Just had a surprising celebrity lunch

and that dude off the show where they restore cars for people who used to be in Pop Will Eat Itself

Fairly niche that. How many people were in PWEI, and once they’ve had their cars done, will the extend it and start restoring vehicles for ex-members of other midlands grebo bands?

All these people meeting Feargal Sharkey – it never happens to me.

Very good work that man

All these people meeting Feargal Sharkey – it never happens to me.

Me neither.

Met his cousin though. Kevin. Nice bloke but dodgy taste in jackets.

I once saw Jonjo Shelvey in Poundland Swansea!

That was my low point….my high point was bumping into Leonardo di Caprio in Soho House, Hollywood!

I’m always surprised when people claim to never have seen a celebrity – I’m not exactly great at facial recognition, not into celebrity culture and don’t get star struck but still manage to bump into them everywhere. Maybe its because I look at the world around me?

Recent ones:

Martin Freeman walked past me in Soho.

I saw Tom Cruise doing his stunt on Blackfriars Station while I walked over the bridge.

Jean Christophe Novelli in his chef’s whites appeared behind me in work one day.

Not so recent:

I had breakfast with Ben Fogle at a safari camp in Kenya. Talked about bikes.

Met Pam St Clement, Simon King and Tony Fitzjohn at a dinner because of the Kenyan trip.

A long time ago:

Jimmy Saville said hello to me (also on Blackfriars Bridge)

David Dimbleby got me a drink at a work’s do.

Christopher Biggins gave me a stern look when I was a Saturday boy.

Loads of others and I’ve met so many famous cyclists it’s not worth listing. Also I live in Swansea where you trip over rugby players every ten minutes.

We went out for lunch in Nando’s in Oldham and sat at the next table was Paul Scholes and his missus. This was when he was still in the first team and winning premierships. He looks even more like the kid off the cover of MAD magazine in real life…

I once stepped over Alex Hurricane Higgins to get to the bar at a pub in Levenshulme. He used to sit at the bar and drink until he collapsed off his barstool and fell asleep on the floor. He did it every night. No-one batted an eyelid. Mind you…. it is Levenshulme

Stood next to John Craven in Keflavik Airport. He dresses like Alan Partridge.

Saw Gary Neville in Tatton Park. Near the “gallopers” in the stables, for those with local knowledge. Solid looking bloke. Not one to get into a fight with I suspect.

Got Chris Brasher and Brendan Foster’s autographs at the AAA Championships in about 1980. Wanted to meet Steve Ovett, but couldn’t get close enough. Another guy also signed my programme and helpfully put his event after his name as I had no clue who he was. Linford Christie ( 100 m ). Apparently.

“I’ve had a wee stood next to Andy Gregory”

As a 17 years lad l didn’t take a pee next to Courtney Walsh… talk about stage fright …. 🙂

Gregory is quite short. I should have rested my elbow on the top of his head whist knocking off the drops. I have however seen him flatten the mighty Mal Meninga, so it was probably wise that I didn’t.

I assume that Mr Walsh was “long in the bathroom”, hence the stage fright.

I’ve also met loads of people from the music industry and film industry through being a musician and at various parties. Used to get up to lots of stuff with some now very famous people but I’m not going to go into that here.

I did once meet the queen when I was a boy as my grandfather was very big in the horse racing scene and had horses of his own and we spoke together in the paddock before a race where both her maj and my grandfather had a horse in the same race. She asked which horse was mine and wished me good luck. It must have made the TV because later in the day Julian Wilson (BBC commentator at the time) came up to me in the VIP area and asked me what the queen had said.

Also ended up sitting next to J K Rowling on a train from London Euston. We got into conversation and she was telling me all about this book she was trying to get published about a some young wizard…can’t remember the name just now. 😉

This is a poor version of this thread from a few years ago IMO

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/have-you-ever-snogged-someone-famous/page/2/

At the risk of making this thread relevant to the forum, I’ve 2 bike related ones…

– Bob Mortimer once cycled past me in Middlesbrough

– I regularly ride my MTB through Griff Rhys Jones’ garden (there’s a PROW) but have yet to actually see him there.

I worked in the same building as the ITV west studios. I must have seen at least one of the people who are on the telly, but I don’t watch ITV, so couldn’t tell you which one. I still feel validated though.

Oooh, another one, I saw, wasn’t then but is now Sir, Bradley and Mrs Wiggins in Wagamamas in Manchester the week after he’d come fourth in the TdF, which at that time was a Very Big Thing to cyclists but was before cycling became a Very Big Thing. I shook his hand and said congratulations, he said thank and went back to the enormous glass of red wine he was having.

A lifetime away for him now I suppose, and one he’d probably quite like to go back to.

IdleJon wrote:

I’m always surprised when people claim to never have seen a celebrity

Depends where you hang around. I note several of yours are in that there London, where doubtless there are plenty about and which is somewhere I’ve only been for a couple of days in the last 10 years. I’m certainly struggling to think of encounters with “celebrities” though seeing some of the people mentioned on here I have a few which might count:

Camped next to Sir Ran on KIMM – he was competing with somebody I know (I also got an email from his secretary about the same time, though it was a mistake he was after somebody else)

I’ve met CB in a cycling cafe

This might mean something to the climbers on here who are old enough as he was a celebrity climber in the 80s – spent an afternoon chatting with Johnny Dawes a couple of weeks ago (though the correct term other people who’ve met him seem to agree with might be “being chatted at by”!) and he nodded hello to me today in passing. I’m kind of surprised how star struck I feel to have Johnny as a “mate”, but he’s the sort of person I’d never have expected to end up hanging around with!

Met Phil Lynott..along with a couple of hundred others after a Thin Lizzy gig in the 70’s backstage at the Mayfair ..signing a Vagabonds of the Western World poster ( lost !)

Got chatting with Howard & Jason ( Take That)  + Lulu in the VIP “tent “at Earls Court on the last night of Pink Floyds Division Bell Tour ..

Had a quick chat with Malcolm MacDonald ( Supermac ) at a supermarket filling station in Consett ..but he was having trouble with his credit card authorisation at the time so wasn’t in the best of moods ..

MTB related ..met Jonathan Edwards with his black Labrador just prior to a Ford crossing between Holborn & Longlands ..chatting for a few minutes before realising who he was …

Also ..went on a group night ride with Roger Uttley while he was living in Falstone ..but being a roadie at heart he didn’t particularly like the “damage” that was being done to his mountain  bike and also had a bit of an ” off ” on a tech section …

A right friend to the stars me like !…🤣

Oh ..one to forget ..also got chatting to the actress Denise Welch in the downstairs bar at the City Hall Newcastle a good  few years back at a pretty crap Prefab Sprout gig ..

Got chatting to a bloke at the Edinburgh Fringe who was promoting his own show and trying to leaflet us. Turned out he’d been in The Archers. We made him sit down and tell us all about it. He’d been the Australian love rat who two timed Helen (many years ago).

Eddie Large (of Little and Large) used to live on my road and he came to my school sports day.

And I nearly served Bet Lynch, and her much younger boyfriend, with fireworks when I worked in a town centre newsagents but I had gone on my break and heard about it from my excited work colleagues

Kiechi Suzuki played “satellite serenade” on comb and tissue paper at my third wedding

I’ve met a fair few, most only briefly. Some were vaguely through work, so don’t count for a thread like this. 20% were lovely, 10% arseholes, the rest somewhere between but polite enough. Like people, I guess!

The more obscure ones then;

I was at a bar after a panto in Mansfield where Simon Groom was telling Brian Cant and Don Estelle that the Blue Peter badge would get you into Stringfellows.

Ali Bastian told me my folding canoe was “awesome” as I lugged it from the belt at Gatwick and she asked what was in the (huge) bag. I didn’t know who she was other than that she was vaguely familiar, and rather attractive, and it was nice for an old boy like me to be unexpectedly engaged in a conversation with her. Research later identified her as an actress, who I just had to look up again to remember her surname. Nice lass.

I got drunk with a weatherman (Phil Avery) at a mate’s wedding. This led to me singing Mustang Sally with the band, only knowing the chorus, while he got the heck out whilst he still could…

Depends where you hang around. I note several of yours are in that there London,

True. In the last five times I’ve been to London I’ve bumped into four celebrities (of varying fame) – Simon Weston, Derwyn Jones (Welsh rugby international years ago), Martin Freeman, Tom Cruise.

Never saw a c’leb when  I lived on Dartmoor – although I almost ran Bonny Tyler over just down the road here in Wales. No surprise, she lives a short walk away. 😁

I was in Newcastle ’99 and verbally abused Ruud Gullit in Bar Uno.

(First time I paid £5 for a pint too)

Robert DeNiro and Bonnie Langford – nearly broke her back.

I didn’t know this thread had moved onto “I once …..”

The Mrs and I were in NOPI in Warwick St and sitting in front of us was Jude Law (and a few of his hanger on gonks taking the piss out of a women who looked like a model..)

Behind is was Dave Myers of the hairy bikers (with his wife)

A cycling related one , on topic!

At  the top of Friston forest, having a snack, Grayson Perry cycled past. We said hello.

Tbh honest I think he’s nearly stalking me too as I’ve bumped into him before in Epping a couple of times.

I met Timmy Mallet once. He seemed quite highly strung, and didn’t have his mallet. Which was disappointing.

I helped Daley Thompson manhandle a chest of drawers into an estate car. I made a joke about it being easier if we just had 2 buttons to hammer away at.

Another one I forgot ..waiting for the Calmac ferry at Uig on Skye to go to Tarbet on Harris (2007)…we were in the cafe and the only other folks in there were that cookery bloke Hugh Fearnley Whatshisname ..and his TV crew ( River Cottage Kitchen) ..dying to be recognised / very loud ..so apart from saying hello we completely ignored them ..

My first brush with anyone famous was when my primary school teacher bought her sister in to meet us; she was an up and coming tennis player called Sue Barker.

A  few years later i met Subway Sect in the chip shop after their gig and they shared their chips with us, we were too dumbstruck at 14 to say much other than thanks.

I once drunk some famous actors beer (cant remember his name but he was in lots of sitcoms and quite funny) in a bar in Islington, i was slightly worse for wear and have no recollection other than my mates telling me.

My real claim to fame was meeting Lance Armstrong with Sheryll Crow in Tenerife, in a Spar shop. I have his autograph somewhere. Just in case it becomes valuable!!

I have also raced against Spencer Smith, been a on training run with a Kenyan athelete, it killed me!! and been on a training ride with Jeremy Hunt, who kindly gave me some tips; wear a woolly hat its too cold for a nothing on your head.

Sat in Stockport station waiting room a few years ago when some slightly well dressed foreign/italian looking man walked in with a slight air and gave me a slightly more intense look than I though the situation warranted. A couple of other people were in and there was a kids football team.milling around in the platform.

There was a bit of an atmosphere which I couldn’t put my finger on, though I did notice the kids seemed a bit wired and there were a few agitated passengers wandering around.

Sat on the train a few minutes later the girl in front of me texted her mate:

You won’t believe who was at the station just now. It was citeh. CITEH I tell you.

Maybe they weren’t kids. I’m getting old.

Simlar to above – went to Madrid on a lad’s weekend and ended up (somehow) in Madrid’s poshest nightclub. We were just hanging about people watching, as you do when suddenly there was a disturbance, crowd was moving back out of the way – my impulse was a fight and clearing space for the protagonists but quickly became evident, as some men in suits were being ushered through the club to the VIP area by some fairly heavy duty security.

We asked our host who it was and she didn’t have a clue so asked someone nearby who was incredulous we didn’t realise.

Real Madrid apparently.

But i was, very, very, drunk.

Sat on a train into central London from Twickenham i had an argument with Rory Underwood about whether it was him or his brother in the Pizza Hut advert. He said it was him, i thought it was Tony. To be fair he probably knew better than i did, but i still think i was right.

he was very patient and polite, given that i was a drunken belligerent idiot.

My uncle has the tale of playing Rugby and being fairly good at a school level up in Northumberland, next fixture was a bit further south and as he described these 2 lads just ran rings around everyone on the wing, yep Young Rory and Tony had the skills from an early age

Ah, trains, that reminds me. I was on a train from Bromley into London when my friend’s child wiped a bit of snot on the back of Vic Reeves’ jacket

I was working in London and went for a lunchtime pint with some of my colleagues. Nick Frost and his misses walked in for lunch, after they had finished eating I went to the shop next door and bought him a cornetto. This was just after Shaun of the Dead had come out.

He was really friendly and we ended up getting quite smashed with him. One of my colleagues had broken his leg the previous week and he asked Nick if he could sign his cast, Nick went all out and wrote an essay down his entire cast. Cracking guy.

I also saw Simon Pegg in Crouch End, but he was with his wife and kid, so I just smiled and waved at him, and he waved back.