Passed Chris Kamara carrying some flat-packed furniture over the road bridge in Whitby, looking slightly sweaty and exasperated, closely pursued by who I presumed to be Mrs Kamara on her phone.
Sat opposite an annoyed-looking Joe/Paul/Stephen/Mark McGann (not sure which) holding an oversized cardboard box on the Tube.
Observed former BBC Chief Political Correspondent John Sergeant having a Thai meal, two tables along from me in a sparsely populated restaurant with whom we presumed to be “paid company”.
Passed Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud. Exchanged nods.
Sat opposite Roy Evans from Eastenders, reading a script, on a train to London. Despite my best attempts to extract spoilers, Roy would not yield any information whatsoever.
Was in a car once and we drove past Pat Sharp legging it down the road carrying a couple of ring-binders, rolled down the window and yelled “Alright Pat!” to him and he went “Alright lads!”
Saw Josh Homme at Edinburgh Waverley Station (he was sitting on his luggage talking to a woman) circa ‘Songs For The Deaf’. I went up to him and said “you’re album is great” and he replied “thank you very much” and that was that.
when i was a student I went to a little preview screen in Soho to review a film for the uni magazine (Spike Lee’s Clockers movie fans). Before the screening there were a few soft drinks and nibbles to be had.
I clocked Jonathan Ross coming in (who if memory serves me right was in a bit of a tv career lul at the time and was mainly just reviewing films for one of the papers). Then a few minutes later I hear him behind me “Excuse me”
19 year old me thought he might be about to chat to me about my expectations for the film, but when I turned round I realised I was just in his way
Basically all my celebrity encounters have been pretty mundane
Like the time 14 year old me asked Nicko McBrain for his autograph when I saw him near the venue we were going to be watching Iron Maiden play at a few hours later
He said “do you have a pen and paper?” and I said “No”
There was a really stupid bit a few years back where England International Jay Bothroyd ended up with my phone number and would ring me semi-regularly because he couldn’t get his Macbook working properly (to run FM). I changed number after a month or two of this and chose not to send him the “here’s my new number” text that was distributed amongst my other contacts.
Similarly, Carl Froch used to come into the casino I worked at very regularly, and we got to a point where we would ‘lunch’ (because there were only 5 of us in the office during the day, and I was the least dickhead).