The Dennis Law chatter made me think of grannie Patel who actually knew Mahatma Gandhi, and my wife who as a small girl met Charlie Chaplin.
Thanks to my work I’ve met of the famous and powerful over the last 30 years, but nothing I’ve done beats grannie.
What are your relations’ claim to fame?
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Kid Dynamite says
My grandma babysat Donald Sinden.
Moose the Mooche says
His pram was matt black… very stylish, or was is pre-Byzantine?
Moose the Mooche says
Me Grandma saw Ghandi when she worked at Buck House briefly in the 30s. Ironically, she never saw any of the royals.
She always spoke of him with great affection, as if he was an old mate.
ruff-diamond says
Lloyd George knew my father…
#onefortheteenagers
Moose the Mooche says
“Lowell George Knew My Father” = Afterword t-shirt
Black Type says
“Boy George Had My Father” – Smash Hits T-Shirt
GCU Grey Area says
I might just have to work those up into designs.
Paul Waring says
And coincidentally, I know Lloyd Cole’s father.
Rigid Digit says
is that a new Half Man Half Biscuit song?
Harry Tufnell says
My mum once served Spike Milligan at Lyons Corner House on Tottenham Court Road. She said he was very polite.
slotbadger says
My dad treated Hayley Mills’s knee when he was an orthopaedic surgeon in Kent in the 1970s
Bamber says
My mother’s cousin served long-term on the Royal Yacht Britannia and was a member of Prince Charles’s personal staff. I remember him coming to visit us in “Rough Estate” Dublin at the height of the troubles in full Navy uniform. He visited us again just before he moved to London, where I was living at the time and my mother wouldn’t allow us to exchange phone numbers in case associating with a known Irish person might cost him his job. He was Irish himself and this conversation took place in Dublin but she just wouldn’t permit it!
I remember having to hide his Christmas cards to us from my staunch Republican father as they usually had Charles and later Diana and the boys on them.
Gatz says
Maybe it’s because I have a cold (and half a bottle of Malbec inside me) be I read almost to the end before I realised that your mum hadn’t refused to let you swap phone numbers with Prince Charles, whom I had never identified as Irish. I was surprised enough that Charles had dropped by to visit your estate.
Paul Wad says
My mum got invited to a garden party at the Palace. It’s because she was one of the senior St John Ambulance people on duty at the Hillsborough disaster. She didn’t get to meet Her Maj, but she had a brief chat with Charlie.
Reading that back, I think I’ve made it sound like my mum went one step further than The Beatles and snorted coke at the Palace. She never did that. I don’t think.
Locust says
My maternal grandfather taught King Olav of Norway (long gone) the art of ski jumping. Granddad was an ace skier and was selected for the Norwegian Olympic team to compete in the Nordic Combination, but his boss wouldn’t let him have time off from work so he never went (His brother, a professional football player, got to play for Norway in the Summer Olympics and win the silver medal – still their only national football triumph if I’m not mistaken…my paternal grandfather was also a professional football player, but in Italy, and he was also the National Champion in rowing at some point, and also competed in the Olympics apparently. Me, I’ve never been keen on team sports, although I had a golden right foot as a kid, and I’m too lazy to do individual sports either!)
Moose the Mooche says
Golden right foot… in sports or self-defence?
Locust says
I was good at kicking all sorts of balls…
Moose the Mooche says
Attagirl!
Kaisfatdad says
Go Locust go!
The AW was invented so that we could delight in your fabulous tales!
Colin H says
My dad effectively ‘discovered’ Rory McIlroy, and let him in early as a juvenile to Holywood Golf Club (where he ran juvenile competitions). The rest being history. I also have an uncle who saw Focus back in the day, and to whom I owe my own love of the band…
mikethep says
My grandmother (also long gone) knew a benign elderly bearded gent who lived down the lane close to the Thames in SE Essex. She referred to him as “the Polish gentleman”. He turned out to be Joseph Conrad.
Moose the Mooche says
Essex… I think we know what inspired Heart of Darkness now.
mikethep says
Curiously enough…”It was here that his novel “The Nigger of the Narcissus’ was completed and the Thames River and foreshore were used as the locality of ‘Nellie’ in his famous novel, ‘Heart of Darkness”‘ He also wrote ‘Lagoon’ and ‘Outpost of Progress’ while at Stanford-le-Hope. They moved out of the area on 26 October 1898 to a house in Kent.’
Black Celebration says
My late mother developed a friendship with Polly Muir, wife of Frank Muir. They did voluntary work together for the Samaritans in Surrey in the mid-70s. She had occasional visits to the house and met Frank several times. When she called their home number, she let me listen to the answerphone message, recorded by Frank, where he said that the caller should leave a message after the noise – he then neighed like a horse.
Later on, as a care worker at a retirement home, she looked after Arthur English – who was apparently very easy going and independent-minded. Didn’t care too much about rules etc and stayed out until all hours.
My late father had a fairly senior Education role at Hounslow Borough Council – he knew nobody famous that I can recall apart from frequent and seemingly frustrating interactions with Education Ministers of the time (Messrs Rhodes-Boyson and Joseph). A great thrill was my dad’s unexpected arrival at my school, being shown around by my normally severe/terrifying headmaster. All of a sudden, my headmaster transformed into a bit of a toady, resembling the man who always said “Super” to Reggie Perrin.
Chrisf says
Couple from me…
The daughter of my grandfathers (on my dads side) brother, Uncle Wilf, went to university with members of Queen and remained (s?) friends with them after they were famous. There were actually a couple of them at her wedding which we were invited to, but for some reason we didn’t go – and at the time i was a teenager who was a massive fan that only found out afterwards……
My grandma on my mums side used to talk about talking with Geoff Boycott’s aunt / mum over the fence when he was a baby at the same time as my mum (he was born a year earlier) in their village in deepest darkest Yorkshire (Ackworth – he is from the next door village of Fitzwilliam). Always impressed me as a young cricket fan.
Vulpes Vulpes says
My dad threw rocks at Oswald Moseley.
ip33 says
So did both my Grandads. I hope they didn’t hit your Dad by accident.
Moose the Mooche says
George Orwell’s account of a Moseley rally includes somebody being hit with a trumpet.
I suppose pretty much everybody carried a trumpet in the thirties. It was their equivalent of a smartphone.
davebigpicture says
Not too sure of the exact lineage, something like grandfathers cousin. Anyway, a moderately successful boxer from The Valleys, journeyed to America to seek fame and fortune in 1912. Unfortunately he chose the new wonder of the modern age, the unsinkable RMS Titanic and never completed his journey.
My wife grew up in Iver near Pinewood Studios and for a while it was like a rural Stellar Street with Sid James, Roger Moore and Tom and Miriam Stoppard living there. Mother in Law used to get a mini bus to work and all the factory girls used to call out to Sid who would wave and call out “Morning Ladies,”
Archie Valparaiso says
My mum met Kim Philby several times. (Perhaps surprisingly, not on a bench on Hampstead Heath.)
retropath2 says
My dad worked with ex-King Zog of Albania, who was a minor civil servant in sussex during the 70s. Whatta name! What guy!
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I stepped out with John Cleese & Connie Booth’s au pair. I went round their house in Holland Park three or four times. They never talked to each other as far as I could tell. Connie was always very polite, John was a miserable sod.
davebigpicture says
I knew someone who worked for him at Video Arts. He could be difficult apparently.
retropath2 says
Ooops, wrong royal family: it was Crown Prince Tomislav (Tommy) of Yugoslavia
retropath2 says
My kids went to Tumble Tots with Geezer Butler’s son. Their ma and his nanny were friends for a while and she went round to the house a few times. Geezer was always in bed. My daughter then went to Stratford College with Tony Iommi’s daughter. My next wife, on becoming my next ex, lived on a farm estate complex next to one of those ex-Sabbath players who played in the band briefly in the 80s, the ones nobody can remember the name of and/or believe their claims. Seemed a nice enough fella, if down on his luck, hiding from creditors
Me? Can’t stand Sabbath.
JQW says
My dad claimed to have known Gerry Marsden when he worked in the local branch of Currys. What HDYDIH was doing working in a North Yorkshire electrical shop is puzzling, particularly when this fact is never mentioned in his biography. Was it actually Gerry’s brother or another Pacemaker? Or was it some other Merseybeat era person such as Billy J Kramer. I will never know.
Alan Bennett was evacuated to the Yorkshire Dales during WWII, and ended up attending the same school as my mother. She can’t remember him at all.
Paul Waring says
When was this? Gerry lived (and possibly still lives) on the Wirral in a very nice house in the same village as us – to my (admittedly incomplete) knowledge he’d lived there for decades.
Over the road from Gerry, ex-Liverpool and England captain Mark Wright lived with his wife and daughters. The girls went to the same nursery school as my boys, who would go round to play at Mark’s from time to time. At one birthday party my youngest (who was probably only two or three at the time) did a poo in their paddling pool. Sorry Mark.
Mike_H says
My late dad was a corporal in the Royal Signals Corps during WWII and spent most of it in Gibraltar dodging German bombs, where he managed to trip Field Marshall Montgomery up with a telephone wire he was running out.
Near the end of the war, in Germany, he had 2 German soldiers emerge from hiding in a haystack and surrender to him. He never fired a single shot in all of his war service and was glad of it.