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Celebrities you've met / seen / encountered - the good, the bad, and Cilla Black
VideoNicey
Posts: 109 Forum Member
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I've been lucky enough over the years to encounter quite a few famous folk whilst on my travels, and I'm wondering if other DS Forum members have stories to tell, good, bad or indifferent. I'll get the ball rolling.
Nice
Terry Gilliam - saw him browsing in an art book shop, as a lifelong Monty Python fan I was proper starstruck. Told him 'I love your work.' He smiled and said 'Thanks, man.' Not the most exciting of anecdotes but I'm just glad he didn't tell me to eff off.
Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey - both very nice (but the less said about Daltrey's politics, the better)
Ray Davies of The Kinks - met him twice, and he was an absolute gent both times
Syd Little and Eddie Large - Eddie was affable and quick-witted but slightly exhausting, as if he felt the need to be 'on' all the time. No wonder the poor sod had a heart attack. Syd was laid back and friendly and happy to chat about all the 'top pop groups' he and Eddie had supported during the sixties.
Roger Moore - lovely, very upset when he died.
Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden from The Goodies - both friendly and chatty. (Oddie wasn't there.)
Andrew Lloyd-Webber - a bit absent-minded but chipper and enthusiastic, like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh in a paisley shirt.
Timmy Mallett - very friendly.
Mel Smith - again, a very sad loss when he died. Very funny when I met him and very, very drunk.
Griff Rhys Jones - national treasure.
Simon Callow - love him. (Not in that way, but I definitely want to keep him as a pet and feed him Charles Dickens novels and stroke his hair.)
Meh...
Jay Kay from Jamiroquai came into a shop where I was working on the counter. He wasn't actively obnoxious but I think he is (or was) quite thick and tries to cover it up by being flamboyant. Had a very peculiar dance-walk, reminiscent of a teenage schoolkid trying to imitate a hard case's swagger.
Martin Freeman - again, not actively obnoxious, but he was wearing the look of a man who desperately wished he was anywhere else.
Su Pollard - if you've ever seen her in Hi-De-Hi!, You Rang M'Lord or Oh Doctor Beeching, this is what she's like in real life. All the time. Very tiring.
Not nice
Rolf Harris - approached him outside a theatre, I wasn't drunk or pestering him or anything, I simply extended my hand and said 'Good to see you, Mr Harris.' (This was in about 1996, long before his darker side was common knowledge.) He recoiled as if I'd just pulled a gun and snapped 'Take your f**king hands away from me.' A nasty man.
Kevin Rowland (Dexy's Midnight Runners) - Arrogant, pretentious nitwit.
Richard Littlejohn - Stuck-up t**t
Jim Davidson - Saw him on a train, sitting all on his own, no book, no newspaper, no Walkman, no laptop, just him and a carrier bag full of cans of lager to occupy the journey. He looked truly dyspeptic. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I remembered all those stories about him smacking his wives around and thought 'Nah, he deserves to be as lonely and as unhappy as he obviously is.'
Hank Marvin - horrible and let his own son die in poverty (Clue - Google 'Dean Marvin son of Hank' and draw your own conclusions.)
There are more but it's late and I've had many gins.
I've heard terrible things about Mark King from Level 42 and Peter Hook of Joy Division / New Order / Monaco. Must be a bass player 'thing.' Suffice to say I've heard them described in brutally unflattering terms by several music shop employees...
Nice
Terry Gilliam - saw him browsing in an art book shop, as a lifelong Monty Python fan I was proper starstruck. Told him 'I love your work.' He smiled and said 'Thanks, man.' Not the most exciting of anecdotes but I'm just glad he didn't tell me to eff off.
Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey - both very nice (but the less said about Daltrey's politics, the better)
Ray Davies of The Kinks - met him twice, and he was an absolute gent both times
Syd Little and Eddie Large - Eddie was affable and quick-witted but slightly exhausting, as if he felt the need to be 'on' all the time. No wonder the poor sod had a heart attack. Syd was laid back and friendly and happy to chat about all the 'top pop groups' he and Eddie had supported during the sixties.
Roger Moore - lovely, very upset when he died.
Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden from The Goodies - both friendly and chatty. (Oddie wasn't there.)
Andrew Lloyd-Webber - a bit absent-minded but chipper and enthusiastic, like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh in a paisley shirt.
Timmy Mallett - very friendly.
Mel Smith - again, a very sad loss when he died. Very funny when I met him and very, very drunk.
Griff Rhys Jones - national treasure.
Simon Callow - love him. (Not in that way, but I definitely want to keep him as a pet and feed him Charles Dickens novels and stroke his hair.)
Meh...
Jay Kay from Jamiroquai came into a shop where I was working on the counter. He wasn't actively obnoxious but I think he is (or was) quite thick and tries to cover it up by being flamboyant. Had a very peculiar dance-walk, reminiscent of a teenage schoolkid trying to imitate a hard case's swagger.
Martin Freeman - again, not actively obnoxious, but he was wearing the look of a man who desperately wished he was anywhere else.
Su Pollard - if you've ever seen her in Hi-De-Hi!, You Rang M'Lord or Oh Doctor Beeching, this is what she's like in real life. All the time. Very tiring.
Not nice
Rolf Harris - approached him outside a theatre, I wasn't drunk or pestering him or anything, I simply extended my hand and said 'Good to see you, Mr Harris.' (This was in about 1996, long before his darker side was common knowledge.) He recoiled as if I'd just pulled a gun and snapped 'Take your f**king hands away from me.' A nasty man.
Kevin Rowland (Dexy's Midnight Runners) - Arrogant, pretentious nitwit.
Richard Littlejohn - Stuck-up t**t
Jim Davidson - Saw him on a train, sitting all on his own, no book, no newspaper, no Walkman, no laptop, just him and a carrier bag full of cans of lager to occupy the journey. He looked truly dyspeptic. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I remembered all those stories about him smacking his wives around and thought 'Nah, he deserves to be as lonely and as unhappy as he obviously is.'
Hank Marvin - horrible and let his own son die in poverty (Clue - Google 'Dean Marvin son of Hank' and draw your own conclusions.)
There are more but it's late and I've had many gins.
I've heard terrible things about Mark King from Level 42 and Peter Hook of Joy Division / New Order / Monaco. Must be a bass player 'thing.' Suffice to say I've heard them described in brutally unflattering terms by several music shop employees...
3
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Comments
Do you do the same with people you actually know ?
Martin Freeman in the 'meh' category for no particular reason other than he wasn't 'on' at the time you met him, and Jay Kay and Su Pollard in the same category for being 'on'! And I'm no Jim Davidson fan or apologist at all, but judging people as 'not nice' because they mind their own business on the train while having a few cans sums up a fair amount of rail travellers.
Very bizarre to make such instant and permanent judgements of celebrities based on a brief interaction in a shop or wherever. Celebrities or not, people have good days, people have bad days, and people have days and lives just to get on with.
And that's before we even get on to the judgements you've made of people you've never come across or had any interaction with!
Also, sat at the same dinner table as Ian Hislop, Tom O'Connor, Frank Carson, Barry Cryer, Barbara Harmer (Britains first female Concorde pilot)
Also met Rikki Fulton (at a Gala day), Chic Murray (at a funeral!) , Shereen Nanjiani (STV newsreader on a Glasgow bound flight from Orlando), Ronnie Corbett (several times at the local shops), Barry Gibb (at the local shops) , George Harrison (when he visited his gran who lived next door to my great aunt)