly off subject, I recently came across some photos of music journalist Chris Charlesworth and was convinced it was actually me….click on the photo and scroll to see me….or is it CC?!
I’d recognise Debbie Harry anywhere, but you’ve never mentioned her before, you lucky devil.
Family trip to the cinema in 2019 to see Blinded by the light the Springsteen related coming of age in Luton film. On leaving the cinema we all looked at each other and said, do you think you saw our sons football manager at one point? So I wrote one of the stranger whatsapps I’ve written, “Hi, hope you’re well, possibly an odd question but we’ve just watched this film and wondered if you were in it”? It turned out that it was him, plus his children and he’d grown up as a friend of the author and been invited to make a cameo appearance.
That’s me in the light blue jumper, underneath the sign for platform 11. It was well after midnight and all trains to East Anglia were cancelled at Liverpool Street because wind had brought trees down on power lines. A similar thing happened to The Light this morning on her journey to work. This morning’s problem was cleared up in a couple of hours. Our late night adventure ended up with taxis taking as back to Essex, and other passengers as far as Norwich.
I used to work on a medical magazine. Rather than pay extortionate fees to use stock photos of people being treated by the GP, they got us staff to pose in various scenarios of having blood pressure measured, looking depressed, or about to be vaccinated with a syringe. These images were later sold by the company to an image library and me and my former colleagues occasionally pop up in photos as patients looking surprisingly young and healthy.
Just remembered another in 2005 Spencer Tunick did a nude shoot in Newcastle Gateshead which I too part in. My son would have been sixteen at the time and I recall talking to him after the event.
He remarked that it must have been chilly, I said “It was lovely especially when the sun rose and you could feel the warmth”
“You didn’t do it did you?”
I passed him the front page of the Chronicle with this photo on the front cover. He had a look and spotted me, and shouted “Oh my god you’re there” I think he’s got over it now.
There’s also a dvd of the Manchester Salford one Ordinary People I appear in that too.
Are you the one waving?
I was looking at the Rory Gallagher Facebook page a couple of years ago and there was a great picture of him playing and I realised I was not only at the gig but also in the picture, in the mob at the front of the stage. 1977 it was taken.
That’s my hand on the stage above the first E of EYE.
I am sure some of you will spot me on this one (July 4th 1985, Wembley)
Are you the one waving?
Pic from the archive of the now defunct Coventry Evening Telegraph
That’s me (on the far left) meeting Mother Theresa of Calcutta after my school did a sponsored charity football marathon for her in – IIRC – 1973
The guy assaulting the helpless old dear with his violent check jacket is called Tom Kennedy and the chap beyond him is called Phil Bonner who I still fly over from Ireland to go and see the occasional Cov City match with
There was nothing very helpless about her.
True.
She had an amazing aura about her – never experienced anything quite like it before or since
I’ve posted about these Blue Oyster Cult gigs before – https://theafterword.co.uk/blue-oyster-cult-2/
DVDs of all 3 nights have since been released, and no, I don’t see myself in any of them. However…
Hopping between clips on YouTube I found one of ex drummer Albert Bouchard and his video blog “More Cowbell” shot on the last of the 3 nights. It starts backstage and then he walks out into the auditorium, where he chats with fans and poses for selfies.
I recall him coming out and the guy sat next to me jumping up to grab a selfie, watching for a bit then chatting to others on my table. I had to turn the sound off as the chat was toe curling and was about to bail when I saw myself directly behind Bouchard, as he posed for yet another pic, and then taking a pic myself – something I had no memory of. Quick scoot through my phone and sure enough, I spot the same scene from the other side., in what was otherwise a truly unexceptional photo. The back of my head then dips in and out of view for the next coupe of minutes.
Mrs F and I have just had our first holiday in Southwold without kids since we went there (while she was carrying Offspring the Elder) 23 years ago. Over the years we’ve stayed in flats over shops, in a converted school gym, the ground floor of a large house near the lighthouse. This time we stayed in the granny annex of a large Victorian house near the water tower.
In the lounge/diner was a dressing table, and on that were three books of black & white photos of the history and people of Southwold through the years, from the mid-’80s to mid ’00s.
It was a bit of a shock to open these books of “photos from a bygone era” and see faces we have known as neighbours staring out from the pages. Mary the florist, Clare the newsagent, Charlotte the librarian, and many others we have chatted with in our ‘home from home’.
Some things change, and some things stay the same…
I have thought of two others, both of which were mentioned in autobiographies, neither of which I was expecting. In Andrew Collins’ first book ‘Where did it all go right?’ he mentions a guy he was at school with called Dav, described (if memory serves) as a cool punk. I worked with him years later and although no longer a punk he was very cool.
Secondly, in James Acaster’s book ‘Classic scrapes’ he mentions my ex-girlfriend and her husband, thanking them for something or another.
Obviously neither of these were on the internet but I was pleasantly surprised when I came across both of them.
Some years ago, I was reading the current issue of Record Collector and came across one of those articles on an obscure 1960s band that issued a handful of forgotten singles before disappearing – probably commissioned by a dodgy record dealer who had just come across a box of unsold copies of one of those singles.
There was a photo of an early line-up of this band, featuring a horn section, who had moved on by the time the first single was cut. I noticed that their alto sax player had the same name as Dave who drank in my local pub. One examining the photo carefully, I deduced that it really was Dave.
I mentioned this to Dave when I next saw him – he told me to keep it quiet as it would give his age away.
A year or so ago I was watching University Challenge with my chum, whose recently deceased father had been a physicist – not a household name, but well-known in the trade and also a founder of OU.
As you may have guessed, he turned out to be the answer to one the questions, causing high excitement on the family WhatsApp group.
Settling down to watch a movie at the cinema a few years ago, they were showing old adverts from the 50’s, and up pops my wife’s grandad, him being one of them thespian types. Gave her quite a shock, and after a few happy tears were shed she asked the cinema if she could get a copy. They referred her to the National Film and Sound Archive and they duly obliged. We’ve got a phot of him and Denis Norden (and possibly Frank Muir) around somewhere.
About 20 years ago the guy who was my best mate during the first few years of secondary school suddenly started popping up in a load of fairly high profile TV shows.
He’d left the school at about 16, and we’d lost touch, and then suddenly there he was on the screen. It was what he’d always wanted to do so I was dead chuffed for him.
He’s gone on to become a fairly well known stage actor and notorious Soho carouser, which was also what he always wanted. We met up a few years ago and had dinner – it was a great night, he hadn’t really changed at all.
More prosaically, a former housemate of mine has had a bunch of bit parts in an absolute ton of Apple TV shows, in addition to being in quite a few ads. Always a pleasure to see him appear out of nowhere – there’s a bunch of us who text one another in delight when we spot him.