Dick Swiveller
Well-known member
- Sep 9, 2011
- 9,587
Lesley Joseph asked me if a Dinner Party game she had picked up in Harrods was any good. I had no idea as I hadn't played it and we were just sight seeing.
Quite the hotspot of celebs then, is Membury. I saw Jon Tickle from Big Brother coming out as I went in.Van Morrison stood next to me at a urinal in Membury service station.
He nearly mowed me down on his bike on a pedestrian crossing (the man was green) on Theobalds Road in Holborn. He clearly has issues. I did make representations to him.I was in a lift at itv and was soaked by the rain, Jon Snow (channel 4 news was in same building) made a joke about me needing an umbrella. I don’t reply just gave him a dirty look.
Was the Hannah Gordon encounter anywhere near Weybridge? I spoke to her in a hotel near there back in 1974. Lovely lady.It's lunchtime, and it's too long until the next game so I thought I'd start a mundane thread on mundane celebrity encounters. As in, the encounter being mundane but if the celebrity is too that's also enough to pass the time. Conversation/interaction has to have taken place, so I once sat opposite Gareth Gates on a train but we didn't speak so that doesn't count. Here's mine:
Cliff Richard asked me where the tins of tomatoes were when I worked in a supermarket. Hannah Gordon once also asked me if we had any single cream. It was a supermarket near quite a posh area. (Circa 1990)
Natalie Imbruglia asked me for directions to a car park in Canterbury, and I said "I'm only visiting and came by train, sorry, I don't know anything about parking." I didn't realise it was her until my girlfriend pointed out it was, and that the singer was in the Canterbury panto at the time. (mid 90s probably)
Anthea Turner apologised when she picked up a magazine at WH Smiths in Waterloo station and the leaflets inside it fell all over the floor next to me. (around 2004-ish). (Weirdly, I saw her several times around London and also once in Brighton over a short period.)
Lily Allen asked me to get a card down from a high shelf in Paperchase in Brighton. I'm tall. She isn't. (8 or 9 years ago)
I was at the TFI Friday show that had Phil Tufnell & Blondie on. I was on the balcony lined up to be next into the bar along with future Mrs B but didn’t make it inDue to being close mates with Wiiilllll from TFI Friday, I actually have countless celebrity encounters from the all the shows I spent in the upstairs bar bit. However I’m going to discount all those, and instead do any other random ‘mundane’ meetings. That’s more in keeping with the spirit of the thread, I think.
My compulsory BHAFC one is that I twice served ex-Albion winger Neil Smillie in Reading ASDA. He was full of compliments for his time at the club.
On a packed Friday evening flight from LHR to Edinburgh once, I was pleased to see the middle seat next to me was the only empty seat. Right up to the moment we were about to push back from the gate, when on came then-PM Gordon Brown, who without the slightest fuss plonked his considerable frame into that Economy Class middle row middle seat and got on with some paperwork. Serious elbow tennis ensued.
Other random plane buddies include Louise Redknapp and Princess Michael of Kent. Though not on the same flight. Or directly next to me.
Like others, I have a ‘motorway service station’ plus ‘gents urinals’ story combo. Mine was the entire Leicester rugby union squad. Including Martin Johnson, the definition of a man giant. (And no I didn’t check out his ‘Johnson’.)
I went to the same schools as Eddie Izzard, so for the best part of 8 years he was around - though several years above me. He once told me off for trying to jump the lunch queue. I later returned the favour to Sussex & England cricketer Ed Giddins, who was a few years lower than me, and actually a bit of a cheeky shit at the time.
University was at Reading in the late 1980s, and then I hung around there for a few more years. As someone very much into music, I was therefore on nodding terms with local bands of the time such as Chapterhouse and Slowdive. I also did loads of gigs around then, so have the almost-inevitable ‘Miki from Lush’ anecdote too. This was being in the front row of a solo gig by Tanya Donelly in Harlesden, when someone started persistently digging and wriggling into my ribs in a determined effort to create a new space next to me, when there really wasn’t room. I turned round prepared to be pissed off, only to realize it was the aforementioned Miki from Lush. So I let her in. Being squashed up next to her for the next 90 minutes didn’t seem much of a hardship.
My first ever job was at a company run by ex-Nationwide presenter Michael Barratt. It was in Maidenhead, and he was very much ‘in’ with the Bray-dwelling 1970s-BBC-famous crowd. The likes of Ernie Wise and Michael Parkinson often dropped by to use the fax machine or share a Friday afternoon whisky. One of those three - I won’t reveal which - once made the unforgettable remark to me that “one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I’ve never made love to a black woman.”
For several years after I then worked for a company that did loads of work for Virgin. We frequently went to Richard Branson’s Notting Hill house to discuss projects with him, as well as attend his parties. Prince Andrew was at one of those. Dancing. He does sweat. Athlete Denise Lewis at another, stood on her own looking a bit lost. Fueled by the free Red Bull and Vodka promo, I decided to just go over and talk with her - she was really nice.
My current company does loads of work in Saudi Arabia, and I’ve presented stuff to MBS about a dozen times now. You rarely get more than a few minutes, so I’ve yet to make small chat about Newcastle Utd with him. Let alone murdered journalists and human rights etc. Maybe one day.
To finish on as rubbish a contribution as possible, I one wandered around IKEA at the same time as boxer Anthony Joshua. Sorry, can’t remember what he was buying, though appreciate that kind of detail makes these threads.
A Morrisons Van driver stood next to me once at a urinal in a service station.Van Morrison stood next to me at a urinal in Membury service station.
Now that is just what this thread is about. Not only a mundane interaction, but not even a real person! Brilliant.I once shook the hand of Great Uncle Bulgaria at a fair in Haywards Heath.
Now that is just what this thread is about. Not only a mundane interaction, but not even a real person! Brilliant.