Celebrity connections!

[hardtailstar]

Bit of a random thread from the idea of another.

 

My connections are/where

 

The cousin of Orlando Bloom used to live near me.

 

Alex Brooker used to go to my Scout group, I was a beaver and he was a cub, He also went to the local boys Grammar School. His younger half brothers went to the Scout group too whilst I was a young leader and adult leader. See them every so often around.

 

What are yours?

[3s-gtech]

Only one that comes to mind is serving the late, great Pete Postlethwaite while I was working at a petrol station many years ago!

[mavhc]

I talked about the Jodie Foster film Contact with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell

[bald_pig]

I have a mutual friend with Ronnie Wood on Facebook.

I once sold Jade Goody a jacket potato.

I once bumped into Shane "Shakey" Byrne doing his shopping in Tesco.

I've seen Keith Flint at my local motorcycle meet.

 

My OH went to school with Rochele Humes.

My OH's Dad's cousin was part of the first gay kiss on Eastenders.

 

My mum hit Tiff Needell with my brothers buggy at a car show.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I've got a few of these. One of the perks of working in live music I guess.

 

Here goes:

 

I took the Arctic Monkeys on their first mini-tour outside of Sheffield before they got signed

 

I once got into a fight with Danny, the bassist for the Wildhearts backstage after a mini-festival.

 

I've gotten drunk with (though not all at the same time)

- Ginger Wildheart

- Mike Peters & the 2005 incarnation of The Alarm

- My Ruin

- Snow Patrol

- The Futureheads

- Terrorvision

- Budgie

- Electric Eel Shock (who I also did a spot of fishing with)

 

There's more I'm sure but those memories are pretty hazy, I'm a LOT more boring these days.

[Linfit]

I went to school with the current poet laureate.

 

I also got knocked over by Bob Geldof and his entourage as they left a press conference at Bett, back when it was at Olympia, (he is a very tall bloke) and, also at Bett, accidentally interrupted a TV interview with Micheal Gove back when he was Education Secretary.

[Brimstone]

When I played Sunday football, Robert Plant from Lez Zep used the run the line for us.

 

I got to know him quite well as he lived not far from the pub team I played for, went on his son's stag do and wedding which was attended by Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Lenny Kravitz. Went to few non advertised gigs that Rob played at.

 

I also met Paul McCartney once when I was doing a sound course at Abbey Road.

[hardtailstar]

Oh I forgot, I once held Susanna Reid's apple when she was having a photo taken with somebody at a speaking event she was doing.

[MartinByard]

Not sure how celebrity it is, but when I was working in the local we used to get Steve Halliwell (Zack from Emmerdale) coming in quite a lot - and we used to be able to have quite a chat with him.

[localzuk]

Norman Wisdom once drove up to me whilst I was waiting for a bus as a kid, got out of his car, walked over, grabbed at my face and ran back to his car shouting "got your nose!"

[smurfomatic]

Few random ones for me:

 

Cherie Blair - then wife of the Prime Minister - opened our Sixth Form Centre when I was at school, managed to miss me out on the handshakes though!

I met Prince Philip a few years ago at St James Palace, through fundraising work for the BHF.

Alan Moore, creator of V for Vendetta, Watchmen, etc. lives locally so occasionally bump into him.

One of our (now former) pupils played Prince Charles aged about 12 in The Crown.

 

Several famous people have been prospective and current or past parents (joys of being an independent school) but shouldn't mention those...

[6Foot2]

...Cherie Blair - then wife of the Prime Minister - opened our Sixth Form Centre when I was at school, managed to miss me out on the handshakes though!..

Did you miss out on the smile too?

 

 

[elsiegee40]

While on holiday in Greece, realised the bloke in a beanie hat and dark glasses also with his family was Jack Dee.

 

I have travelled on the train with Ian Hislop many times. Everyone just ignores him in best London commuter style.

[rad]

My OH taught Robert Lindsay to sail at her centre.

[6Foot2]

As an update to another post from a while ago, I can relate when I DIDN'T have a celebrity encounter.

 

The Right Honourable The Lord Winston came into school to give a talk to our sixth form, and I was asked to set up all the IT he might require.

 

As was my routine for such occasions I went down to the entrance to the Hall where he was due to speak to check if he would need anything further, or any changes in what I had already provided.

 

He spotted me and moved to say 'hello' etc, but he was intercepted and ushered away in a 'Don't bother with him, he's only IT' sort of way by his school 'minders'

 

He seemed like he would have been a very nice man, if he had been given the chance.

 

I was surprised by how short he was (5 feet 8 inches) I didn't get that impression from his TV appearances.

[AJWhite1970]

In the late 80’s I had a job in a leisure club attached to a 5* hotel that once a year hosted a massive pro-am golf tournament ran by Peter Allis and for 3 days the hotel was full of celebs like Forsyth, Tarby, Wogan, Corbett, Russ Abbott, Bob Carolgees (with Spit) to name a few. Great times, lots of alcohol drunk by the stars, funny golf stories (I once gave Ronnie Corbett a lift up in a bunker so he could see over the lip) and great tips....

[Jawloms]

I stood next Steve Davies at a urinal in Vegas. I needed a wee, I wasn't just being weird.

[bald_pig]

@DaveP has reminded me, I ran an assembly for David Dein a few years back, we had a chat before and after the assembly, and was surprised with the offer of a pair of tickets to the next Arsenal home game

 

(For the fans like @ICTDirect_Dave, we beat palace 5-1!)

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I've remembered a couple of additional moments from my childhood.

 

In year 6 school went to london to visit parliament. Edwina Currie was the MP who showed our class around.

But on that trip we also became the first ever school children to visit the Ugandan Embassy & meet their Ambassador.

We got invited as our school had somehow raised a fortune to support schoolchildren in a deprived village in Uganda.

 

Best of all was when my family were visiting my older sister who was doing teacher training up in Saltburn. We'd all gone out for a meal and a man had heard me talking about a new TV program I'd found on channel 4.

He came over and said I had very good taste and Babylon 5 was indeed an excellent show. Years later when the internet was more prevalent, I saw a picture of Joe Michael Straczynski and realised that for whatever reason, he was over in the UK visiting Saltburn and felt the need to congratulate 11-year old me on my taste in sci-fi.

[ICT-Joe]

We had the Duke of Kent open one of the buildings in our school back when I was a student there. A few of us got asked to hold the doors open and we were there for about an hour until we saw this crowd of people walk quickly by us - the person holding the other door didn't realise it was him!

[mb2k01]

I went swimming with Jack Sugden off of Emmerdale fame as a kid.

I saw Prince Charles, who if it also counts, was very near Thomas the Tank Engine at the time!

I've shook hands and talked to Nick Clegg when he was Deputy Prime Minister, as he was at one of our schools.

I used to talk to Tulisa (N-Dubz / X-Factor fame) on MySpace / MSN!

I once told Alison Hammond (current This Morning fame) to move out of the entrance of the shop I was working in, while she was trying to film a reboot of "Street Mate" (Channel 4 dating type show that Davina McCall used to do) when she was filming in Newquay... as she was blocking the sunglasses and postcard stands!

[Dos_Box]

I drove Les Dennis in Belize. He'd been out doing a show for the troops and on the second night in our camp (I saw him the first night) I was duty NCO and got a call.

There had been a huge thunderstorm during his show and it had knocked out the power in Belize City and becuase of this, his hotel room had been burgled.

So I picked him up outside of the garrison theatre with his current girlfriend and tour manager in the Club Bus (large American minibus) and took them off to Belize City (about 15 mins away).

As his hotel was on the southern side of Belize City I had intended to go into town, and over the '

', an almost unique clockwork bridge that require a group of people to go into the middle of the bridge, insert a large key and turn it to allow the bridge to swing.

If you have ever seen the film 'Dogs of War', that is the bridge they swam out to in the river (which was really brave as the Belize River at that point was an open sewer!).

It also jammed often and on this night it has chosen to get stuck in the middle. This meant I had to go the long way around. Though neighbourhoods that were less than safe, especially at night in a power cut.

I'll never forget his face when I told them to close up all the windows, lock their doors and not to stare at anyone!

We made it fine, but it was quite an experience given that the area we had to go through was really, really dodgy (his hotel was in a 'nice' area beyond the dodgy once we had to drive through.

[clareq]

I used to run a pub in the East End of London. Our regulars included Charlie Kray, and most of his "minders", Lenny Peters (of Peters and Lee fame) and Stanley Baxter.

[stevejp]

At the age of 16, made my debut on drum kit (I’m carp, by the way) playing for a show at my mum’s school. Daughter of John Richards, former Wolves footballer, was in my mum’s class at the time. Conversation went as follows:

 

Me: hi #oldest daughter - are mum and dad coming to concert tonight?

Daughter: yes, and my uncle Bev is coming too.

 

Yep, you’ve guessed it - made my totally inept debut on kit with Bev Bevan (drummer for ELO, for the younger ones among you) sitting in the front row of the audience! He was kind enough not to laugh out loud, but the grin said it all...

Edited April 16, 2020 by stevejp

[unixman_again]

Wayne Sleep failed to sell me a brightly coloured waist coat at a sale of old costumes at the Birmingham Hippodrome.

I was next to Jimmy Carr in an Edinburgh coffee shop in 2002, and recommended he had a Anzac with is coffee. I'm sure he enjoyed it! He wasn't well known then.

In 2000, I was in the Hermitage in St Petersburg, and Chris Smith (then culture secretary) came into the gallery. I thought we might be ushered out, but we weren't.