Twinkle
It’s an odd thing to meet someone famous. You already know them, you’ve seen them on TV or in films, you’ve listened to their records.. and somehow they are, all of a sudden, a complete stranger again. They even look different – some are shorter, others are far larger, they all look older…
Perhaps that will become less of a shock with HD television… experience the wrinkles before you meet the star.
It is especially true of actors, though to some extent musicians, that without their act they can appear almost lost. It’s nice to have someone make you look witty or charming, but carrying around an on-the-fly scriptwriter just isn’t an option.
I once met former super-middleweight boxer and UK celebrity Chris Eubank in a fish and chip shop in Brighton. He’s famed for being a presence in that town. As you can imagine he is of the bigger and taller category of celebrity… still, he seemed a little tragic, certainly not threatening, as he stood there wearing a full kaftan whilst queuing behind me for fish and chips. In the ring and on TV he looked like a warrior, in a queue he just looked like some guy with a hankering for battered cod and pickled eggs.
And whilst I don’t want to sound like a b-list (probably closer to c-list) celebrity stalker, I was also at a party with a cast member from the popular teen soap Hollyoaks. Again, he had a certain sort of melancholy about him as he stood by the bottom of the stairs being avoided by just about everyone – The party was full of ‘cool’ people (I don’t count, I was smuggled in)… all being too cool to go up to him and say, ‘you’re on the telly’. To my shame I didn’t talk to him either, but that’s because I know I would have taken the opportunity to tell him everything I think is wrong about his programme, and nobody wants to spend the whole night hearing that.
I’m not saying they’re all like that, indeed I have met a few that are even more charming and charismatic in real life, and Em rates former presenter of The Antiques Roadshow, Michael Aspel very highly.
I hope I don’t ever become a celebrity… I’m happy for my comic to get around (here’s the book appearing in Mr Gray’s 2nd Shift), but there’s a high possibility I would be one of the less wittier, shorter types… that is, of course, unless I am famous for being short and witless, as so many celebrities are these days.
justine on 
Wow. I feel very, very sorry for that guy at the party. Poor dude. I hope he has friends to pick him up when he’s down.
And thanks for the plug.
I appreciate it.
I’m sure they do… It was a bit of an odd party anyway, a strange mix of interesting arty types and absolute idiots (the ones that spend an awful lot of time in the bathroom). if it wasn’t for the fact that I was catching up with some old friends i imagine I would have been in the same position as him.
Funny you should say that about HD- there was a massive run on plastic surgery- more massive than normal, anyway- in the porn-producing areas of Hollywood when all the studios upgraded to HD.
Not that I’d know anything about porn.
/b
Weird Al is much taller and nicer in person.
You met Al? Brilliant!
i always had the impression he was a little bit lanky, he just comes across that way in the videos.
He’s six-foot-eleventy, or something! But I was about ten at the time.
Also I saw Paul Zaloom (Beakman) live, when I was verra wee.
Apparently they did a Beakman’s World LIVE show over at the Orlando Science Center recently. I bet it was kickass.
A mate of mine works at the ABC (Australian BBC) and I played on his work netball team. This meant that every time I turned on the news I was constantly surprised to see all these people I knew and was quite familiar with. Because journalists are trained to speak on television, they all used their TV Voices on TV and sounded like your normal, foul-mouthed, ocker Aussie netballers when I saw them in person.
BBC, the australian ABC
i never thought of it like that
if anything, i guess its always seemed the other way round
I met Shawn Majumder on a plane once. That’s about my only brush with celebrity.
You have to wonder about actors… I mean you sat on a plane next to someone who has convincingly played a terrorist. I bet a few people looked at him and just assumed ‘this is it’.
Watching Shaun Majumder on “24″ when I am used to him doing his act in his broad Newfie accent was incredibly jarring to me. Although, honestly, I sometimes wonder if I’m the only person who can tell actors of Indian descent and actors of Arab descent apart to begin with.
My dad, although not famous himself yet, knows too many showbiz people and often tells stories about how out of touch with reality they are.
My favourite story is about a wedding he went to where two war correspondents were getting married and as most of the guests have been in war-torn areas since the eighties, my dad said everyone was wearing white, Miami vice type suits. Apparently they all spent the night dancing to Spandau Ballet with their sleeves rolled up, adjusting their shoulder pads. He said it was the weirdest and best wedding he’s ever been to.
Oh and Michael Aspel looked like someone sent from heaven! He was so charming and the cleanest person I’ve ever seen.
“the cleanest person”
What about me? Wait, don’t answer that.
my apologies, but if i heard someone referring to me as the “cleanest” person they’d ever met theres a possibility i would be slightly weird’d out! haha i know what you mean though. some people give that impression.
He really did give the impression of being very clean, I think it was because everything about him was so neat and perfect.
And no sweetheart, no matter how much I love you, I will never be able to say that you are the cleanest person I’ve ever met
I met Neil Gaiman at a book signing once, and he just seemed very very tired, but still incredibly charming and kind. The venue had originally only sold 500 “signing” tickets, and everyone else just got to attend the reading, but there was such an outcry on his blog that they changed all the tickets to “signing-class”, and started the event an hour earlier. He started doing his reading and his Q & A at 8 pm and stayed until well after 2 in the morning meeting grateful fans and signing whatever they had handy, adding personal notes and all. He even signed a birthday card for a friend of mine who wanted to be there but couldn’t make it. Since I was near the back of the line, I’m not at all surprised that he looked tired.
Recently, I met Kevin Sorbo (TV’s Hercules) and Doug Jones (Abe Sapien, various other costumed beasties from film and TV) at a comic/sci-fi expo, and they were both great. Sorbo was friendly and made a lot of jokes. He’s definitely showing his age, although he’s still in great shape, physically. He’s also HUGELY tall. TOWERING. I took a picture of him with my friend Aaron, who is six-foot, and he had to lean over to fit into frame. Jones was amazing, and took lots of time to talk to his fans about his various roles. I asked him about how it felt to move from total obscurity to fame (starring as two creatures in the Oscar-winning “Pan’s Labyrinth” counts as fame in my book) and he was happy to relate that his rise to fame has been so gradual that he simply adjusted over time. He also does lots of florid gestures and finger-wiggling that I have always associate with his characters, but never considered might be a real trait of his. That one was particularly strange, given that he’s usually in heavy costume makeup, and yet there he was, a totally normal-looking guy. No gills or horns or eyes in the palms of his hands.
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, Doug Jones!! I love him so much! Ever since I saw him in Hellboy, I have been following his career! It’s so great to hear he’s a lovely person.
I can say that I have only ever heard good things about Mr Gaiman. It’s no wonder everyone wants to meet him.
I know I’d just keep bugging him about the supposed film version of Good Omens (with Stephen Fry in it)… it might just be a rumour, but still.
I could walk right past Doug Jones and not recognise him… maybe I have… perhaps he should wear make-up full time to stop this happening…
I’ve never met Mr. Gaiman but I have had an experience with him. Many a year ago, I worked at a bookstore. Neil Gaiman was doing a signing at a rival bookstore but I was working that night and couldn’t go. A co-worker, under guise of wanting to read some work, borrowed my copy of the “Books of Magic” graphic novel, my favorite of Gaiman’s work. The next day, I got my copy back, signed with a silver marker on the cover.
“Abracadabra from Will. Neil Gaiman.”
Coolest thing ever.
I’m not sure I have ever met anyone very famous.
Atleast outside of their industry.
Wait, I am good mates with the husband of a Big Brother Intruder, does that count?
No? Oh well.
I really don’t get why a celebrity is such a good thing.
They are just ppl who work and get acknowledge for it.
By the time you actually see a star in the sky, it’s already dead, isn’t it?
That’s certainly true for some of them… I like the fact that if you apply that to the metephor I was trying to use (stars and celebrities) it works equally as well.
I’ve also observed the “taller/shorter or bigger face” reality of being in the same room as a celebrity.
I just spotted something real sweet. Right at the bottom of every Flowfield page, there’s a tiny little smily face…did anyone else notice this? if you didn’t, scroll down to the bottom and look, it’s really cute and makes you want to smile back.
Adam, did you put it there?
It’s not my doing. I think it’s part of wordpress, since I have seen it on other blogs and comics too.
Normally I would strip this sort of thing out of my site’s code, but it cheers me up too, so it stays… at least until I can replace it with a smiley that has an expression of ‘humour in the face of impending doom’.
Your banter with your missus in the comments section of this page allows me to use a phrase I learnt recently from a fellow blogger (http://handmaiden-furry.blogspot.com/): GAG ME WITH A SPOON!
(You do realise that the above comment surfaces from very deep wells of jealousy, don’t you.)
((She doesn’t have a sister who’s equally into cartoonists, does she?))
(((Don’t know why I put double brackets there. Actually I do. Felt like doing a punctuation echo of PS, PPS, PPS etc. Thought that needed explaining.)))
It gets better… Em is also an expert videogames player… there’s a strange joy in being thrashed at Mario Kart by your wife.
Indeed Em does have a sister who is also very cool, however, I belive she is unavailable, so you lucked out as that’s it from that gene pool.
I’ve never heard the phrase ‘gag me with a spoon’ (keep repeating it to get some ‘adult’ site traffic)… must try to use it in a conversation at some point today.
I like that use of brackets.
You do realize that “Gag me with a spoon” hearkens back to spooning pablum into unwilling babies mouths?
I did not know that… thanks
also had to look up ‘pablum’…