yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

Stan was also very nice to me and my wife whenever he met us in a car park too.  Small world.

Bravo.

nick_md wrote:

Lol, that totally went over my head.

That's what my favorite auntie said

Cracking stuff, lads.

I played poker with Victoria Coren. But we got moved to different tables and then she got knocked out lol.

I've met:
Noel Redding

Keith Flint

Alan Fletcher

My mate works with John Romero and another mate knows Stephen Soderberg.

I took a pic of Donna Air when MTV News were at Leicester Square and it's probably one of the best photos I've taken. Remember the big windows they'd stand against and you see people outside? She saw 90s art student me and posed for the pic, which was sound of her.

I've also met a couple of the lads from The Beta Band in a bar in Newcastle.

I'm a massive fan, and I kinda gummed up and all I could manage was a rather pathetic "Thank you so much - The Beta Band changed my life"!

There was also the time when Dominic Dimond (I don't have a thing for him, honest!) called my house to get me down to London to interview for Games Master.  I didn't believe it was him at first and then I thought, "it's well before 6pm (the time kids were allowed to make calls back when land lines existed), there's no way its one of my mates".  Happy times!

I did head down to London for an interview, played Dom again (it was a hockey game, but not the EA franchise), got beaten and didn't end up on the show.

Class!!!

I don’t know if this counts, but I came third in the first national video games championships?

Won the regional finals and the prizes were a SNES, Megadrive and an Amiga 600.

Free trip to London for the finals at the Future Entertainment show. £10k for first place and £4K for second. Nowt for third!

I did end up getting a local tv crew round to my house for an interview, so became a local celebrity!

The interviewer hit on my Mam…..still makes me feel a little queasy to this day!

TheBoyRoberts wrote:

Class!!!

I don’t know if this counts, but I came third in the first national video games championships?

Won the regional finals and the prizes were a SNES, Megadrive and an Amiga 600.

Free trip to London for the finals at the Future Entertainment show. £10k for first place and £4K for second. Nowt for third!

I did end up getting a local tv crew round to my house for an interview, so became a local celebrity!

The interviewer hit on my Mam…..still makes me feel a little queasy to this day!

I was at that show

I wasn’t.

The local TV company had a camera crew down at the show and at the beginning of the segment they show scenes from the FES.

For a 15 year old it was a sight to behold!  Remember they even had a Helter Skelter?

Dark Soldier wrote:

It mist be a Northern thing. Have a wedding and Emmerdale stars randomly turn up.

I had about half the cast of Emmerdale at my stag do. I'm pretty sure they just invite themselves to any party in Leeds.

Other crap celebrity encounters...

Star in Your Eyes presenter and wrongly accused paedophile, Matthew Kelly, once told me to fuck off backstage at a pantomime.*

I went ice skating with some of The Levellers. Or at least, that's who they said they were.

Stewart Lee once asked me what artist had drawn the cartoon on my t-shirt.  I couldn't remember and his disappointment in me was ill concealed.  Several years later I was having a very bad day at the Edinburgh Festival and one hapless soul chose the wrong moment to push a flier into my face. I rudely batted them away, whilst muttering expletives to myself - only for the wife to corner me a little further down the road and ask me why I'd felt the need to be quite so unpleasant to Stewart Lee.

I had a brief but pleasant chat with Neil Gaiman once.

I once tripped over Amanda Palmer and made her late to get onto stage.

I once heard John Bramwell of I Am Kloot spilling the dirt on a vast conspiracy relating to The Beatles and the music industry in general.  He was very drunk and I barely understood a word of it. (Barring his obvious love of the Fab Four.)

I stood next to Jarvis Cocker and his son whilst they ate pizza.  My wife and I left as we were rubbish at pretending not to know who he was.

A very famous (and very nice) American actor was once utterly confused by my refusal to let them pay me for doing my job. 

I came across Paul Daniels in a department store in Edinburgh.  He insisted on loudly doing tricks for people.  I later spotted the lovely Debbie McGee quietly shopping in the same store, and it occurred to me that perhaps Daniels wasn't a self important dick, but simply providing a distraction so that his wife could shop in peace. Or maybe he was a dick, and had abandoned her to show off - either way she seemed happy.

I worked in Leeds General Infirmary when Jimmy Saville had an office there.  Every now and again you would get the call down to the wards that "Jimmy's coming" and the nurses would quickly pull curtains around certain patients. I remember being told it was to stop him "bothering them", which made sense at the time because he was bloody annoying, but in retrospect it possibly meant something else entirely.

I once looked after a very drunk Pete Postlethwaite at a film festival.  Someone asked him why he'd done Jurassic Park 2, and he replied "because sometimes, no matter how refined our tastes, all we want is a McDonalds."  (Or words to that effect.)

*My younger brother has a completely different recollection of this event than me.  We were both little kids at the time, and in my memory we were both harassing him at the bar backstage, until he ultimately told us to fuck off in exasperation. In my brother's memory however he was apparently absolutely lovely, and gave us sweets.  I've genuinely no idea which of us is right, but generally assume that my brother simply missed the bit where he'd had enough of us...

tin_robot wrote:

I once tripped over Amanda Palmer and made her late to get onto stage

Alternate timeline here where you saved us from her heel turn.

Pretty sure Paul Daniels was genuinely a dick Tin, I saw him (and Debbie McGee) in a virtually empty London Indian restaurant (it was right in the city, mid-week) and he was very creepily hitting on the young women working at the bar, with his wife right there.

JMW wrote:

Pretty sure Paul Daniels was genuinely a dick Tin, I saw him (and Debbie McGee) in a virtually empty London Indian restaurant (it was right in the city, mid-week) and he was very creepily hitting on the young women working at the bar, with his wife right there.

Weren't they swingers or something or just a bit like that?
I remember her constantly flirting with Theroux in their episode.

I have a works yard where all the tools, machines and spare materials are kept.  When we moved in about 10 years or so ago it was being sold off in sections as it was all part of Paul Daniels estate.  The buildings at the front where all filled with all his props and memorabilia - literally had those boxes there that he’d cut Debbie McGee in half in - and Debbie herself was there watching untidy looking men loading up a van with the good stuff and chucking the crap in a skip.
I got myself a wand but I don’t think it works because I can hardly ever get rabbits to come out of hats, even when I wave it about.