Celebrity Encounters

I recently heard somebody say ‘There’s nothing more satisfying than crossing things off a list.’ I’m not sure I agree but my wife certainly does, she loves making lists and judging by the Christmas present she bought herself with her vouchers, it’s the making of lists not the crossing off that she loves. She bought Listography: Your life in lists.

One of the lists is Celebrity Encounters and she has a surprisingly long list. I’m not sure my list would be as long.

My first celebrity encounters were all rugby league. My favourite player was Ian Van Bellen and after the match I used to run on the pitch and ask for his tie-ups. I don’t really remember him but I have a vivid memory of the Germolene smelling tie-ups which hung on my pin board for many years.

Some years later my dad worked for our local club Bradford Northern in their marketing team and his job primarily involved driving the high profile players to fund raising events. It was at a time when I was trying to sell my second computer (an Atari 800) to buy my third (an Atari ST) and as Northern were managing their lottery using paper and pen I wrote a program to do it on the computer and hoped I could sell it them.

I turned up at the office one day to present what I’d done and it couldn’t have gone worse. Terry Holmes (one of the first and most famous players to make the switch from amateur Union to professional League) was there and after I’d presented my management program he asked if I had any games with me. As everything was in one box I did and we ended up playing Track n Field for the next hour. As you’d expect of a professional sportsman he was very competitive and I recall him running around the car park with his arms above his head whooping when he beat me and set a new record.

They didn’t buy the computer – they were probably worried that all it would be used for was entertaining Terry and the other players.

My final rugby league celebrity encounter was in a toilet at The Stoop just before Bradford Bulls played London Broncos and Brian ‘Nobby’ Noble (the Bradford coach) walked in and stood at the urinal next to me. We didn’t talk and we certainly didn’t shake hands in the circumstances and no, I didn’t have a peek if you were wondering.

I didn’t talk to the next celebrity I encountered either. One year we went to the Prom in the Park event in Hyde Park and sat behind us on the grass, enjoying a picnic before the music started was Clive Anderson. He was with his family having a day out and it didn’t seem right to interrupt and say hello, so I manoeuvred myself into the right position so that when my wife took a photo of me, Clive was in the background.

 One of my favourite authors is Michael Ridpath and as I collect modern first editions I like to buy each of his books in hardback first edition form as soon as they come out. When he published his fourth book I could only find a softback edition so I emailed him and I was surprised to receive a reply explaining that his publisher thought he would sell more if they skipped the hardback. He also informed me that Asda had commissioned a special hardback run for exclusive sale in their stores. I have one of those. Unfortunately Asda didn’t repeat the task in subsequent years so the next four books I have are softback, then Michael changed publisher and I have four more hardbacks before he changed publisher again and returned to softback only. It spoils the look of my collection but what can you do.

 My most recent celebrity encounter is thanks to my blogging. As my work colleague puts it I showed my appreciation of Dave Gorman by writing a blog to attack his writing. I didn’t see it quite like that, I was just trying to write something in the spirit of his book about his book. Anyway I tweeted him to let him know my latest blog was about his latest book. I didn’t expect him to be interested but I received two replies.

The first explaining one of the subjects I had queried and the other getting his own back by pointing out my grammatical errors in my blog.

I wonder who will be next? One thing is for sure I won’t be going out of my way to find it.