The woman who hosts Top Chef: Masters, a cooking competition show on the Bravo channel, lived on my freshmen hall at college and was in my sister-in-law's sorority. Back then she was called Young Choi. Now she calls herself Kelly Choi. She was sort of friendly, but clearly well above my social station.
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I once worked briefly with a girl who was so clearly, utterly, inarguably above my social station that I couldn't be arsed making the effort to be anything but 'me' around her. Plus, she had a boyfriend who was very 'her station'. This girl wasn't even on the usual 0 - 10 scale. She would have been measured on an entirely different system reserved for heiresses and socialites and goddesses-in-training.
Anyhoo, she was apparently so charmed by the unvarnished 'me', that the weekend after she broke up with her boyfriend, she drove three hours to 'happen' to show up at the bar was I was tending, whereupon I promptly (and cluelessly) turned and introduced her to my new girlfriend who was waiting for me at the end of my shift.
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
How do you know? I mean I'm not doubting it, but did she break-down in tears bawling "You do you realise I drove three hours on the off-chance I'd find you in this bar" or what?Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
No, the girlfriend that she dragged along for the ride told me. And it wasn't an off-chance: she knew where I worked.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I used to subscribe to the whole being-in-or-out-of-a-league thing. But if I was somehow single, I wouldn't give a shit about that. I'd be middle-aged, desperately middle-class with a desperately middle-class car, balding et cetera. But I don't think I'd see those things as invariable causes for being rejected.
After a few rejections I would probably change that notion, of course.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
No, the girlfriend that she dragged along for the ride told me.
Ah, the "friend to provide the guilt trip" ploy, I see.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
You are so dissing me, old man.
You saying I couldn'ta had her?
I coulda had her.
I coulda been a contender.
(etc)Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
Anyway, back to recent brushes with celebrity:
a few months back, before he started the Tonight Show, I walked past Conan O'Brien in Westwood. Very tall. I was walking to the ATM, and on my way back, he was standing at the corner, talking to two guys. As I walked up to cross the street (going the other direction from him), I heard him saying to the guys "thanks for watching, it means a lot. I really appreciate it." Then he walked off, and the guys were walking my direction. They said he was one of the nicest people they'd ever met.
Not too long ago, also in Westwood, I walked past Baron Davis. I would have stopped to talk to him, because I've met him before (he and my wife went to high school together, and I talked to him a bit at their 10-year high school reunion), but he was busy talking to some friends.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
You saying I couldn'ta had her?
No, not at all, really. I'm sure you absolutely could've.
I assumed the BF was along to provide moral support and then, should the come-on not be appropriately received (as was the case), deliver the metaphorical guilt-kick.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I should add, perhaps unnecessarily, that had I been single...Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I meant she was above my station in the made-up class structure of college life. I didn't think much of her either way. I wasn't interested in her. She was attractive in a freakishly skinny sort of way, but the only reason she ever deigned to talk to me was because my brother's girlfriend (now my sister-in-law) was in her sorority. Otherwise, I'm sure she would have just seen me as another piece of flotsam.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I once rode up an escalator and went through the security line directly behind Huey Lewis at the Philadelphia airport. He was by himself.
One time I also passed Geraldo Rivera in an airport terminal.
My brother ate dinner next to George W. Bush at a fundraiser back in the early 90s.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I worked in the the Harrods'perfumery in the mid 80's and Huey Lewis was shagging my boss on the quiet.
Or so she said. I never met or spoke to man.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I worked in a call centre for a mortgage company quite a few years ago, and had an argument with David Baddiel. He was a total bellend.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I think you'll find that's Gianni Rivera. And if it isn't, most people on here will lose interest pretty quickly anywayComment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I've seen several celebs in airports or airplanes. Brad Friedel, Willard Scott, Dr. Ruth, that one ESPN guy whose name I forget, the guy who was coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers at the time, Al Franken and Chuck Grassley.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
Ex-England and Wednesday goalkeeper Chris Woods in a golf course club shop in Sheffield.
David and Victoria Beckham came into Next at Meadowhall when I was working there about a decade ago. Why on earth two multi-millionaires should go clothes shopping with a Next card I've still yet to fathom out.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I know lots of famous people because I am very important but, as far as brushes go, I saw Miranda Richardson at an open garden last week that I was taking my wife and mother-in-law and she looked very nice.
Bryan Adams made me a cup of tea once.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
My favorite brush with celebrity, was a brush with famous-for-DC Wes Clark (former General, brief love of the center-left in 2004). I ended up sitting next to him on a Southwest flight to Las Vegas (I was on my way to a bachelor party, he was going to speak at the Yearly Kos shindig). We talked about sports for two hours, and he was knowledgeable and passionate and, frankly, kind of awesome.
I had lunch with Don Mattingly once when I was a kid as he lived in my grandparents' apartment building during baseball's spring training, and my grandfather was friendly with him. He was very nice, with a beautiful wife, and I hated every single minute of that lunch as he was an icon of the mother@#$ng NY Yankees. That same month, I had Ricky Henderson throw my chock-full-of-autographs baseball away when I tried to get him to sign it.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
Reed of the Valley People wrote:
Heh...she discussed me once on air.Dr. RuthComment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
Oh, and I had dinner with (current) Prime Minister Stephen Harper back in...oh...'93 or '94. I left thinking 'what an asshole'. I may have been right.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
About 4 or 5 years ago I was standing next to Hazel Blears in a pub in Westminster, and I forgot to punch her.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
Actually, I forgot that I worked through a conversation that Gordon Brown was having in the street about 6 years agoComment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
A pal told me of a time he was flying from Edinburgh to London some time ago sat next to an American. They got chatting and the guy told him he'd been attending a literary festival.
"So what do you do?"
"I'm a writer"
"OK, published anything?"
"Yes"
"Sold many"
"Yeah, a few"
Anyway they talked about other stuff. He was a thoroughly nice chap according to my pal. They parted at Heathrow but my pal noticed someone coming up to the guy and asking for his autograph. Mmmmm, maybe he's famous he thought and just happened to be walking past a bookshop completely plastered with pictures of the guy.
John Grisham.
He also told us about the time he woke up in a hotel room, completely naked on a completely stripped bed. No sheets, duvet or pillows. (My pal, not John Grisham). He admitted he was very pished on going to bed but felt sure he'd have noticed something.
A mystery JG could probably have spun into a terse thriller.Comment
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Brushes With Celebrity Part 45
I have Paul Daniel's phone number having taken a phone call from him ages ago wanting to buy the Viz caricature of him :-)
come to think of it I took phone calls from loads of "celebs" in those days..I have a fax from Carol Decker that came about after she phoned the office..but sadly this was in the days of old fax paper that starts to turn dark after a while :-( so in the unlikely event she becomes a mega star I'll not get much for it on Ebay
Does knowing Chelsea Clinton's fiancee count as a brush with Celebrity?
Spent an hour or so getting stoned with Nico in my room in the Columbia Hotel once..that was pretty cool..well it would have been if she hadn't been such a boreComment
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